marja de vries
CHAPTER 3 - THE FIRST LAW - THE LAW OF ONENESS
from 'The Whole Elephant Revealed' by Marja de Vries
© 2007, Marja de Vries;translation into english by Veronica Verkaik
| Everything is essentially consciousness, purity and joy. | ||
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THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING IS ONENESS
Because all the wisdom traditions see the beginning of everything as Oneness, the first universal law, the first principle, is the Law of Oneness.
• Everything that exists emanates from one and the same Oneness or Source.
The first universal law is the Law of Oneness. The Law of Oneness states that everything that exists emanates from one and the same Oneness or Source.
• There is an eternal and unchanging unified field underlying everything
This Oneness or Source from which everything emanates is an eternal and unchanging unified field of intelligence underlying everything and permeating the whole of creation. The Law of Oneness is also known as the Law of Divine Oneness. In Taoism, the Law of Oneness is known as the concept of Tao.
• Everything and everyone is connected with everything and everyone
Because everything emanates from this Oneness or Source and because this field permeates all the manifest and unmanifest parts of creation, the Law of Oneness also states that everything that exists is connected with everything else. That which connects everything with everything else and therefore we ourselves with everything else too is expressed in different ways. Some call it Love, others, Universal Consciousness. It is also referred to as ether and in modern usage it is sometimes also called energy and sometimes light. This interconnectedness means that the world does not consist of separate things. Mind and matter are not separate from each other. Nor are we human beings separate from each other or from the world around us, or from nature, the plants and the animals, or from seemingly non-living matter either.
• The underlying field of intelligence is a field of Universal Consciousness
The Law of Oneness also tells us that this omnipresent field of intelligence, which lies hidden behind all the outer manifestations and phenomena, is in fact an infinite and endless field of Universal Consciousness. The Law of Oneness is therefore also known as the Law of Universal Consciousness and as the Law of Universal Mind.
• This Oneness is also the Whole, because everything that exists exists within this Oneness
In accordance with the Law of Oneness, this Oneness is also the Whole, because it is everything that there is. Nothing exists outside this Oneness, which means that everything that exists exists within this Oneness. At the same time, this Oneness is endless, both in terms of time (it is eternal) and place (it is everywhere, permeates everything and is in everything) and it is also endless in terms of force (it is unlimited). This law is therefore also known as the Law of Pure Potentiality.
• Everything ultimately returns into this Oneness
Finally, not only does everything emanate from this originally undifferentiated Oneness, but the multitude of forms and manifestations ultimately also return into this unformed Oneness.
ANY DESCRIPTION OF ONENESS IS INADEQUATE
| He (Atum) is hidden,yet obvious everywhere. (...) He is bodiless,yet embodied in everything. (...) He is All, not many. The All is not many separate things, but the Oneness that subsumes the parts. | ||
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Most of the wisdom traditions tell us that any description of this Oneness, this Source or this Universal Consciousness, is in fact always inadequate. In the Tao Te Ching, it is expressed as follows: "The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name." 3 This indescribable Oneness, this unending Source from which everything emanates is a Nothingness, which is at the same time a Fullness. The only way of truly gaining an understanding of this is via the way of the mystics, through the direct experience of Oneness-with-Everything.
Everything that emanates from the Oneness is continually moving and changing. This movement and change is subject to eternal, unchangeable patterns of order. These patterns ensure that the Whole continues to move eternally in harmony - and therefore in dynamic balance - with no beginning and no end. Because everything emanates from one and the same Source and nothing exists outside it, it inevitably follows that these patterns, these universal principles, also themselves emanate from this Oneness. The whole world of phenomena is subject to these universal principles, therefore to the universal laws and the patterns of sacred geometry alike. While all the constituent parts manifest themselves, disappear and are created anew, the Oneness is itself unchangeable and the universal laws by which everything moves, manifests itself, and disappears again, are also unchangeable.
