Ervin Laszlo Quotes

Thus Wittgenstein’s magnificent statement: “If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”31

Clarified states of consciousness are contagious.

There is a Universal Creative Force connecting all beings and things, a source of love and wisdom that can be drawn from and revealed through the creation of works of art.

As Steven Strogatz says in his book, Sync, “For reasons we don’t yet understand, the tendency to synchronize is one of the most pervasive drives in the universe, extending from atoms to animals, from people to planets.

Whereas traditional reductionism sought to find the commonality underlying diversity in reference to a shared substance, such as material atoms, contemporary systems theory seeks to find common features in terms of shared aspects of organization.

Air France’s in-flight magazine.

Our spiritual ecology simply does not permit private awakening.

I have learned that all knowledge is available to us. We don’t have to create it; we have only to access it. Simply ask in the right way—not with pride in your accomplishment, but with an open heart. I don’t even mean to ask humbly, in the sense of being self-deprecating. Don’t think about yourself at all, nor about your ability or lack of it. Concentrate, rather, on attuning yourself to Infinite Consciousness and ask for guidance in what you want to do. It’s delightful, fun, and deeply inspiring to work and let yourself be used in this way.

A range of different types of consciousness is available to human beings. It’s a kind of anomaly that postmodern Western culture has narrowed the range of that what we are encouraged to have. Maybe it’s not so much a transformation we are speaking of, but an opening. It’s a reclaiming.32

As the Hindu sages who fashioned the Akashic concept realized, there are aspects of the human mind that are unlimited in space, therefore omnipresent, and that are also boundless in time, therefore eternal and immortal. Omnipresence and eternality are qualities that have always been attributed to the Divine—thus the Hindu aphorism Tat tvam asi, “Thou art that,” which affirms that we share qualities with the Godhead or the Absolute, however named.

a paradigm where information rather than matter is the basic reality,

to effect large-scale changes in our lives and in the world, we need to hold large-scale visions in our minds and consciously pour our energy into them.

An NDE gives a person a conscious experience of a dimension in which time and distance play no role, in which past and future can be glimpsed, where they feel complete and healed, and where they experience unlimited knowledge and unconditional love. The life changes that follow mainly spring from the insight that love and compassion for oneself, for others, and for nature are major prerequisites of life. Following an NDE people realize that everything and everyone is connected, that every thought has an effect on both oneself and others, and that our consciousness continues beyond physical death.

The activity of a creative field becomes further invigorated when similar creative fields are generated by other people. This is because creative fields having the same vibrational frequency tend to merge, forming large-scale collective creative fields. These collective creative fields can be extremely pervasive. The bigger they are, the more powerfully they respond to thoughts emanating from people in various places.

Jaroslav Trnka, this discovery implies that spacetime, if not entirely illusory, is not fundamental: it is the result of geometrical relationships at a deeper level (Arkani-Hamed 2012; Trnka 2013). Henceforth physicists can

Based on my NDE research, I conclude that our waking consciousness, which we experience as our daily consciousness, is only a complementary aspect of our whole and infinite nonlocal consciousness. This consciousness is based on indestructible and constantly evolving fields of information, where all knowledge, wisdom, and unconditional love are present and available, and these fields of consciousness are stored in a dimension beyond our concept of time and space with nonlocal and universal interconnectedness. One could call this our higher consciousness, divine consciousness, or cosmic consciousness. It’s the Akashic field to which conditions at the portals of death provide a special kind of access.

Much has been written and said about the creative power of thoughts and words—especially words. But it seems to me that few people truly understand this power. If they understood it, how could they go on using words with such carelessness?

In the business world I had been used to “making things happen” and focusing on results. I was continually pushing or pulling the outcomes of events and circumstances rather than focusing my highest intention and then allowing the optimum outcome to unfold.

Working with a small team of researchers, educators, and scientists, we are creating a curriculum on what we are calling “worldview literacy.”31 We define this as the capacity to comprehend and communicate not only our own worldview but also to recognize that our beliefs come from our particular frame of reference and to understand that others hold different and potentially equally valid worldviews out of which their assumptions, and therefore their actions, arise. This capacity also includes being able to adapt to changes that come through a meeting of different perspectives, customs, practices, and belief systems.

Both Rolling Thunder and Spotted Fawn had told me about how “spiritual healing” begins with respect for the Great Spirit—the life and love that can be found in all of nature’s creations. Each element of creation has its own will, its own way, and its own purpose. These ways need to be respected, not exploited, by human beings.

