Dr. Amit Goswami – Love, Death and the Meaning of Life
(OMTimes | Sylvia Henderson) Dr. Amit Goswami – The Everything Answer Book: How Quantum Physics Explains Love, Death, and the Meaning of Life.
Dr. Amit Goswami and is an award-winning Quantum Activist and a Theoretical Quantum Physicist. Dr. Amit Goswami became internationally recognized. He appeared in the film “What the Bleep Do We Know” and, later, appeared in its sequel called “Down the Rabbit Hole,” as well as the documentary “Dalai Lama Renaissance” and the award-winning documentary “The Quantum Activist.” He is currently a pioneer of the new paradigm of science called “Science Within Consciousness” an idea he applies in his seminal book “The Self-Aware Universe” where he also solves the quantum measurement problem elucidating the famous observer effect.
Since then, Dr. Amit Goswami has written many other popular books based on his research on quantum physics and consciousness. We can site among them: “The Visionary Window,” “Physics of the Soul,” “The Quantum Doctor,” “Creative Evolution,” “God Is Not Dead,” “How Quantum Activism Can Save Civilization,” “Quantum Creativity,” “Think Quantum, Be Creative,” “Quantum Economics,” “Unlocking the Power and Economics of Consciousness,” and his soon to be released book “The Everything Answer Book – How Quantum Science Explains Love, Death and the Meaning of Life.”
Interview with Dr. Amit Goswami by Sylvia Henderson
Sylvia Henderson: Dr. Goswami, there are so many profound insights that you have shared from your soon-to-be-released book “The Everything Answer Book – How Quantum Science Explains Love, Death and the Meaning of Life.” You have provided such a brilliantly layered pathway for the reader to follow while you explain everything through the reality of consciousness. Why is it important for us to view ourselves, our world, our experiences, and all the existence, really, from consciousness space science versus Newtonian matter-based science?
Dr. Amit Goswami: Yes, this is the most important question to start with. Newtonian matter based science and their science only to the extent that we are machines and, admittedly, we do have some conditioning in our existence and behavior. We do have a genetic disposition, and that conditions us to some extent. Then we have conditioning that we grow up with, such as nurture, that part also objective, and then quantum physics admits we do have reincarnation so past-life conditioning, too, contributes to our condition existence. Beyond that, we have creativity. Beyond, we have feelings, we have intuition. These experiences are beyond what a machine can experience. Quantum Physics has come along, and it has given us a new basis to look at things, and that is the basis we are talking about today. Consciousness is the ground of everything.
Sylvia Henderson: So, when you say consciousness, –what is consciousness? You talk about local consciousness and then non-local consciousness. What do you mean by that?
Dr. Amit Goswami: Quantum Physics says that there are two domains of reality. One domain is where we have Sensorial experiences, as we experience, you know, sensing, thinking, feeling, intuition. All these things come with objective experience and we, as the subject of experience, experience these objects. So, that is the consciousness that is explicit, that is manifest. Then, Quantum Physics also says that there is a domain of potentiality in which all objects of experience become potentiality, possibility way, and this is what consciousness is. Consciousness is that domain of potentiality. It consists of multipotentiality of subjects and the potentiality of objects, and when we choose from the potentiality of objects, then that is the manifestation conversion of potentiality into actuality that means something to you. So, in the domain of potentiality, the consciousness is unconscious.
Sylvia Henderson: I see. So, in our local consciousness, the subject of experience, we live in a 3-D reality that is influenced heavily by the concept of duality. From a quantum physics perspective, is duality a reality within this non-local consciousness of potentiality?
Dr. Amit Goswami: Yes. I should have mentioned that what I am calling the domain of potentiality is also a domain of oneness. There is no distinction between consciousness and its possibilities, and the domain of oneness is also visualized as a domain in which communication is instantaneous without signals. Therefore, we call it non-local, a signal-less communication.
Whereas, in space/time domain of reality, we call it local because communication requires signals which always take a finite amount of time going through space. A signal going through space taking a finite amount of time is always involved in communication in space and time. Therefore, we call it local consciousness, so in that way. Now, of course, ideas become most important when we recognize that both domains are important for functioning. It is not one versus the other. The unconscious contributes to what we experience in the conscious.
Sylvia Henderson: So, the non-local consciousness, could this also be defined as God, or the Dao, or the Universe? From a spiritual point of view, how would one look at non-local consciousness as a defined concept, is that correct?
Dr. Amit Goswami: A very good point. Indeed, spiritual traditions call it God, but you have to be a little bit careful. If you are looking for God in water, then fish would have discovered it, and that it is neither here nor there makes it very clear that it is nowhere to be found in space and time. You should look at it outside of space and time which suggests something like oneness. So, is God non-local consciousness, yes?
Sylvia Henderson: It really does depend on our definition of God then does it not?
Dr. Amit Goswami: Yes. If you recognize God as a oneness experience. These experiences are not very uncommon, you know when we walk in the forest, or we look at the vast ocean, or even the beauty of a sunset, sometimes we fall into this oneness of consciousness where it feels like we are one with everything. Many people, including the discoverer of quantum physics, had this oneness experience “I am the whole world.” I have experienced this, and many people have experienced this. So, that is the kind of oneness that quantum physics posits, that reality at the level of potentiality is about.