A FIELD OF INFORMATION
According to the Law of Oneness, the universe is filled with one, unifying 'substance' in the form of a unified field of intelligence, a field of consciousness. In Vedic literature, this 'substance' is referred to by the Sanskrit term Akasha, which means 'ether' or 'primordial substance'. Akasha is described as the all-permeating rarefied ethereal substance, the vibrating energy of which physical matter is composed. However, at the same time, it is also described as the ethereal substance, in which everything that happens - and has the potential to happen - leaves an imprint. These 'imprints' contain information in a certain way about everything that has ever happened. This is why this 'primordial substance', this Akasha, is also known as the Primordial Memory of humanity and the term Akasha Chronicles is used. Furthermore, as this ethereal field exists on a plane of reality beyond time and space, these so-called Akasha Chronicles also exist on this other plane of reality, beyond the physical world. Some seers or clairvoyants are able consciously to make contact with these other planes of reality and thus are able to 'read' information from these transcendental 'chronicles'.
EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED WITH EVERYTHING ELSE
The Law of Oneness also tells us that via this field of intelligence, which is invisible to our ordinary eyes and pervades the whole of creation, we, like everything that exists within the Whole, are connected with everything else. Moreover, via this energy field, everything that exists is also connected with the Oneness from which everything emanates. In short, this field is both a part of ourselves and a part of all we observe.
Mystics are aware that every human being is a manifestation of the same original Oneness and at the same time that every person is unique and that no single person can be replaced by any other. On the plane of Oneness experienced by mystics it is possible to be aware of our individuality and at the same time to be so much part of the whole that we are unable to say where we end and the other person begins. On the plane of physical reality we experience the sense of being all separate individuals, while on higher planes of reality, by contrast, we are at the same time connected with everything and everyone in the universe, though often unaware of this. Because we all have a connection with the Oneness and with everything and everyone, we are not separate parts of a whole, but we are a Whole.
Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy convey this concept in their book The Hermetica: The Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs (1997) in the words of Hermes Trismegistus, as follows: "You think that things are many when you view them as separate, but when you see they all hang on the One, and flow from the One, you will realize they are united - linked together, and connected by a chain of Being from the highest to the lowest." 4 While in our modern Western culture this connection with this Oneness and the non-physical connection between all people and all beings in the universe has to a large extent disappeared from view, many peoples who live close to nature are, however, conscious of it. This is the reason why the concept of 'All Our Relations' is central to the philosophy of the Native American people.
North American Brooke Medicine Eagle describes the importance of this in her book Buffalo Woman Comes Singing (1991) as follows: "...law of oneness, given us when the world was formed, is that we must be in good relationship with all things and all beings - with All Our Relations. The phrase, 'All Our Relations' is used to represent the full Circle of Sacred Life, of which we are a part. This sacred circle includes not only two-legged relatives of all color and persuasions, but also all the peoples with four legs, those with wings and fins, the green standing (tree and plant) people, the mineral and stone people, those that live within and crawl upon the Earth, those in the starry realms, and those ancestors who have gone beyond, as well as those children of generations to come. Everything, both known and unknown, is included in this phrase of wholeness and holiness." Because, as she explains, "...whatever we do to any other thing in the great web of life, we do to ourselves, for we are one." 5
EVERYTHING IS IN ESSENCE CONCIOUSNESS AND LOVE
As everything emanates from the same Oneness, everything is in essence composed of the same substance. This means that everything is in essence Consciousness. The universe is therefore in essence Consciousness and everything in the universe is also in essence Consciousness. Based on their experience of Oneness, the mystics tell us that this pure Consciousness is also our own essence. However, as this Consciousness is the essence of everything, it is not only the essence of ourselves, human beings, but therefore also of the planets, the suns, the animals, the plants and the minerals.