What I want to say is simply that we are all surrounded by an ocean of abundance: knowledge, wisdom, ability, opportunities, material plenty. What a pity it is that people close themselves off from that spiritual environment. Keeping their gaze fixed on the ground, they trudge through a life burdened with worries, fears, and self-doubts.

Spotted Fawn left a legacy as well. She taught me, and many others, that it’s not enough to plan and execute a project intellectually. If a project is to grow and prosper, it needs to be rooted in the spirit, in the body, in the community, as well as in the mind. And in her final months of life, Spotted Fawn bore her adversity with dignity and good humor. She was neither a whiner nor a complainer.

A growing body of evidence suggests that what we do affects others and what others do affects us, and yet within this matrix, individuality is not suffocated but paradoxically liberated into deeper forms of self-expression. The self that sees and consciously participates in the porosity of being becomes more than the self who didn’t see it. Experientially opening to the Akashic field that surrounds us melts the boundaries of the private ego, bringing about the “death of self” spoken of so often in the spiritual literature; but as the ego dies, a new form of individuality is being birthed, not an isolated individuality but one that thrives in this deeper give and take. In the end, I think we will see that expanding the breadth of our conscious participation in the surrounding matrix of life brings forward a new depth of personal presence in history.

The thoughts, words, and emotions that human beings emit from moment to moment are constantly streaming forth from their bodies, forming creative fields that are visible in various colors, forms, and shapes. Some of these creative fields are hazy and cloudy in appearance, and they hover around the person in indeterminate patterns. Others are extremely tenacious, and they twine tightly around the person like a resilient string.

C. J. Martes, healer and author, has helped clients in more than forty countries for nearly twenty years. In 2004 she developed Akashic Field Therapy (AFT), an integral method of quantum healing that helps individuals identify and then remove subconscious negative patterns and beliefs at the mental, physical, and spiritual level. Her work blends A-field (Akashic Field) Theory, Behavioral and Integral Psychology, Vibrational Medicine, and Western science.

How is a positive affirmation practiced? Let us say that you have chosen the positive words “Everything will definitely get better!” Whenever you have a chance, say this phrase aloud over and over again. Or, you could try inhaling deeply, then repeating the phrase in your mind many times while holding your breath. Many people have found that, through this practice, their thought habits really do change, and their circumstances take a turn for the better.

When a perspective is integrated, it is accommodated by the intelligence of the body as a whole. The axis of that intelligence rests on the pelvic floor, informed by the world in ways that are utterly beyond the cause-and-effect logic of which our culture is so fond. In its function, the embodied center of being within us has many of the qualities of what physics has dubbed the quantum vacuum. As systems scientist Ervin Laszlo describes the quantum vacuum, it is the locus of a vast energy field that is neither classically electromagnetic nor gravitational, nor yet nuclear in nature. Instead, it is the originating source of the known electromagnetic, gravitational and nuclear forces and fields. It is the originating source of matter itself.197 The integrating genius of the pelvic intelligence is the quantum vacuum of the self: touched by the present, it receives into it all the perspectives of our living, and then rebirths them as the living sensitivities of the felt self, awakening it to the mutual awareness of reality. The

How can we take control of our creative processes? How can we dissolve the unharmonious fields that we have unknowingly generated? Our first step, I feel, should be to steadily monitor our own thoughts and words to gain a sense of what kinds of fields we are creating. Next, I suggest that we train ourselves to cancel all negative words as soon as they come to mind by replacing them with positive ones. At the same time, I recommend that we make up our minds to banish our destructive beliefs by transforming them into constructive ones.

When I go into meditation, I simply concentrate on oneness with the essential universal vibration. My breathing becomes deeper, slower, and more spiritualized. My body cells become more spiritualized as well. I can feel my cells expanding through the surrounding space until there is no dividing line between me and space, nor between me and others. My consciousness still recognizes that I am Masami Saionji, but there is no borderline to my existence. I am one with the universe, one with Earth, one with all living things, existing beyond time and space.

The scalar waves of the universal holofield interfere with the waves emanating from quanta and quanta-based systems, and the resulting phase-conjugating interference transfers information from the field to the systems. Since the field is universal and transmits information in the distributed mode of holograms, and the waves of the field are scalars that propagate quasi-instantly in space and do not attenuate in time, the transfer of information produces instant or quasi-instant interaction within and among quanta and quanta-based systems throughout the observable regions of space and time.

