Full interview with Dr. Amit Goswami

Full interview with Dr. Amit Goswami, founder of the Center for Quantum Activism and former professor at the University of Oregon. Amit talks to Stephanie and Michael about the relationship between quantum physics and nonviolence. One of the basic ideas he puts forth as essential to quantum physics is the notion that the universe, at its core and most fundamental, is immaterial consciousness. This challenges the basic tenets of materialism (the theory underlying much contemporary science), which posits that ultimately, the universe is made up of physical stuff and is governed by universal natural laws. If we accept (or at least consider) the principles of quantum physics, genuine choice and agency become possibilities, We are not reduced to being human machines, compelled by external forces (the laws of nature) to react – often violently – to those around us. Instead we can act creatively, spontaneously and nonviolently.

Transcript

Stephanie: Dr. Goswami, welcome to Nonviolence Radio. Usually, to get started, we ask our guests to just say a few things about themselves. Who you are, what you want people to know about you at this point in your life?

Amit: Well, I was a physics professor at the University of Oregon for quite a while. And of course, towards the middle of my career, I became interested in consciousness. Because quantum physics forces us to look at consciousness, the observer effect.

From the beginning, it was very clear that the observer has to play a role. But in the measurement theory, how we measure quantum objects, it becomes very clear. Because an observer is instrumental to change a quantum object from a possibility, object of possibility, to an actual object.

So that's what began to interest me. If you do it in the usual way, then like, consciousness as brain phenomenon, it went nowhere. So, that was the paradox. How can consciousness be a brain phenomenon, because that was the belief system scientists still have – scientific materialism it’s called. Whereas measurement theory shows that the agent that converts waves of possibility into particles of actuality, they have to be non-material.

So, how could non-material enter science? That was the challenge. Of course, the answer was right before everybody. I just happened to discover it in a wonderful night, sudden intuition, that consciousness is the ground of being. Matter is just a possibility in consciousness. So, consciousness chooses out of the matter waves the actual events that we experience. In the process, consciousness identifies with our brain, the observer's brain. So that's more or less the story.

A few more aspects have to be added, psychophysical parallelism, and all that. So, I did all that. And of course, you know, ever since – that was 1990 when I started talking about this, writing about this, and eventually wrote the book Self-aware Universe, but I have been researching consciousness ever since. And now I can very happily say that we have a full paradigm based on quantum science, science within consciousness, to replace the scientific materialist hypothesis.

This new paradigm integrates science and spirituality to all of the great institutions that we have. You know, there is no need for worldview polarization between religion and science. Agreed that religion is dogmatic, but so is science in the current way. Scientific materialism is also dogmatic.

The spirit of science has no place for dogma. Spirit of spirituality also has no place for dogma. When we use quantum physics, all dogmas are not needed. No assumptions are needed. Everything falls in place with a very few additional laws of consciousness.

So, in this way, we can talk about nonviolence in a very scientific way. If we are all originating from the same source, if we are ultimately the same consciousness that works through us, then it is complete ignorance to be violent to each other.

Actually, very recently anthropologists are finding that this nonviolence started something like, probably hundreds of thousand years ago, but it culminated in a process called self-domestication about 70,000 years ago. And then from that, we developed altruism. That's instinct for about 40% of us. But the other 60% still are quite violent.

So, the issue of nonviolence is basically a challenge of transformation. How do we transform using creativity, using the archetype of goodness, bring that into the equation of power, and learn to be nonviolent with each other?

And then that is just the beginning of a series of progress that we can make that will increase our happiness, our health, our intelligence, and all that. I mean, it is all unfolded. In my own work, work with Valentina Onisor, who is a medical doctor who has added much new energy to the work.

And so, yes, we should talk about nonviolence. We can talk about it for hours, but the basis of it is very simple. It’s that spiritual tradition saying all along. We are coming from one source, and therefore we should not be violent. That's very clear.

The aspect of consciousness that tells us this, we call goodness. And goodness, of course, we see it as a dichotomy, good or evil. And that means that there should be, and would be, some battle between the dichotomous elements because of the ignorance. But as soon as you penetrate the ignorance, goodness will eventually prevail and violence will disappear from human society, just as the nonviolence began 70,000 years ago. Hopefully, we won't have to wait 70,000 years more for achieving that state of nonviolence of the entire humanity. Maybe it will happen in a couple of hundred years from now.

Michael: Tying in with what you just said, Doctor Goswami, I don't think we have even seven years to work this out.

I'm a little bit hesitant because my next question is kind of a technical one. And on the heels of your marvelous overview, it's going to seem a little bit trivial, but maybe it will get the ball rolling. And I think you probably don't need much to launch into some profundity. So let me tell you what I had.

