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CHAPTER 19. SPIRITUAL JOY

This book sets forth a basic idealistic framework for self-exploration leading beyond the ego. What is it – religion or science? And what is the role of philosophy?

The term “religion” comes from the word religiere , meaning “to reunite”. The pinnacle of the process of adult development, indeed, should be considered a reconnection with what we were originally – with the primary processes of our mind-brain, with the non-individual self. So in this sense the idealistic program really is a religion.

However, all major religions have dualistic tendencies. In most religions, there is a deification of a particular teacher or disseminator of a certain teaching or a certain belief system. Ultimately, all of this must be transcended. Therefore, in its final stage of development, the idealistic scheme must go beyond all religions, creeds, belief systems and teachers.

Can an idealistic scheme be called science? I believe that most, if not all, of the stages of adult development are objectively verifiable (in the sense of weak objectivity) and therefore can be considered science. Not long ago, psychologist Gordon Allport said that we have no liberation psychology. Okay, here’s some psychology at last.

Perhaps, considering the phenomenon of human spiritual search as the latest extension of psychology will lead to a final rapprochement between science and religion. In this psychology of liberation, science and religion will perform complementary functions. Science will engage in further objective – theoretical and practical – research related to the phenomenon. Religion will be concerned with disseminating the scientific knowledge thus obtained – but on a subjective level, since objective teaching of this kind of knowledge is largely useless. To crown them both and serve as a guide for them will be philosophy – idealistic metaphysics, which will continue to be enriched with new insights.

Fundamentally inaccessible to verification (in the scientific sense), idealistic metaphysics can be formulated extremely briefly: consciousness is the basis of all being, and our self-consciousness is That consciousness. But in the simplicity of this statement lies its richness. Evidence of this can be found in the vast philosophical literature in which people have tried to expound and explain this metaphysics in different eras and in different cultures. This book represents the most recent contribution to the ongoing work of idealist philosophy—a contribution suited to our predominantly scientific culture.

In spiritual traditions, two important schemes for the spiritual way of life are formulated: of these, in first place is the scheme based on the denial of the world. The Buddha said that the phenomenal world is dukkha, suffering. In Christianity, a person’s entire life is considered a punishment for original sin. In much of Hindu Vedanta philosophy, the phenomenal world is seen as an illusion. In this tradition, the emphasis is on enlightenment, renunciation and nirvana as various forms of salvation from the illusory world of suffering. We turn to spirit because the material world has nothing to offer us; we declare spiritual upliftment to be the highest virtue. From this position, science, aimed at exploring the world, seems opposite and resistant to spirituality, and this apparent dichotomy gave rise to antagonism between science and spirituality.

However, within spiritual traditions there have always been—though never predominant—persistent peace-affirming voices. Thus, in Japan, along with Rinzai Zen with its emphasis on enlightenment, there has always been Soto Zen, which emphasizes the awakening of compassion to serve the world. In India, among all the world-denying Upanishads, one – the Isha Upanishad – is distinguished by the fact that it proclaims the possibility of immortality in life itself. In China, Taoists also preached the philosophy of peace and joyful living in the world. In India, the Bauls sang the splendor of spiritual joy.

Due to its world-affirming nature, spiritual joy welcomes the study of manifest nature, which is mainly what ordinary science is concerned with. It is therefore not surprising that we have finally created a science—an idealistic science—that is truly compatible with the spiritual philosophy of joy. This idealistic science calls on the world’s religions to change their emphasis and recognize both fundamental joy and suffering, both the spirit and the world. Achieving this goal will mark the final rapprochement of science and religion.

In addition to science, religion and philosophy, we ourselves and our free will exist. In one of the last verses of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna to decide by his own free will whether he chooses an idealistic lifestyle. This is a decision that you, I and all of us must make of our own free will.

Numerous surveys have shown that a surprising number of Americans have had mystical experiences. If only they could make these experiences the basis for awakening to buddhi-level being! And when such a return of enchantment becomes available to a significant number of people, there may well be a change in the movement of consciousness throughout the world.

I believe that such a mass movement of consciousness can be called a revival. Similar periods of transition have occurred in many cultures and civilizations. The next such renaissance will be very special because, thanks to modern communication technologies, humanity has become interconnected. The next resurgence will have repercussions around the world; it will be a global revival of the world.

The Bhagavad Gita depicts such events of rebirth as the coming of an avatar – the teacher of the world. In the past, such avatars were sometimes isolated, individual people; other times it was groups of people. But now the world is much larger and requires an unprecedented number of people to become avatars to lead the next renaissance. Imagine our journey at a time when there is a huge rise of humanity from fragmentation to unity in diversity. It would truly be a hero’s journey.

Hero’s Journey

The myths of many cultures contain a theme that mythologist Joseph Campbell called “the hero’s journey.” The hero painfully experiences separation from the world, goes alone to meet mysterious forces, and finally returns in glory, bringing with him the knowledge he has acquired. The ancient Greeks expressed their gratitude for the benefits of fire in the myth of Prometheus: Prometheus went to heaven, stole the secret of fire from the gods and gave it to people. In India, Gautama Buddha gave up the comforts of his life as a prince to undertake a hero’s journey that led him to enlightenment. He returned to teach the truths of the Eightfold Path. Moses, the hero of Israel, sought his God on Mount Sinai, received the Ten Commandments, and returned with them to unite his people. In each case, the reunion gave birth to the doctrine of unification – a new way of manifesting the spirit in the experience of everyday life.