The earliest modern attempt to test prayer’s efficacy was Sir Francis Galton’s innovative but flawed survey in 1872.16 The field languished until the 1960s, when several researchers began clinical and laboratory studies designed to answer two fundamental questions: (1) Do the prayerful, compassionate, healing intentions of humans affect biological functions in remote individuals who may be unaware of these efforts? (2) Can these effects be demonstrated in nonhuman processes, such as microbial growth, specific biochemical reactions, or the function of inanimate objects? The answer to both questions appears to be yes.

Since I began meditating in 1979 (steadily, if not as regularly as intended), I have been a successful songwriter devoted to the greatest good, with my creative ego in service of the whole. Interestingly, I can’t recall any “writer’s block,” ever. Through a sustained channel of appreciative inquiry into the human and Divine, I’m flooded with ideas. (All the more reason to sit quiet, to bathe in the Akashic realm, in universal mind.) If anything, the number of song fragments and essay themes streaming in require more time and consideration than there are hours in a given day or week. This creative abundance is a great joy and, only sometimes, a burden.

An answer may be found in the Akashic Record, more exactly in the Akashic field, augmented continuously by quantum holographic information. To routinely access this deeper level of intuitive information requires a natural openness to such information, enhanced by practice, and by learning to trust the validity of such experience. As suggested above, intuition should be considered a basic source of information (our “first sense”) available in nature long before humans evolved to use language and so-called left brain processes. Intuitive information affects us at the cellular level and is more associated with feeling than with thinking, intellect, and language.

As Laszlo describes in his Summing Up, the quantum hologram is a nonlocal quantum information structure derived from Max Planck’s study in the late nineteenth century of the surprising radiation emitted by material substances, called “black body radiation.” For most of the twentieth century such radiation was believed to be curious random photon emissions from matter, and of minimal interest—until Schempp demonstrated that the emissions are entangled, coherent, and carry nonlocal information about the emitting object. Subsequent studies have shown such nonlocal information to be fundamental not only to our normal perceptual faculties but also that it forms the basis of intuitive-level information.

While all these impressive facts do not necessarily constitute a definitive “proof” that we survive death and reincarnate as the same separate unit of consciousness, or the same individual soul, they represent a formidable conceptual challenge for traditional science, and they have a paradigm-breaking potential. It is clear that there is no plausible explanation for these phenomena within the conceptual framework of mainstream psychiatry and psychology. Having observed hundreds of past life experiences and experienced many of them myself, I have to agree with Chris Bache that “the evidence in this area is so rich and extraordinary that scientists who do not think the problem of reincarnation deserves serious study are either uninformed or “bone-headed.

THE HOLOGRAPHIC LIFE REVIEW Here the subject feels the presence of, and re-experiences, not only every act but also every thought from his or her life and realizes that all is an energy field that influences others as well. All that has been done and thought seems to be stored. Because of their connection with the memories, emotions, and consciousness of other persons, subjects experience the consequences of their own thoughts, words, and actions for those persons at the very moment when they occurred. They understand that everything one does to others will ultimately be returned to oneself. Patients survey their whole life in one glance; time and space don’t seem to exist during this experience—instantaneously they are where they focus their attention.

Each thought or emotion holds its own unique form of creative energy, and thoughts having a similar frequency band together to form a homogeneous creative field around the person who emitted them. When the amassed energy of a particular creative field has accumulated to a critical point, and is triggered by some external circumstance, it manifests itself in some way on the visible plane. This manifestation might occur in the form of some sort of event, happening, or situation that emerges in the person’s life. It might take shape in the form of an encounter with another person. Or, it might manifest itself in words that are heard or read, or observed popping up unexpectedly in the person’s own mind. Once this manifestation has occurred, the energy held within the creative field is depleted to just that extent.

Through quantum effects, cells create a coherent field of information throughout the body. This “biofield” supplements the ordinary flow of information with the multidimensional quasi-instant information needed to ensure the coordinated functioning of the whole organism. The quantum effects of the biofield are not confined to the physical bounds of the organism: they extend into the environment. Through its biofield, the living organism interacts with all the fields that surround it. Thanks to this interaction the organism is in constant communication with its environment. Because this communication involves quantum effects, the organism is in communication with more than its immediate environment: it is in communication with other organisms whether near or far. In the final count it is connected with the entire sphere of life.