The Hindu concept of [chanum], a moment, as you might, I like to think of it as, Planck length in time, that is the smallest imaginable unit of time, is developed, by the Buddhists into [chanakavada], the doctrine of momentariness. And it always has seemed to me, in my amateurish way, that this was an anticipation of quantum theory. But that being Indians, the focus was on, mental reality rather than physical reality. I just would like to get your thoughts on that, your comment on that.

Amit: Yeah. I mean, the whole Buddhist philosophy, metaphysics, is very much in tune with quantum physics. The language sometimes it's a little bit confusing because quantum physics – in quantum physics we do talk about consciousness as the ground, whereas in Buddhist, there's a tendency of saying, “No-God.” Consciousness is the ground of being is very much like, “Call it God, what's the harm?” kind of thing.

And I sometimes I like the word God, so I sometimes myself, you know, use God for consciousness. Some kind of power has to be there, right, to create reality.

But Buddhism, sometimes is misunderstood, I think, when they call it, “No-God.” That's not what it's saying. Buddha said – if you read Buddha himself, then you don't find much metaphysical speculation. Buddha was against metaphysics.

So, he just said that he was – he achieved Nirvana. Nirvana means desirelessness. No attachment to physical pleasure. Even you can call everything that is physical, desire drives us towards them. And Buddha said that one can be desireless because then only one can be truly happy and one can serve all that Buddha did himself.

He did not go to the forest and enjoy his enlightenment, he served people. He tried to make people see things in the right way, remove their ignorance, and so forth. Nonviolence is one of the basic creeds of how one can be good in the world, in their relationships.

So, that being the case, the doctrines sometimes get a little bit too elaborate, and confusing. No-Self, that's another confusing aspect. But of course, it can all be understood very easily, Buddhism. Because when we say Self, what is the self? When we discover the Self, we find it is not the personal self, it's the universal self. So, one can easily say that it is No-Self. So, in that way, we can look at our consciousness as having a lot of stuff.

We can also look at consciousness as having nothing but unity. So, I think that is basically the message. That oneness, consciousness of oneness, from which the world originates as subject-object. And then the Buddhist principle of pratītyasamutpāda, which is dependent co-arising of subject and object. The world, and at once the condition subject that we call the ego arises. This is absolutely vintage Buddhism.

And then I think the rest of it is very advanced epistemology. Epistemology of Buddhism, how to attain Nirvana, is a very, very advanced. You know, I don't even aspire to give up my desires entirely. Because I know very well that desire of teaching, desire of changing worldview, these things drive me. If I give up those desires, I don't know how that would be.

So, desirelessness is an aspect of our consciousness which comes quite late in our practice. And we practice for many incarnations. So, I think, one does not really need to be involved with Buddhist epistemology so much.

But the little metaphysics that is needed to understand Buddhism is completely agreeable with all the other traditions that look at consciousness. The difficulty that today people have, the reason that some scientists are even giving up on the science of consciousness, you know, the latest I read was that one scientist is seriously proposing that there is no such thing as consciousness.

Cassy: Thank you, Dr. Goswami. In one of your books, you said that God is quantum consciousness. Would you explain to us what that means?

Amit: You know, the word quantum has become very confusing because people are using it everywhere. Quantum haircut is the latest one I heard. I don’t know, there’s some sense, because the haircut is this great array of hair. If you cut that haircut, then it can be called quantum haircut because quantum is discreteness basically.

But of course, that's not the meaning that I imply as quantum consciousness. What I imply is in the usual spiritual way of understanding consciousness as a oneness –  oneness of every ego all is rooted in that oneness. That misses an aspect, which is it introduces all the attributes, but what it misses is the idea that attributes and all aspects of consciousness and all the sources of our experience, they are all beginning as possibility.

And the possibilities are quantum possibilities. So, consciousness and it's quantum possibilities. So, in short, we say quantum consciousness.

If you assume quantum possibility, then consciousness can be introduced into physics very easily by saying, okay, there are these possibility waves. Who collapses them? Who causally affects them? Consciousness does. Consciousness changes them from possibility into actuality. And then we get human experience, including the subject-object split.

The consciousness identifies with the brain that becomes the subject self and object that is experienced is in a given position, that’s the electron and all the measuring apparatus that we put to measure the electron. So, it becomes very clear how the world is created. And then the subject consciousness is still reflective of that oneness. But that gets changed with this dependent co-arising, which is reflection in the mirror of memory. Because quantum physics says the measurement is not complete, perception is not complete, until you make a memory in the brain.

So, this perception and memory, they are the apparatuses that sort of capture consciousness into feeling that I’m separate from the rest of the world. That's how the subject-object split is created.

So then, you have the basis of explaining all the experiences. It took a while, but of course, we now understand creativity, we understand feelings, we understand emotions, we understand intuitions.

And we can then make a very learned discourse of how human beings can transform from the state of violence that we are in, you know, negative emotions are built into our brain, how we can balance them with positivity and make and become nonviolent. The method has become very clear.