I see the myth of the hero’s journey being played out again in the scientific quest for the nature of reality. However, the individual heroism of earlier days has given way to collective heroism. Many unknown scholars have charted the heroic path through each of the three stages of myth.

The Cartesian separation of mind and matter was historically necessary so that science could freely pursue its own path without being constrained by theology. It was necessary to study unconscious matter without theological bias in order to gain an understanding of the mechanics and interactions that shape all matter, including living and conscious matter. It took almost four centuries to achieve today’s relative mastery of these physical forces.

There were many turning points and many heroes along this path of division. Descartes raised the sails, and very soon Galileo, Kepler and Newton became the helmsmen of the ship of heroes. Darwin and Freud completed the division by extending the laws of mechanics into the realm of the living and conscious, and hundreds of sailor scientists supported this division.

In the twentieth century, the sails of the ship of heroes began to be blown by a fresh wind blowing in a different direction. Planck discovered the quantum of action, Heisenberg and Schrödinger discovered quantum mechanics, and together these discoveries forever changed the previous materialist, separatist course. According to Bertrand Russell, in the twentieth century matter began to look less material and mind less mental. Everything was ready to build a bridge across the four-century gap that separated them: the hero’s return had begun.

Prometheus brought fire, Buddha brought the Eightfold Path. Each return led to a revolution in the dynamics of society, to a genuine paradigm shift. Today we see in the interpretation and assimilation of quantum mechanics within the framework of idealistic science a potential for paradigm shift similar to that possessed by the fire of Prometheus and the noble truths of the Buddha.

Mythology is the history of the play of consciousness. If you refuse to explore consciousness, if you do not reject the idea of ​​consciousness as an epiphenomenon, then the myth may pass you by. Now is the culmination of the most universal of all myths – the return of the hero, but only a few can see it clearly. Such blindness led Marilyn Ferguson to dub the evolving paradigm shift the “Aquarian conspiracy,” but it is the most overt conspiracy that history has ever known.

The legacy of the Separatists of the past—mind-body and mind-matter dualism—cannot be eliminated by asserting a monism based on material realism, as many mind scientists tend to do. As Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield emphasized, “Declaring these two things [mind and body] to be the same does not make them so.” Of course he doesn’t. When a monistic point of view is rashly adopted, old schisms are simply replaced by new ones – as long as this point of view is internally contradictory and does not take into account the legitimate concerns of idealists (about how to include all three elements – body, mind and consciousness – in our model of reality).

The paradigm described here is based on truly unifying ideas that take into account the interests of both the idealist and materialist camps. These ideas are explored not only in the theories of quantum physics, but also in experimental studies in cognitive psychology and neurophysiology.

There is still a lot of work ahead. Even though the new view provides a consistent interpretation of quantum mechanics and resolves the mind-body paradoxes, a host of questions must be answered before a consistent picture can emerge. If consciousness is the fabric of the world, then how can we find new laboratory experiments to confirm this idea? This is just one of the questions that remains unanswered.

The ideas explored here of a new idealistic science based on the primacy of consciousness – ideas growing out of efforts to unify science and idealistic philosophy – deserve your personal and serious assessment. If this assessment motivates you to explore consciousness, to begin your own hero’s journey toward transformation, then my work has not been in vain.

For centuries we have celebrated the objectivity of science, but in our own lives we have cherished subjectivity and religion. We allowed our lives to become a series of dichotomies. Can we now ask science to unify our way of life and revolutionize our religions? Can we demand that our subjective experiences and spiritual philosophy be allowed to expand our science?

“Someday,” said the Jesuit philosopher Teilhard de Chardin, “after we have subdued the winds, waves, tides and gravity, we will have to conquer… the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will open fire.” We have already subdued the winds, waves, tides and gravity (okay – almost). Can we begin to tame the energies of love?

Can we recognize our full potential—the unified access to our classical and quantum selves? Can we allow our lives to become an expression of the eternal surprise of infinite Being? Yes we can.

The book “The Self-Aware Universe. How consciousness creates the material world.” Amit Goswami

Contents

PREFACE
PART I. The Union of Science and Spirituality
CHAPTER 1. THE CHAPTER AND THE BRIDGE
CHAPTER 2. OLD PHYSICS AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL HERITAGE
CHAPTER 3. QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE DEATH OF MATERIAL REALISM
CHAPTER 4. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MONISTIC IDEALISM
PART II. IDEALISM AND THE RESOLUTION OF QUANTUM PARADOXES
CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS IN TWO PLACES AT THE SAME TIME AND EFFECTS THAT PRECEDE THEIR CAUSES
CHAPTER 6. THE NINE LIVES OF SCHRODINGER’S CAT
CHAPTER 7. I CHOOSE WITH THEREFORE, I AM
CHAPTER 8. THE EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN PARADOX
CHAPTER 9. RECONCILIATION OF REALISM AND IDEALISM
PART III. SELF-REFERENCE: HOW ONE BECOMES MANY
CHAPTER 10. EXPLORING THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
CHAPTER 11. IN SEARCH OF THE QUANTUM MIND
CHAPTER 12. PARADOXES AND COMPLEX HIERARCHIES
CHAPTER 13. “I” OF CONSCIOUSNESS
CHAPTER 14. UNIFICATION OF PSYCHOLOGIES
PART IV . RETURN OF CHARM
CHAPTER 15. WAR AND PEACE
CHAPTER 16. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CREATIVITY
CHAPTER 17. THE AWAKENING OF BUDDHA
CHAPTER 18. IDEALISMAL THEORY OF ETHICS
CHAPTER 19. SPIRITUAL JOY
GLOBAR OF TERMS