Where does our creative energy come from in the first place? Pure energy is always emitting from the source of the universe, brimming with infinite potential. This energy supports all forms of life, big or small. Each human being receives a steady supply of this same universal energy, and each of us assigns a shape to that energy by means of our words, thoughts, and emotions. This is the process of creation. The energy of any thought, whatever it might be, holds the potential for generating a creative field. However, unless several thoughts of the same type are emitted, a creative field will not be formed. Just one thought, in and of itself, will quickly lose impetus unless it is reinforced by the energy of other thoughts that resemble it. If several thoughts of the same type are emitted, the energy of those thoughts will band together and the rudiments of a creative field will take shape. Once this rudimentary field has been formed, new energy can easily be added to it. As its mass increases, it will consolidate into a cohesive creative field. As this field continues to grow, it exerts a stronger and stronger influence on the person’s will, decisions, and behavior.

Although it is undifferentiated, Brahman is dynamic and creative. From its ultimate “being” comes the temporary “becoming” of the manifest world, with its attributes, functions, and relationships. The cycles of samsara—of being-to-becoming and again of becoming-to-being—are the lila of Brahman: its play of ceaseless creation and dissolution. In Indian philosophy, absolute reality is the reality of Brahman. The manifest world enjoys but a derived, secondary reality and mistaking it for the real is the illusion of maya. The absolute reality of Brahman and the derived reality of the manifest world constitute a co-created and constantly co-creating whole: this is the advaitavada (the nonduality) of the universe.

In the last count matter is but a waveform disturbance in the quasi-infinite energy- and in-formation-sea that is the connecting field, and the enduring memory, of the universe.

We can tune our consciousness to resonate with the holograms in the A-field. The transmission of information in a field of holograms is known: it occurs when the wavefields that make up two (or more) holograms are “conjugate” with each other. The effect is similar to the more familiar effect known as resonance. Tuning forks and strings on musical instruments resonate with other forks and strings that are tuned to the same frequency (or to entire octaves higher or lower than that frequency). The resonance effect is selective: it does not occur when the forks and strings are tuned to a different, unrelated frequency.

This is not just a fanciful supposition: there is indirect yet significant evidence for it. It comes from the farther reaches of contemporary consciousness research. Stanislav Grof found that in deeply altered states of consciousness, many people experience a kind of consciousness that appears to be that of the universe itself. This most remarkable of altered-state experiences surfaces in individuals who are committed to the quest of apprehending the ultimate grounds of existence. When the seekers come close to attaining their goal, their descriptions of what they regard as the supreme principle of existence are strikingly similar. They describe what they experience as an immense and unfathomable field of consciousness endowed

with infinite intelligence and creative power. The field of cosmic consciousness they experience is a cosmic emptiness—a void. Yet, paradoxically, it is also an essential fullness. Although it does not feature anything in a concretely manifest form, it contains all of existence in potential. The vacuum they experience is a plenum: nothing is missing in it. It is the ultimate source of existence, the cradle of all being. It is pregnant with the possibility of everything there is. The phenomenal world is its creation: the realization and concretization of its inherent potential.

The Vedas tell us, “From Joy is all this created, by Joy is all this sustained, through Joy does all this move and into Joy does all this merge!” For

Among the most accessible of writers on this subject is the systems theorist Ervin Laszlo. Many of his seminal ideas, articulated with the average reader in mind, come together in his description of the ‘Akashic field’, the interactive realm of quantum fluctuations, culminating in a supercoherent state empowering all structures in creation, whether atoms, organisms, or galaxies. Laszlo goes on to raise a crucial question, central to the deliberations of this book. ‘Could it be that our consciousness is linked with other consciousnesses through an inter-connecting Akashic field, much as galaxies are linked in the cosmos quanta in the microworld, and organisms in the world of the living?’ The link with contemporary brain studies is informatively reviewed by Wallace.

Karl enrolled in one of our Esalen month-long seminars after he had done some inner work in a renegade primal therapy group in Canada. It was one of the groups of people who had left the institute of primal therapy

World Peace Prayer movement.

Christopher Bache has been a professor of religious studies at Youngstown State University for thirty years and more recently adjunct professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He was director of transformative learning at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. His teaching focuses on Eastern religions, psychology of religion, and transpersonal psychology. Bache is the author of three books.

Las partes están correlacionadas de modo que lo que sucede a una sucede también a las demás, y también al sistema como un todo. Todas las partes responden al “resto del mundo” como un todo, se mantienen como un todo y cambian y evolucionan como un todo. Las implicaciones de estos descubrimientos son profundas. Parece que las partículas y átomos, y las entidades macroscópicas constituidas por conjuntos de átomos y partículas, no son meramente locales. Las partes de estas entidades no están limitadas al lugar donde han sido halladas; abarcan todo el sistema del que forman parte. Y los propios sistemas son no locales: no se limitan a estar aquí y ahora, sino que en cierto sentido están presentes en todo el espacio y el tiempo. A fin de cuentas, todas las cosas del mundo son esencialmente “no locales”.