The great sages from all the traditions have on the one hand continually emphasized that everything is Consciousness, and on the other, they tell us that the fundamental quality of the cosmos is Love. The Rig Veda, for example, says: "In the beginning Love arose." That means that our essence is not only an expression of pure Consciousness but also of Universal Love. Ravi Ravindra writes about this: "The search for this great Love at the very heart or the cosmos is both the beginning and the end of all spiritual paths, expressed as service, mercy, compassion, and ultimately oneness with all other beings. The core of all spiritual practice is freedom from the selfish, isolated, and isolating ego so that one can see more and more clearly and be related with all others more and more lovingly and selflessly." 6
A FIELD OF POTENTIALITY
The same underlying ethereal field full of information, this field of pure Consciousness, is also seen as pure potentiality, meaning as a subtle field of everything that is in essence possible. In other words, it is a field of infinite creativity. The author Deepak Chopra writes about this in his book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success (1994): "The source of all creation is pure potentiality seeking expression from the unmanifest to the manifest." 7 This source of pure potentiality is our essence. In other words, it is present in ourselves and is waiting to be activated. "When you discover your essential nature and know who you really are," he writes, "in that knowing itself is the ability to fulfill any dream you have, because you are the eternal possibility, the immeasurable potential of all that was, is and will be." 8 In other words, everything is then possible, whatever that may be. We are restricted in this by nothing more than by ourselves, and the better we know our own nature, the closer we come to the field of pure potentiality.
WESTERN SCIENCE AND THE LAW OF ONENESS
| ...armed with the ancient knowledge and the modern vision that comes from modern physics, particularly quantum physics, we can rediscover what the ancients may have known. All we need are a few basic concepts - a new way of seeing the old way. | ||
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Can we detect any aspects of this Law of Oneness in present-day scientific understandings? Based on experiments in quantum physics, which initially puzzled scientists at the beginning of the twentieth century, physicists came to the conclusion that more indeed exists beyond the familiar physical reality. Beyond the reality where the familiar laws of physics are applicable, there exists a universal energy field known, among others, as the zero-point energy field. Researchers into the zero-point energy field are discovering that everything and everyone is interconnected by means of this field in which all the information from all times appears to be stored.
Perceptions acquired on the basis of both quantum physics and the fast-growing new discipline of sciences of consciousness suggest that the zero-point energy field and the field of consciousness may be one and the same thing. Furthermore, among a small but growing group of present-day scientists, the radical perception is beginning to dawn that it is not that matter gives rise to consciousness - which was long the accepted view - but that it could well be that consciousness has always existed and that consciousness gives rise to life and matter.
THE ZERO-POINT ENERGY FIELD THAT UNDERLIES EVERYTHING
In physics, we come across the Law of Oneness and the concept of a unified field underlying everything as the so-called zero-point energy field. The recent cutting-edge perceptions on this underlying zero-point energy field have been made more accessible to a wider public: in particular by the now well-known book The Field, the Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe (2001) by British science journalist Lynne McTaggart. In addition to the research conducted by many other science pioneers, she describes among other things how the North American physicist Hal Puthoff, together with his colleagues Bernhard Haisch and Alfonso Rueda, has launched into research on this zero-point energy field. Puthoff recounts that quantum physicists had in fact long been well aware of the existence of the energies in this zero-point energy field. However, because this was something that appeared to be permanently present in the background, for a long time it had received no attention, instead being written out of the scientific calculations and equations. However, Hal Puthoff suspected that the special characteristics of this energy field might well account for a number of matters that up to that time had been seemingly inexplicable within quantum physics, for example the phenomenon of nonlocality.10
The idea that such a unified universal field could underlie everything is not new in the world of Western science. As early as the end of the nineteenth century, some scientists suspected the existence of just such an underlying field. For example, Nikola Tesla (1856 - 1943) - whose discoveries included the alternating current - spoke, totally in line with the Law of Oneness, in terms of the existence of a 'primary substance', filling all space. He also referred to this 'primary substance' as 'ether'. This concept initially enjoyed some popularity among scientists, but when friction could not be detected,11 Albert Einstein made use of this in support of his Special Relativity Theory. His theory was accepted and the existence of something like 'ether' or an underlying universal field was finally dismissed.