Sylvia Henderson: Can you talk a little bit about the observer of our thoughts and our experiences?
Dr. Amit Goswami: Yes, basically this is the important part of quantum physics. How it gave us one consciousness as the reality of potentiality. So, that means everything is one. Then comes the question of “Alright so what do we call it, what do we call this oneness”?
That is where the observer effect comes in. We notice that when we measure – I said before that measurement or observation changes people’s potentiality into the actuality of our experience an observer is essential for that – so what is the observer doing? If you look at it, then something a little paradoxical because before the conversion of potentiality into actuality observer himself or herself, the brain, is a potentiality.
It is just a wave of opportunity. It is not an actual brain. There is no manifest brain. So, the process of conversion of potentiality into actuality, not only is the object created but also the observer is created.
Sylvia Henderson: So, from the awareness of potentiality and multiple possibilities, you also talk about the importance of creativity, that it is very vital. In doing so, you also talk about suffering being a catalyst, or the catalyst, behind creativity. As you know, humanity wishes not to suffer, but is suffering purposefully for humanity to expand and grow creatively?
Dr. Amit Goswami: Well, all the sufferings is certainly an important one, and we have to consider it because of some people, including myself, are not attracted towards getting beyond our machine existence unless we are pushed badly by suffering. I did require suffering initially but now, my curiosity is aroused, and I do not need to suffer anymore to investigate the reality of oneness and all of this nice pain – values, love, beauty, justice, truth, which also is part of that same exploration.
I do not need suffering anymore. My curiosity propels me all over the world looking for all these things and changing myself into a transformed person. So, I hope that the listeners are encouraged by this. Suffering very good, but you do not really have to sustain suffering dynamic for very long. Once you get the taste of what this building of potentiality works for you – all these wonderful possibilities that are open to us are only subjects for our creative exploration.
Sylvia Henderson: Well, I most definitely prefer the curiosity road map to suffering myself. So how does one begin to get a taste of that oneness? How does one begin to choose curiosity over suffering? Does meditation aid in that process?
Dr. Amit Goswami: Yes, if we can listen to this sage advice that is given to us from age-old spiritual traditions if we could listen to that? I mean, I was told in my childhood – because I grew up in a kind of spiritual society – but life took me in a different direction. Thus, I could not stay with that kind of advice. I tried meditating early as a teenager, but never really got behind it. So, for me, suffering was essential.
This was my favorite dream – if we can build a society with the new quantum knowledge, where we teach meditation, we teach yoga, and stuff like that, there would be many, many minds slowing down, and exercises which would allow our creative motivations just out of curiosity. We would not be so careless about our suffering being so important to us at a major stage of our life.
Sylvia Henderson: You know, you touched on something that I think is important for people to hear and that is mind slowing down exercises that opens the door and allows us to move beyond our suffering. So, why is that? What is it about slowing down our thoughts, our mind, to allow us to do this?
Dr. Amit Goswami: When we slow down, our unconscious takes over. This is the thing, Sylvia, this is the crucial thing. Creativity consists of both doing and being. If we are into doing and constantly changing, all doing comes with thinking and so the mind is constantly occupied. There is no scope for the unconscious for this oneness to come into play. Unconscious is the oneness, so if you want the oneness to play a role and the values that govern the oneness to come into our life, then we have got to give the unconscious a chance.
Of course, every night you sleep that is true, and that is unconscious, but the problem is that if we do not prepare enough, then sleep does not come to our aid very much. So much more help is unconscious episodes during our waking hours, and we gain that through slowing down our thoughts and slowing down our feelings. It turns out we are in the unconscious and in that unconscious what happens is that the objects of potentiality they grow. And, of course, given the choice what could be deduced from it, a bigger pool of potentiality or a small pool of possibility? Obviously, we choose a bigger pool of potentiality.
Sylvia Henderson: Dr. Goswami, one of the things you talk about in that book is what the Newtonian Science touches upon which is the conditioned mind; but what Quantum Physics explains so well the concept of Dharma and even reincarnation and how they inter-relate, to be an endless journey. How do karma, dharma, and reincarnation have an impact on someone in that situation?
Dr. Amit Goswami: This is such an important question, especially in the culture we live in today. After the 5th Century A.D., because of political reasons, Christianity tried to welcome the concept of reincarnation, and this caused a lot of cognitive dissonance in this along with Psychologists in how to get a good hold on what the problem is with human development.
The problems decidedly that are in reincarnation karma, as you put it, influences us greatly and karma is nothing but propensities or habit patterns that remain from our past lives. Now some of these habit patterns are good, for example learning to learn, that is a very good habit. Learning to process meaning is a very good habit. Being purposeful is a very good habit.
Learning to love is a very good habit, but there are also, likewise, very bad habits. Procrastination, lack of forgiveness, lack of acceptance, these are very bad habits that we also hold, and if we have only bad habits, then these bad habits will prevent us from creative exploration. So, that is the problem with karma. When you say bad karma, we do not mean that we have done some wrong to somebody and that somebody is going to get us, no.