El mundo cuántico está intrínsecamente interconectado, con una conexión no local entre los cuantos. En el nivel fundamental, el mundo es inequívocamente no local. Como veremos, el fenómeno de la no localidad es vital para nuestra comprensión del mundo no solo a una escala muy pequeña, sino también en las macroescalas. Este no es un mundo con múltiples estratos y diferentes niveles que obedecen a sus propias leyes y siguen su propia dinámica; es un mundo integral, un sistema integral, en el que los procesos básicos se producen y reproducen en todas las escalas de tamaño y complejidad. El modo en que los elementos fundamentales están interconectados y cómo interactúan nos dice mucho acerca de cómo está construido y cómo funciona el mundo.

Hasta que el cuanto es medido (o posiblemente solo observado), tiene tanto las propiedades de las ondas como las de los corpúsculos. Pero, como nos dice la teoría de la complementariedad onda-partícula de Niels Bohr y el principio de indeterminación de Heisenberg, estas propiedades no ocurren y no pueden ocurrir al mismo tiempo. El estado-onda del cuanto excluye el estado-partícula, y viceversa. Esto significa que todas las propiedades del cuanto no pueden medirse simultáneamente. Al medir una propiedad, otra propiedad se desdibuja o su valor se dispara al infinito.

La separación en el espacio y el tiempo no divide las partículas que se originaron en el mismo estado cuántico. No es necesario que las partículas hayan tenido que originarse en el mismo lugar y al mismo tiempo: basta con que en un momento y lugar hayan compartido un mismo estado cuántico. Partículas que una vez ocuparon un mismo estado cuántico en un lugar e instante determinados pueden estar separadas por años luz en el espacio y miles de años en el tiempo. Su conexión no la disuelve la distancia o el tiempo.

Las observaciones relativas al mundo cuántico trascienden el llamado “realismo del estado local”. En este mundo, las interacciones no están confinadas dentro de los límites prescritos por la física clásica, y ni siquiera por los de la teoría de la relatividad. En el nivel de los cuantos, el nuestro es un mundo entrelazado: un mundo de interacciones universales, no locales.

At any moment, a human being can receive new energy from the wellspring of the universe. However, to receive this pristine energy, our thoughts need to connect with it. We can do this with pure prayer or with peace-loving thoughts such as “I am so grateful! Everything will definitely get better!” or “May peace prevail on Earth!

Purified Annie Hunt, spiritualized Annie Hunt. Purified Annie Hunt, spiritualized Annie Hunt. Purified Annie Hunt, spiritualized Annie Hunt. How can we thank you? May peace prevail on Earth. On behalf of humanity, we thank the love of the universe for the purified existence of Annie Hunt.

Because to respect one’s own existence, and the existence of others, is in tune with the great universal will, these positive words attracted a flow of shining energy from all over the universe.

Richard had conducted a series of DMILS studies. While my data resulted in significant deviations between the treatment and control conditions, Wiseman consistently found chance results in his studies.

The most fundamental element of reality is the quantum vacuum, the energy- and in-formation-filled plenum that underlies, generates, and interacts with our universe, and with whatever universes may exist in the Metaverse.

But information by things on other levels is less intense and evident than information by things that correspond to a thing’s own level. (P.108]

Suppose that when it is measured, a quantum such as an electron has a 50 percent probability of going up and a 50 percent probability of going down. Then we do not have just one universe in which the quantum has a 50/50 probability of going up or going down, but two parallel universes. In one of the universes the electron is actually going up and in the other it is actually going down.

In periods of scientific revolution, when the established paradigm is under pressure, many science fables are put forward but not all pan out. Theoreticians proceed on the assumption that, as Galileo said, “the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics” and forget that not everything in the language of mathematics has a place in the book of nature. As a result many mathematically sophisticated fables remain just that—fables. Others, however, harbor the seeds of significant scientific advance. Initially, nobody knows for sure which of the seeds will grow and bear fruit. The field is in ferment, in a state of creative chaos.

As just remarked, every particle, every atom, and every molecule possesses not only the state that it occupies when it is observed, but also states that are empty and hence are said to be “virtual.” Virtual states are described by probability functions and bits of information. They become real when a particle, an atom, or a molecule “jumps” into them.

The set of virtual states into which a given particle, atom, or molecule can jump—unlike the jumps themselves—is not random. The order of a given particle’s (or atom’s or molecule’s) set of virtual states controls the translational, vibrational, and rotational motion of that particle (or atom or molecule). This virtual-state order determines the movement of chemical systems across surfaces of potential energy by leading them from one conformal state to another—from one kind of chemical or biochemical ensemble to another.