At the same time, however, the quantum physics pioneers had determined that some kind of 'space' must exist where the laws of normal physics do not apply. They called this space a 'universal vacuum', an emptiness, therefore, because they were of the opinion that instead of being filled with 'ether', this space was completely empty. It is this so-called 'universal vacuum' from quantum physics that Hal Puthoff is referring to and that in his view does not in the least resemble a void. Rather, this zero-point energy field is a fullness, a veritable ocean of energy.
It is meanwhile clear that this zero-point energy field is not to be found on the plane of reality where the laws of normal physics apply. Quantum physicists tell us that this ocean of energy lies instead on a plane of reality that is 'beyond space and time'. The zero-point energy field also turns out to be a very special frictionless sea of energy.12 It is therefore understandable that its existence was initially not detectable in the form of friction. Whereas this energy is not directly observable, the observable effects of this ocean of energy have meanwhile been successfully demonstrated.13
On the basis of research and studies conducted by him between 1987 and 1998, Hal Puthoff in 2002 wrote the following in his article Searching for the Universal Matrix in Metaphysics: "If my goal for this research comes to full fruition, what would emerge would be an increased understanding that all of us are immersed, both as living and physical beings, in an overall interpenetrating and interdependent field in ecological balance with the cosmos as a whole, and that even the boundary lines between the physical and ‘metaphysical’ would dissolve into a unitary viewpoint or the universe as a fluid, changing, energetic/information cosmological unity." 14
EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED WITH EVERYTHING VIA QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT
| One of the most surprising discoveries of modern physics is that objects aren't as separate as they may seem. | ||
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The concept that everything that exists is connected with everything else in accordance with the Law of Oneness is encountered in Western science as the concept of quantum entanglement and was first revealed in sub-atomic particles at quantum level.16 It was found that in the world of quantum particles everything is intimately entangled with each other, giving rise to a coherent order. However, it was initially assumed that this was only the case at the level of the quantum world, and that it had no practical consequences at the level of larger, physical phenomena, such as living beings. In other words, it was suspected that at quantum level, a different truth applied than the truth that we know at the more familiar everyday level of reality.
However, researchers in quantum biology have now ascertained that such an 'entanglement' is present at many levels of organization. The British biologist Mae-Wan Ho describes in her book The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms (1993) that thanks to this multidimensional and time-independent 'entanglement', communication between all the parts is possible. Based upon this intensive intercommunication, a quantum coherence exists within organic systems. Our body, for example, is a multiplicity of organs and tissues, composed of many billions of cells and even more molecules of many different kinds, all working autonomously, and yet forming the coherent whole that we are. Therefore, according to Mae-Wan Ho, an organic whole is by definition an entangled whole, where the parts and the whole are thoroughly entangled. This entanglement is also true for the connections between organisms and the connections between organisms and their environment. Many different recent scientific perceptions suggest that the whole universe in fact appears to be an intrinsically and instantaneously interconnected whole, in which everything - large and small - and everyone is interconnected via the zero-point energy field.
