The Self-Aware Universe [Paperback]

Some people respond with a wary eye but an open mind.

Others don't care.

Still others enthusiastically embrace any challenge and work with it to see where they get to in the end.

Then there are the people who just as enthusiastically resist any open challenge to an established, "gut" idea. These people respond irrationally, with fear and excessive caution. Many of the reviews of this book fall into the latter category.

Yes, Goswami's interpretation of quantum mechanics has been disputed. What this has to do with anything is rather irrelevent. To the gentleman who named Polkinghorne by name, Polkinghorne's interpretation of physics has been challenged numerous times as well. There is no one interpretation physicists agree on. Look at the results and you can even see that not all of them agree the Earth exists!

Further, this gentleman points out that the reformulation of Descartes' Cogito argument could well be "God chooses, therefore I am". How silly this is supposed to be a criticism. Anyone who understands the book knows that Goswami is talking about a transcendent mind, not a personal one. He IS talking about God.

It is true that Goswami does not hold up every so-called "paranormal" event as evidence of his idealist philosophy. Again, this is irrelevent. Science always progresses this way--a new model appears and allows us to explain something we previously though impossible, but it does not logically follow that everything we thought impossible is now explainable by the model, now does it?

I was ready to blast Goswami's point about the OBE (Out-of-body-experience) because I read the Amazon.com review that declares Goswami debunks the OBE because it suggests dualism (which it does not, at least necessarily). This is not at all what Goswami does--what he says in the book is that the appearance that the mind has escaped the body is false, but the event is not. Goswami basically points out that if all that exists is (fundamentally) mind, then the OBE is merely a "shift of perception" if you will in the universal Mind. If I sit across from my friend, there is no difference between perceiving my body through her mind or through my own, because our minds are really the same since both derive from and reside within the transcendent mind--it is the assumption that they are not which leads to the mistaken belief the mind has somehow "left" the body.

Goswami makes a fine argument for demolishing material realism. It's not that hard, to be honest, because you have to be a blockhead to be a materialist (pun intended). Goswami's monistic idealism is certainly not the only possible scientific viewpoint (there are dozens of contenders) but so far this is the only view that bridges a gap between science and religion so well.

The first portion of the book is a crash course in Quantum Physics using various dialogues to make a multitude of points. I am somewhat familiar with the cast of characters of the history of Quantum Physics and the major eastern religious texts and I wish the author had of just stated his case. But then I was soon to realize that the book was not about consciousness, but his theory called "monistic idealism".

I promised myself, in my thirties, that I would go wherever my intellect and curiosity could take me, which is why I finished the book. Now in my middle sixties, I followed his many logical arguments and his quotations from a wide variety of philosophers, psychologists, scientists and religious texts.

It is a wide-ranging book and in all fairness I did gain some new and interesting insights.

However, when the author gives his definition of "Quantum self" as "The primary subject modality of the self beyond ego in which resides real freedom, creativity, and nonlocality of the of the human experience", I decided I felt more comfortable thinking about human consciousness actually being hugged between groups of nerve synapses deep within the human brain.

To begin with, he uses "paradox" as a synonym for "self-contradiction."

According to Goswami, religions are all founded by mystics who believe in monism, a trancendant Brahma, divine play, the whole Upanishadic kit and kaboodle. Later, disciples dumb the "real teachings" of the Master down for the masses. This is doubtful historically in almost every actual case of which I am aware -- and I study the origins of religions for a living. In the case of Jesus, still less Mohammed, only massive falsification or at least wishful thinking can save the paradigm. I realize this idea is not original with Goswami. But I am a little tired of people making a case for monism from the NT by quoting a few teachings that seem to agree with it out of context, and ignoring the rest.

As for philosophy, Goswami's ideas about love seem shallower than those of theistic thinkers like C. S. Lewis, Lin Yutang, or even Scott Peck, to me. He thinks love is best when based upon the premise of monism. "How can you not love when there is one consciousness and you known that you and the other are not really separate?" A silly question; there are categories of neurosis that work precisely that way. On a philosophical level, the question is meaningless. On a historical level, if monism is the True Path to love, and if the culture that has embraced monism the most enthusiastically is India, then why did it take a foreign religion (guess which one) to challenge the cruel and inhuman institutions of caste, widow-burning and confinement, human sacrifice, etc? (See J.N. Farquhar, Crown of Hinduism; Vishal Mangalwadi.) Given that history, it is a bit bizarre for a Hindu to accuse Christians of a "world-negating" faith.

Again, "If we could single out one historical concept that has propelled humans and their societies towards much violence and warfare, it is the concept of hierarchy." This kind of statement may sound good to many readers, but it strikes me as facile and historically incomplete. (Though his idea of "tangled hierarchy" is interesting.) Actually, some of the bloodiest movements, like early Islam and Marxism, have preached radical equality. And the Sisters of Charity are hierarchical, I believe. Goswami makes sweeping historical generalizations that sound good, but it seems a hit-or-miss proposition whether they are in fact true.

I am less qualified to debate Goswami's science. I assume he's getting his basic facts right, and don't see any too obvious errors in that regard. But another way to access a writer on unfamiliar topics, is to see how he engages opposing points of view. Those who know more about physics than I do (I'm thinking of John Polkinghorne for one) have objected to the interpretation of quantum facts Goswami offers. It doesn't appear to me that Goswami really engages such views well.

Back to philosophy, when Goswami argues that, given the facts of physics, Descarte's famous statement should be re-written as, "I choose, therefore I am," an alternative phrasing, "God choses, therefore I am," seems to me equally valid, on Goswami's premises. Why prefer his interpretation? He offers no good reason. It appears he hasn't really thought the question through from anyone else's point of view but his own.

The diagrams are good; the writing clear and colloquial, the subject interesting. I think the best thing Goswami could do would be to read a lot of good books he doesn't agree with. The book would be more interesting to me were it part of a dialogue, rather than a monologue by Schrodinger's cat alone a box. But maybe that's one of the dangers of monism.

author, Jesus and the Religions of Man