The remarkable fact emerging from this sea of quantum mystery is that particles, and the atoms constituted by particles, are not individual beasts. They are sociable entities, and under certain conditions they are so thoroughly “entangled” with each other that they are not just here or there, but in all measured places at the same time. Their nonlocality respects neither time nor space: it exists whether the distance that separates the particles and the atoms is measured in millimeters or in light-years, and whether the time that separates them consists of seconds or of millions of years.

We know that living organisms consist of as much as 70 percent water. But it was not known that the properties of water make life itself possible. These properties do not derive from the chemical composition of the H2O molecules of water; the decisive processes involve the bonds between the hydrogen components of the H2O molecules. These bonds are more than ten times weaker than the typical chemical bonds. Because of the stretching of the molecular bonds between hydrogen atoms and their host oxygen atom, every drop of water is a constantly forming and re-forming mixture of molecular structures.

In a complex organism the challenge of maintaining dynamic equilibrium is gigantic. The human body consists of some million billion cells, far more than stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Of this cell population, 600 billion are dying and the same number are regenerating every day—over 10 million cells per second. The average skin cell lives only for about two weeks; bone cells are renewed every three months. Every ninety seconds millions of antibodies are synthesized, each from about twelve hundred amino acids, and every hour 200 million erythrocytes are regenerated. There is no substance in the body that is constant, though heart and brain cells endure longer than most. And the substances that coexist at a given time produce thousands of biochemical reactions in the body each and every second.

No matter how diverse the cells, organs, and organ systems of the organism, in essential respects they act as one. According to the experimental biophysicist Mae-Wan Ho they behave like a good jazz band, where every player responds immediately and spontaneously to the improvisations of the others. The super jazz band of an organism never ceases to play in a lifetime, expressing the harmonies and melodies of the individual organism with a recurring rhythm and beat but with endless variations.

Max Planck said it clearly: in the final count, there is no such thing as matter in the universe.

The current understanding is that the world did not come into being when our universe did: there was a pre-space in the world before this universe was born. The universe we inhabit was born in the cosmic explosion known as the big bang 13.8 billion years ago, and it will vanish when the processes that make up its matter-like elements have run their course.

Our universe is a remarkably coherent domain. This calls for explanation, and now we have an explanation. The explanation is that our universe is “in-formed” by the wider and deeper dimension: the Kosmos. That the Kosmos would be an “in-forming” domain beyond space and time is a long-standing insight; it is present in Plato’s philosophy. According to Plato, the world of forms and ideas is the higher (or deeper) reality, the reality of the Kosmos; the physical/material furnishings of the world are but its reflections.

The world is an in-formed quantum system constituted of clusters of in-formed energy. The clusters and configurations are coherent—coherent enough so we could define and classify their characteristics. In the most basic and general sense, the in-formed energies that make up the observable world are in-phase patterns of vibration: relatively stable and enduring standing and propagating waves.

The world “runs” on information, in the active form quantum physicist David Bohm called “in-formation.” In-formation accounts for the coherent, nonrandom behavior of the particles that make up the basic entities of space and time. It accounts for the myriad ensembles of atoms and molecules that constitute the observable furnishings of the universe. The world is an in-formed quantum system.

The clusters of in-formed energy that constitute the universe are not random: they display remarkable coherence. This is not explained by the received theory that the things that emerge in the universe are the result of random interactions.

According to the traditions

The evolution of complex systems is not merely a happy coincidence of elements and conditions in particular regions of the universe: the complex systems we call living are found in more and more places, under more and more diverse conditions. The universe is a universal template for the evolution of systems that range from atoms and molecules to cells and organisms, and societies and ecologies of organisms. It is astronomically improbable that these systems would have come about through a random mixing of their components: they are staggeringly coherent. The statistical analysis of even relatively simple systems reveals that to produce them by a random mixing of their elements would have taken longer than the age of the universe.

To use a simile suggested by mathematical physicist Fred Hoyle, the probability that a complex system such as a living organism would come about by a random mixing of its components is similar to the probability that a hurricane blowing through a scrapyard would produce a working airplane.

The coherence of the basic parameters of the universe is necessary for the evolution of stars and galaxies, living organisms, and entire biospheres in space and time. Complex systems can only arise in a universe of which the physical constants are precisely and enduringly correlated. Variation of the order of one-billionth of the value of some of these constants (such as the mass of elementary particles, the speed of light, the rate of the expansion of galaxies, and two dozen others) would have resulted in a sterile, lifeless universe. Even a minute variation would prevent the creation of stable atoms and stable relations among them, and would thus have precluded the evolution of systems that manifest the phenomena of life.