Moreover, this zero-point energy field appears to be not only a heaving sea of energy in the background of our existence but it is also especially an information carrier, a field where all the information from all times is supposedly stored. Because of this, we live as it were in a 'sea of information'. Researchers in an increasing number of scientific disciplines, such as cosmology, quantum physics, evolution biology and consciousness research are finding indications that information exchange indeed takes place via the background energy field. Scientist, philosopher and musician Ervin Laszlo suggests in his book Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything (2004) that the 'universal vacuum', thus the zero-point energy field, corresponds with what in the Vedic texts is termed the Akasha field. In this book, he summarizes the most recent perceptions in this context and writes that a number of pioneers in science - including Nicola Tesla, David Bohm and Harold Puthoff - have come to the following conclusion: "Interactions in the domains of nature as well as of consciousness operate via a fundamental field that retains energy and information and forms the heart of the universe." 17
THE UNIFIED FIELD IS A FIELD OF CONSCIOUSNESS
What physics calls the vacuum or void is actually filled with incomprehensibly complex dynamic networks of highly organized - and organizing - fields of force. Though physicists do not understand the origin and organization of these invisible force fields, they are convinced that they definitely exist and play a regulating or guiding role in all physical systems. |
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Is this underlying field of energy and information also a field of consciousness? This is indeed what recent scientific perceptions suggest. Firstly, a number of leading neurologists, including Arthur Sherrington, Karl Pribram, Wilder Penfield and John Eccles have in recent decades come to the conclusion that our consciousness and our brain are two different things and that consciousness is definitely not exclusively found in the brain. Brain researcher and Nobel Prize winner Karl Pribram assumed on the basis of his extensive research that our own memories may not be stored in our brain but stored as holographic information in a universal field of consciousness. This means that our brain is in fact not the storage place, but in principle the receiver and processor of this information. This could indicate that it is our consciousness that enables us to transcend the boundaries of the world of physical reality and which might be our means of contact with the omnipresent field of information, beyond the world of space and time.19
The latest discoveries ranging from transpersonal psychology and the increasingly important new discipline of sciences of consciousness, through to quantum physics, lead one to a similar perception. The new perception is that human consciousness cannot possibly be totally confined to the skull, but instead is part of a universal field of consciousness. The consciousness research by transpersonal psychologist Stanislav Grof confirms that in transpersonal experiences, it is possible to transcend the usual limitations of the body, ego, space, and linear time. These experiences are able to bring us into contact with the collective consciousness and with entirely new information that surpasses everything that we learned of earlier through the usual channels.20 His research also shows that many people during profound experiences in an altered state of consciousness do indeed experience a form of consciousness that seems to be from the universe itself. They say that they experience an immense and unfathomable field of consciousness endowed with infinite intelligence and creative power. The field of cosmic consciousness they experience is like a cosmic emptiness. Paradoxically, they also describe it as an essential fullness, a plenum.21
Until the advent of quantum physics, such experiences, as in the case of the ancient knowledge of the traditions of wisdom, were for a long time incomprehensible to Western science. "But now, in light of recent scientific discoveries," writes quantum physicist John Hagelin (1999), "these ancient descriptions make sense. They describe consciousness as a universal field of intelligence underlying the whole of material creation. (...) One is drawn to conclude that the unified field of physics and the field of consciousness are one." 22
CONTACT WITH THE FIELD OF POSSIBILITIES
In short, between the material world and the world of the mind and consciousness there does not exist an absolute dividing line. Instead there exists a constant connection and communication between all things, which co-exist. If our individual consciousness is indeed a part of universal consciousness, that means, wrote scientist Erich Jantsch as early as 1975 in his book Design for Evolution, Self-Organization and Planning in the Life of Human Systems, that all knowledge present in universal consciousness is in principle available within ourselves. However, to consciously contact this universal consciousness, our rational mind or our five physical senses are of little use to us. Instead, we have to rely on our intuition and even more on the capacity to perceive via other states of consciousness. In other words, it is in essence available as inner knowledge. In the meantime, considerable research has also been conducted into the existence of the various forms of perception that transcend the familiar five senses. In his book The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena (1997), Dean Radin, psychologist and researcher into the multidimensional nature of our consciousness, gives a detailed overview of the progressively more refined experimental scientific research that has now been going on for over a century into these widely-ranging capabilities of our consciousness.
Dean Radin describes our consciousness not only as a part of the omnipresent Universal Consciousness that extends beyond the individual. On the basis of many well-documented experiments, he describes consciousness, moreover, as something that affects the probability of events. Consciousness brings order into systems and that also applies to our own consciousness. Because our consciousness is a part of the consciousness of the universe, we are therefore also able to influence the field of universal consciousness with our own consciousness. And in Dean Radin's view, this is precisely what we do.
