Table of Contents
| 1 | A meaningful worldview for our time | 12 |
| 2 | On puzzles and fables : the next paradigm shift in science | 16 |
| 3 | A concise catalog of contemporary puzzles | 26 |
| 4 | Searching for the memory of the universe | 45 |
| 5 | Enter the Akashic field | 56 |
| 6 | The "a-field effect" | 106 |
| 7 | The origins and destiny of life and the universe | 121 |
| 8 | Consciousness : human and cosmic | 143 |
| 9 | The poetry of cosmic vision | 164 |
Read an Excerpt
from Chapter 4
The Crucial Science Fable--In-formation in Nature
Our review of the puzzles encountered at the frontiers of science has set the stage for the quest to which Part One of this book is dedicated: to discover the basis for a scientifically founded Integral Theory of Everything (I-TOE). We have gained an important insight. We have found that in order to account for a growing number of things and processes that are undoubtedly real and are likely to be fundamental, a new factor needs to be added to the repertory of laws and concepts of contemporary science. What is this new factor? Let us look at the principal findings:
• Astonishingly close connections exist on the level of the quantum: every particle that has ever occupied the same quantum state as another particle remains correlated with it in a mysterious, non-energetic way.
• The universe as a whole manifests fine-tuned connections that defy commonsense explanation.
• Post-Darwinian evolutionary theory and quantum biology discover similarly puzzling connections within the organism, as well as between the organism and its milieu.
• The connections that come to light in the farther reaches of consciousness research are just as strange: they are connections between the consciousness of one person and the mind and body of another.
These connections indicate links between the particles that make up the material substance of the universe, as well as between the parts or elements of the integrated systems constituted of the particles. The links fine-tune the particles and the elements of the systems, creating space- andtime-transcending coherence among them.
The surprising “nonlocal” forms of coherence crop up in fields as diverse as quantum physics, cosmology, evolutionary biology, and consciousness research. Some physicists--John Bell and Chris Clarke among them--suggest that nonlocality may be in fact the deeper reality; ordinary, so-called “classical” or “decoherent” states (states where things have a unique location and a unique set of physical characteristics) may appear merely as a consequence of the way we interact with medium-sized things--things that are neither as small as quanta nor as large as the cosmos.
Independent of the truth of such speculations, it is clear that nonlocal coherence has important implications. It signals that there is not only matter and energy in the universe, but also a more subtle yet real element: an element that connects and produces the observed quasi-instant forms of coherence.
ENTER THE AKASHIC FIELD
The idea that information is present throughout nature is a recurrent theme in cultural history, but it is new to Western science. It calls for the recognition that information is not an abstract concept: as “in-formation” it has a reality of its own. It is a part of the physical universe. And since it is present throughout nature, it is best conceptualized as an extended field.
Rationale for an In-formation Field
The evidence for a field that would conserve and convey information is not direct; it must be reconstructed in reference to more immediately available evidence. Like other fields known to modern physics, such as the gravitational field, the electromagnetic field, the quantum fields, and the Higgs field, the in-formation field cannot be seen, heard, touched, tasted, or smelled. However, this field produces effects, and these can be perceived. This is the same in regard to all the fields known to science. For example, the gravitational or G-field cannot be perceived: when we drop an object to the ground, we see the object falling but not the field that makes it fall--we see the effect of the G-field but not the G-field itself.
In the case of the field that could account for the presence of in-formation in nature, the evidence is the puzzling, quasi-instant form of coherence that comes to light in the physical, cosmological, and biological sciences, as well as in consciousness research. These phenomena call for an explanation, and the simplest and most logical explanation is a field that links the entities that prove to be nonlocally coherent.
Although fields, like other entities, are not to be multiplied beyond the scope of necessity, it seems evident that a further field is required to account for the special kind of coherence revealed at all scales and domains of nature, from the microdomain of quanta, through the meso-domain of life, to the macrodomain of the cosmos. We need to recognize that just as electric and magnetic effects are conveyed by the EM-field, attraction among massive objects by the G-field, and attraction and repulsion among the particles of the nucleus by quantum fields, so nonlocal coherence is conveyed by a field: the universal in-formation field.
The Akashic Field
In my previous books I named the universal in-formation field the Akashic Field, or A-field for short. What is the reason for this name?
In the Sanskrit and Indian cultures, Akasha is an all-encompassing medium that underlies all things and becomes all things. It is real, but so subtle that it cannot be perceived until it becomes the many things that populate the manifest world. Our bodily senses do not register Akasha, but we can reach it through spiritual practice. The ancient Rishis reached it through a disciplined, spiritual way of life, and through yoga. They described their experience, and made Akasha an essential element of the philosophy and mythology of India.
The Akashic vision of a cyclic universe--of a Metaverse that creates universe after universe--is essentially the vision we now get from cosmology. In the new physics the unified, physically real vacuum is the equivalent of Akasha. It is the original field out of which emerged particles and atoms, stars and planets, human and animal bodies, and all the things that can be seen and touched. It is a dynamic, energy-filled medium in ceaseless fluctuation. The vacuum is Akasha and Prana rolled into one--the womb of all the “matter” and all the “force” in the universe.
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