In Indian philosophy the ultimate end of the physical world is a return to Akasha, its original subtle-energy womb. At the end of time as we know it, the almost infinitely varied things and forms of the manifest world dissolve into formlessness, living beings exist in a state of pure potentiality, and dynamic functions condense into static stillness. In Akasha, all attributes of the manifest world merge into a state that is beyond attributes: the state of Brahman.

The cycles of samsara—of being-to-becoming and again of becoming-to-being—are the lila of Brahman: its play of ceaseless creation and dissolution. In Indian philosophy, absolute reality is the reality of Brahman.

The fact that a high level of consciousness, with articulated images, thoughts, feelings, and rich subconscious elements, is associated with complex neural structures does not tell us that such consciousness is due to these structures. The observation that brain function is associated with consciousness does not entail that the brain creates consciousness.

Gustav Fechner, the pragmatic founder of experimental methods in psychology, came to much the same conclusion. “When one of us dies,” he wrote after recovering from a serious illness, “it is as if an eye of the world were closed, for all perceptive contributions from that particular quarter cease. But the memories and conceptual relations that have spun themselves round the perceptions of that person remain in the larger Earth-life as distinct as ever, and form new relations and grow and develop throughout all the future, in the same way in which our own distinct objects of thought, once stored in memory, form new relations and develop throughout our whole finite life.

The quantum vacuum, the subtle energy and in-formation sea that underlies all “matter” in the universe, did not originate with the Bang that produced our universe, and it will not vanish when the particles created by that explosion fall back into it. The subtle energies and the active in-formation that underlie this universe were there before its particles appeared and will be there after they disappear. The deeper reality is the quantum vacuum, the enduring in-formation and energy sea that pulsates, producing periodic explosions that give rise to local universes.

The sum total of all forces in the universe, mental or physical, when resolved back to their original state, is called Prana. When there was neither aught nor naught, when darkness was covering darkness, what existed then? Then Akasha existed without motion. . . . At the end of a cycle the energies now displayed in the universe quieted down and became potential. At the beginning of the next cycle they start up, strike upon the Akasha, and out of the Akasha evolve these various forms . . .

The “phase conjugation” that transmits information in holograms is a particular kind of selective resonance. It occurs when two interpenetrating wavefields contain synchronized oscillations at the same frequency. In that event the conjunction of the individual waves creates a spatially and temporally coherent channel of communication between the objects that emit the wavefields. Even when the wavefields contain oscillations at different frequencies, if they are in harmonic resonance (that is, when they constitute a series of two, four, eight, etc., waves per cycle, with synchronized peaks and troughs across the series) they produce a coherent channel of communication.

In the in-formed universe our brain/ mind can access a broad band of information, well beyond the information conveyed by our five sensory organs. We are, or can be, literally “in touch” with almost any part of the world, whether here on Earth or beyond in the cosmos. When we do not repress the corresponding intuitions, we can be in-formed by things as small as a particle or as large as a galaxy.

Physicists discovered that all things in the universe are constantly oscillating at different frequencies. These oscillations generate wavefields that radiate from the objects that produce them. When the wavefield emanating from one object encounters another object, a part of it is reflected from that object, and a part is absorbed by it. The object becomes energized and creates another wavefield that moves back toward the object that emitted the initial wavefield.

The universe’s microwave background radiation proves to be isotropic—the same in all directions. This radiation is believed to be the remnant of the Big Bang; according to BB theory, it was emitted when the universe was about 400,000 years old. The problem is that at that point in time the opposite sides of the expanding universe were already ten million light-years apart. By that time, light could have traveled only 400,000 light-years, so no physical force or signal could have connected regions ten million light-years distant. Yet the cosmic background radiation is uniform for billions of light-years wherever we look in space.

Quasi-instant, system-wide correlation cannot be produced solely by physical or even chemical interactions among molecules, genes, cells, and organs. Though some biochemical signaling—for example, of control genes—is remarkably efficient, the speed with which activating processes spread in the body, as well as the complexity of these processes, makes reliance on biochemistry alone insufficient. The conduction of signals through the nervous system, for example, cannot proceed faster than about twenty meters per second, and it cannot carry a large number of diverse signals at the same time. Yet there are quasi-instant, nonlinear, heterogeneous, and multidimensional correlations among all parts of the organism. The level of coherence in the organism suggests that in some respects it is a macroscopic quantum system. Living tissue is a “Bose-Einstein condensate”: a form of matter in which quantum-type processes—hitherto believed to be limited to the microscopic domain—occur at macroscopic scales.