The many studies that have been conducted into this show that the degree in which such influence takes place is in proportion to the strength of the consciousness present. Normally speaking, he writes, the strength of consciousness of an individual fluctuates from moment to moment, and is regulated by the degree of focus of attention of the individual. And the ability to focus our attention is of course something that we can improve by practice. In short, a skill of this nature in principle opens up unending possibilities in co-creating the kind of world we wish for. In his recent article The Emperor's New Media: Science, Psi, and Skeptics: Breaking the Silence (2004) Dean Radin observes: "...some of which is now beginning to appear in mainstream psychology, physics, and medical journals. (...) my guess is (...) that historically the turn of the millennium will be viewed as a time when scientific and editorial opinions began to noticeably shift about the capacities of mind." 23
THE PRIMACY OF CONSCIOUNESS
Unless modern Western science can embrace the concept that consciousness is primary, it will remain trapped in a repetitive maze. |
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For present-day scientists from widely-ranging disciplines, a real understanding of consciousness appears to be of pivotal importance to comprehend more of the nature, the meaning and operation of the universe. Recently, among a small but growing number of scientists nowadays, the radical perception has begun to dawn that consciousness may not only be something that permeates everything, but consciousness may also be something that underlies everything and that plays an important organizing role in the creation of life and matter. Instead of matter giving rise to consciousness - which was long the accepted view - a number of scientists are now suspecting that it could well be that consciousness has always existed and that consciousness gives rise to life and matter.
In 1993, the North American physicist Henry Stapp postulated in his book Mind, Matter and Quantum Mechanics the hypothesis that reality is created by consciousness. He bases this Quantum Theory for Consciousness mainly on the perceptions in quantum physics. In the same year, the North American physicist Amit Goswami also put forward this perception. In his book The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World (1993), he tries convincingly to argue that consciousness indeed is the primal ground from which everything originates.25 He does this, like Henry Stapp, with use of the perceptions in quantum physics, but as well as this he also uses insights from different wisdom traditions.
After thirty years of research into the nature of consciousness, British physicist, mathematician, philosopher and author Peter Russell also comes to the conclusion that consciousness does not arise from matter, but that the reverse is the case. Consciousness underlies everything and matter originates from consciousness. In his book From Science To God (2000) he writes that he arrived at this radical perception by integrating the most innovative perceptions from theoretical physics and experimental psychology with the study of various mystical texts as well as with his own personal experiences. Furthermore, he maintains that this new world view is not in conflict with any of the findings of modern science - it turns out only to be in conflict with certain presuppositions within Western science.26
This radical new perception represents a change in the world view that has long been at the foundation of the whole of Western science. For this reason, Peter Russell terms this new perception, in which consciousness should be seen as real and fundamental a factor as space, time and matter and in fact more fundamental than the other factors, not merely a paradigm shift but a metaparadigm shift. According to this new perception, the universe is regarded as having its origins in - and in essence consisting of - consciousness, consciousness from which matter arose and continues to arise.
Physicist Fred Alan Wolf summarizes this new view as follows: "Basically, we're looking at a process in which the ultimate source of everything (...) transforms consciousness into matter. Once this happens, matter inherently acts as a kind of reflection or mirror of the intelligence from which it sprung. As matter modifies itself over time in an ongoing evolutionary process, new information and intelligence continues to be reflected in an ever-evolving universe." 27 In this new view, consciousness, then, is what underlies all the processes and is the directional force behind the process of evolution, in which we human beings also participate.
© 2007, Marja de Vries
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1 Quotation in Thomas J. McFarlane, Einstein and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings, 2001/2002,p. 43; quoted from Shankara, quoted from Shankara, Shankara's Crest-Jewel of Discrimination (Viveka-Chuda-mani). Transl.: Isherwood, Christopher. Hollywood, CA: Vedanta Press, 1971, p. 98.
2 Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy, The Hermetica: The Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs, 1997, p. 46.
3 From Tao Te Ching written by Lao-tzu, translation into English by S. Mitchell at http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html
4 Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy, The Hermetica: The Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs, 1997, p. 46-47.
5 Brooke Medicine Eagle, Buffalo Woman Comes Singing, 1991, p. 6.
6 Quotation from the article by Ravi Ravindra, Truth and Love, in the reader for the conference Paths to Peace - Soul in Education, Budapest, October 2004, p. 47-51.