Nature is what is going to get us. Bad karma means we have developed some bad habits, and those bad habits are going to keep us away from investigating the new and investigating what makes us happy. Like love, beauty, and abundance. These things make us happy. So, this is the problem of karma.
Dharma is another very beautiful concept. It turns out that before we come into this life, we choose the kind of Archetype, which includes objects that we wonder about that everyone wants to explore like love, beauty, justice, wholeness, that I have already mentioned several times. You know, who does not want to explore love? Who does not want to explore beauty? Who does not want abundance in his or her life? These are the things that we want, but the question is, you know, we never find them.
Some of us are forever dissatisfied because we never found what type of Archetype that would give us the happiness that we seek, the satisfaction that we seek. The answer is that it comes from the incarnation you had chosen before you died the last time, and you must remember it. Of course, we also choose to birth, which is supposed to be helpful to remind us.
For example, if you want to explore music, this Archetype of beauty, then you would choose a musical family to be born into so that the remembrance comes easily. But, you know, it may also happen that you were born in a musical family, but then your parents divorced, and you moved away from the musical family. So, it is very important for everybody to make a concerted effort. If you are not satisfied with your life, that is a sure sign that you have not found your Dharma, the Archetype that you chose for yourself to explore in this life.
Sylvia Henderson: You know, one of the other things you talk about, which I found very interesting, was Poker Karma. That explains why we are not exact duplicates of our previous lives. Would you mind talking about that? You were talking about how you could be dealt five cards of information from your past life, but then the rest of it is kind of randomized.
Dr. Amit Goswami: Yes, very important information. I am glad you raised that issue. Let me tell you about the data that was collected by a past life regression therapist in Ohio. He, David Klein, had many people that he regressed to past lives and kept a regular journal of all these people’s data. And he found that many of his clients were talking about lifetimes, consecutive lifetimes, and he started to compare the propensities that karma brought in each of these lifetimes. He found that the propensities of being are not cumulative.
You do not bring all the propensities that you gathered in your immediate past life. So, why do you bring only a portion of it? This is the question that arises. In fact, Klein called this Poker Karma. Like you do not play all 52 cards in poker, you play with only five or seven cards. So, the analogy appears that you only bring a small number of propensities out of your whole bunch of cumulative propensities. Why is that? That is because you want to use those propensities for a specific archetype to explore.
For example, in my own life, I have known that I came to explore the archetype of wholeness, and that requires propensities that I have. You will find the Archetype which is particularly suited. Those propensities are particularly suited for the archetype you chose.
Now, I got rid of a lot suffering because there are many life circumstances which did not allow me to stay within the lives that I had started. I was not following the Archetype of Wholeness for the bulk of my life, and I knew that I could change my life, and in the course of that, I recognized that I have to integrate my life and livelihood and all these concepts.
Sylvia Henderson: There are other things that you touch upon in your book is about unprocessed emotions, and how they can affect us, especially physically. Why is it so important that we process our emotions, from a quantum physics point of view, why is that so important?
Dr. Amit Goswami: Yes, this question of emotion is a very important one because, you know, we are born with this negative emotional brain circuit which, of course, plays havoc with us. Those emotions that we recognize as anger, love, competitiveness, jealousy, envy and all those things, they create so many problems for us. But they are built into us so we cannot do very much about them except to realize that it is in our power to make positive emotions as well.
You do not have them in the brain as you are born, but we can make them; we can build them in our brain by creative exploration of the Archetype. For example, if we explore the Archetype of love. We can create positive emotions to replace those other emotions of anger and jealousy and hatred and negative judgments. We can balance them with positive emotional brain circuits. Start to explore the Archetype of love, which is not difficult because this is one of the Archetypes which is built into us. We do not have to really get initiated by making any big fanfare of exploration.
It is built into us in the sense that we have an immune system in our body in the form of one part of it is called the Thymus Gland. It is in the region of the heart, and the job of the Thymus Gland is to distinguish between me and not me. Now, when a stimulus comes to us like you are going on the street and a person of the opposite sex comes at you, and you look at him, you look at her, and I am having these enormous feelings in my Heart Chakra. Familiar, yes, tingles in the heart, heart-warming, what does it signify? It is built into us. So you have recognized the other as part of you. There is no longer any separation between the two of you. That is what we call romantic love.
An ordinary person who has not worked on love does not have a positive emotional brain circuit could stay in hate lifelong. We know that. People stay in it for lifelong, but people who have a love circuit in their brain do not stay in hate for more than a few minutes. In a few second, they are already over it, and they are immediately feeling love again in their hearts.
Sylvia Henderson: And that alone will help you step out of suffering for sure. I do want to remind everyone that Dr. Amit Goswami’s brand new book is coming out on April 1st. It is “The Everything Answer Book – How Quantum Physics Explains Love, Death and the Meaning of Life.” And if you would like to know more about
Dr. Amit Goswami, you can go to his website: www.amitgoswami.org. Dr. Goswami, thank you so much for this opportunity. It has been amazing, and a moment I will always remember.
Source: OMTimes