An isolated genome working through random mutations is unlikely to produce a mutant organism capable of surviving in its milieu because it is not enough for a mutation to produce one or a few positive changes in a species; it must produce the full set. The evolution of feathers, for example, does not produce a reptile that can fly: radical changes in musculature and bone structure are also required, along with a faster metabolism to power sustained flight. The development of the eye requires thousands of mutations, finely coordinated with one another. The probability of a single mutation producing positive results is almost nil: statistically only one mutation in twenty million is likely to be viable; each mutation by itself is likely to make the organism less rather than more fit than it was. And if it is less fit, sooner or later it is eliminated by natural selection.

Life, and the cosmos as a whole, evolves as integrated entities within a network of constant formative interaction. Each thing not only “is,” it also “becomes.

The view that consciousness is produced in and by the brain is just one of the many ways philosophically inclined people have envisaged the relationship between the physical brain and the conscious mind. It is the materialist way. It maintains that consciousness is a kind of by-product of the survival functions the brain performs for the organism. As organisms become more complex, they require a more complex “computer” to steer them so they can get the food, the mate, and the related resources they need in order to survive and reproduce. At a given point in this development, consciousness appears. Synchronized neural firings and transmissions of energy and chemical substances between synapses produce the qualitative stream of experience that makes up the woof and warp of consciousness. Consciousness is not primary in the world; it is an “epi-phenomenon” generated by a complex material system: the human brain. The materialist way of envisaging the relationship of brain and mind is not the only way. Philosophers have also outlined the idealist way. In the idealist perspective, consciousness is the first and only reality; matter is but an illusion created by our mind. This assumption, while outlandish on first sight, makes eminent sense as well: after all, we do not experience the world directly; we experience it only through our consciousness. We normally assume that there is a qualitatively different physical world beyond our consciousness, but that may be an illusion. Everything we experience could be part of our consciousness. The material world could be merely our invention as we try to make sense of the flow of sensations in our consciousness. Then there is the dualist way of conceiving of the relationship between brain and consciousness, matter and mind. According to dualist thinkers, matter and mind are both fundamental, but they are entirely different, not reducible one to the other. The manifestations of consciousness cannot be explained by the organism that manifests them, not even by the staggeringly complex processes of the human brain. In this view the brain is the seat of consciousness, but it is not identical with it.

The rudimentary consciousness of matter at a lower level of organization (the neurons in the brain) becomes integrated in the more evolved consciousness of conscious matter at a higher level of organization (the brain as a whole). This does away with the hard problem of the materialist view without doing the kind of violence to our everyday apprehension of the world that idealism does (according to which all is mind, and nothing but mind). It also does away with the problem of dualism, one that is just a shade less “hard” than that of materialism—because if matter and mind interact (as they must interact in the brain), then we must still say how “something as unconscious as matter” can act on, and be acted on by “something as immaterial as consciousness.

When we are in spontaneous contact with birds, trees, and clouds, with brooks and rivers, with hills and mountains, and with the recurring alternation of the seasons, we think and feel whole. We know that we are part of the world; that we are in everything, and everything is in us. Feelings of belonging, connection, and communion surface and reinforce the ancient and now-revived realization that everything is connected with everything.

According to the traditions, the seat of identity is in the region of the abdomen or bowels. The heart is usually regarded as the vessel through which intimate connection with others, with a larger wholeness, is achieved. Hence, the deepest knowledge of one’s self, and of the oneness of reality, can best be realized through the body.

We live in a finely tuned and delicately constituted universe, where everything that emerges is a whole, and all wholes are embedded in larger wholes and themselves embed smaller wholes. The largest whole in which humanity is embedded is the web of life on the planet. The coherence of this whole is subtly but effectively impacting and influencing us, and all things around us. Bringing this connection to our waking consciousness enables us to reconnect to other wholes around us. Doing so will change us, and will change others around us.

Differentiated multiatomic structures become templates for the evolution of organic macromolecules. The latter build into still more complex and coherent systems: living cells. Groups of cells in turn build into multicellular organisms

Adopting a term originally proposed by psychiatrist Stanislav Grof for developmental processes in psychology

The tendency toward coherent complex systems is manifested on all levels of size and complexity. Gravitation brings the particles and ensembles of particles that emerge in space and time into contact

That evolution would be a universal process has been recognized