7 Deepak Chopra, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, 1994, p. 15.
8 Idem, p. 18.
9 Quotation from Fred Alan Wolf, Mind into Matter, 2001, p. 7.
10 Hal Puthoff in Lynne McTaggart, The Field, the Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe, 2001, p. 21.
11 The Michelson-Morley experiment conducted in 1887.
12 To gain some idea of what we should understand by this frictionless sea of energy with an extremely high density, a comparison with supercooled helium is sometimes made. When the gas helium is gradually cooled, the gas first becomes liquid and when it is cooled further, this liquid becomes 'superfluid'. Ervin Laszlo writes in his book Cosmic Vision, 2004, that supercooled helium, though it is superdense, does not resist objects passing through it. It flows frictionless through cracks and apertures so tiny that nothing else, not even a much thinner gas, can penetrate them - at least, not without notable friction. Just like superfluid helium, the underlying energy field appears both in superfluid and superdense form.
13 in the form of the so-called Casimir force.
14 In his article 'Searching for the Universal Matrix in Metaphysics', 2002, in the magazine Research News and Opportunities in Science, 2, No. 8, p. 22, Templeton Foundation Press, April 2002; and at www.earthtech.org/publictions/RNOST v2 p22.pdf.
15 Dean Radin, Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality, 2006, p. 1.
16 Quantum entanglement was predicted by the Irish physicist John S. Bell and subsequently the French physicist Alain Aspect in 1982 confirmed by experiment the phenomenon that, under certain circumstances, sub-atomic particles prove to be able to affect each other immediately - meaning without any time loss - even if they are at a great distance from each other. These findings have far-reaching consequences, because they are in conflict with the thesis of Albert Einstein that nothing is able to go faster than light. This shows that there is indeed a plane of reality that exists 'beyond space and time'. In 1998 and 2004, the same phenomenon was once again confirmed by Nicholas Gisin of the University in Geneva.
17 Ervin Laszlo, Cosmic Vision, The Dawn of the Integral Theory of Everything, 2004.
18 Gary E. Schwartz, 'Intelligent Evolution', in Shift, June-Aug. 2006, No. 11, p. 10-14.
19 More on this follows in the next chapter.
20 Stanislav Grof, 'Alternative Cosmologies and Altered States', in Noetic Sciences Review, No. 32, Winter 1994, pages 21-29.
21 Research quoted by Ervin Laszlo in Cosmic Vision, 2004, p. 99
22 John Hagelin in Science, Consciousness, and Public Policy, at http://weblife.org/vote/chapter12.html
23 Dean Radin, 'The Emperor's New Media: Science, Psi, and Skeptics: Breaking theSilence', in Shift, Institute of Noetic Sciences, March-May 2004, No. 2, p. 34-37.
24 Herbert G. Lebherz Professor of Biochemistry, San Diego State University; excerpt from his recommendation of the book The Hidden Domain,1997 by Norman Friedman. He refers to this book, which is based on solid science (including quantum biology and quantum physics and offers a non-materialistic quantum physical perspective of the conscious energy at the source of all creation, as being of immense value; on website http://brassringbooks.com/store4/normbk2.htm
25 The perceptions of quantum physics reveal that molecules and atoms in essence consist not of matter but of 'wave functions'. 'Wave functions' are possibilities and it emerges that consciousness has an influence on these 'wave functions'. Under the influence of consciousness, subatomic probability waves may give rise to atoms and therefore, in theory, matter, and consequently Amit Goswami posits the question what, then, creates consciousness. The old idea that consciousness comes from the brain is, in his opinion, a paradox considering the fact that the brain itself consists of matter. In his view, it must therefore be the case that the fundamental nature of reality is consciousness and that matter is a phenomenon that arises out of consciousness.
26 see the article The Primacy of Consciousness by Peter Russell, on his website www.peterussell.com
27 Fred Alan Wolf in Eliot Jay Rosen (ed.) Experiencing the Soul, 1998, p. 2.