Michael: You know, as the Bhagavad Gita says, when, reality is known, how can self injure self? But if you see yourself in another being, how can you bring yourself to injure your own self?

Amit: Yeah. I mean, that’s the biggest mystery. I mean…the problem is that what we are looking for is what is looking.

Michael: In “The Self-Aware Universe” you made a fascinating reference to Gandhiji, which, of course, we seize upon. And I think you were saying that his unusual creativity was, correct me if I'm wrong, but was, in a way, part of the indeterminacy of the quantum world that. Would you elaborate on that a little bit?

Amit: Yes. You know, there was a story about Gandhi. Let me start with that story. You know, Gandhi’s two very successful movements, one was the non-cooperation with the British government. And that worked very well. After the success, and the British considered a lot of stuff as a result of that movement, his followers wanted to continue that movement or similar movements. Gandhi wouldn't do anything.

So, Gandhi stayed close to quite for like seven years, after a very successful movement. And his disciples really were angry at him. They were not doing anything. They were complaining. And then suddenly there was this Salt Act, and Gandhi said, “Okay, this is one we must protest.” And again, it was hugely successful.

So, then his followers really came to, they said, “How did you know?” And Gandhi said, “See, I was not getting an intuition. For seven years I waited and waited and waited for the intuition to come to me, when is the right time to strike again? And it just wouldn't come. And then suddenly the intuition came when this Salt Act was enacted.”

So, this is the spirit. Nonviolence is difficult because the violence is built into us, that already manifest in terms of brain circuit. Whereas, the nonviolence is a possibility in us. And to make the possibility actual for a moment, momentarily, is easy. We all have done that. But we have an impulse, and we control it because it's not practical, or there are many other reasons.

But then violence rises again and rises again, and we cannot handle it. Eventually, we become prone to violence. And although not physical violence, I think, there are many people today who don't engage in physical violence directly, but we end up supporting violence in some way. We end up in emotional violence with our dear ones. End up in mental violence in many ways.

You know, right now in America, there's a lot of mental violence going on for good reasons. But the point is that the way we approach it as violence begets more violence. So, it never stops. The answer, of course, is the nonviolence has to grow from inside of us. It has to be an intuition that often happens not just once or twice during the day, but becomes a conviction, a faith that I cannot be violent to my fellow human.

How that has to grow is through this intuition. Once intuition comes, then we carry out the creative process. And with the creative process, we have an understanding of the archetype of deep understanding, which we call creative insight, that is reached by a discontinuous quantum leap. When that happens, then nonviolence is eradicated from your thinking, from your feelings. It just goes away.

It still remains in the sense that the negative emotional circuits are there, so that there is still some work to be done, making positive emotional circuits. So, we now have brain data. Brain data shows that the negative emotion is all in the limbic brain, the midbrain. In the cortex, there is hardly any positive emotion for some of us who are altruistic instinctually. For them, there is a little bit of positive emotion to have a little bit of ability of nonviolence, and we can grow on that.

But if we take the quantum leap, what happens is if we manifest and manifest and manifest the quantum leap experience, then we make brain circuits a positive emotion. And heart is awakened in the process. So, we truly can then balance negative with positive. And then the negative is still there, but you can squash it right in the brain. It cannot take any actions.

So, that's how to do it. But it still takes some doing. You know, I'm a scientist, so I experiment on myself, and I experimented on it. It took me years. I mean, it's no joke. I mean really, to get to that unconditional level of love, it took me literally 30 years.

So, it's not an easy practice, certainly. But in the process, if we join the process, that itself is enough of an effort that keeps us away from violence, real violence. And violence in the sense of, you know, physically attacking somebody or supporting war, that kind of violence.

You still have violence at the personal, intimate level. That is the one that is the hardest to remove. Violence in the process of even thinking. Like your partner does something wrong and then even thinking that, “Okay, I have to retaliate.” That thinking even is squashed from the beginning. So that's a bit hard to achieve.

So, on the whole, I would say that we have some ways to go in the transformational journey. And so, you know, Valentina and I have started a transformational system of education. This is our hope that we can really make nonviolent people by educating them into transformation.

Cassy: I am so glad that, Dr. Goswami, you talk about consciousness is mostly about oneness and how you connect it with Gandhi's movement. Because in one of your books, you said that you believe that life is this expression of vital energy. And to me, I feel like Gandhi's life is about this energy. What do you think about that? Like, what does this vital energy mean to you?

Amit: Well, vital energy is really energy that feeds life. I mean, literally, vital energy is connected with organ functions. If an organ is functioning properly – here are the new understanding about how organs function. This is very different from how biologists think of it.

You know, they think everything comes from matter. And organs just happen to have some physiological aspects, which sounds purposive, but they pretend that it's not really purposive. But we can see that, yeah, digestion is for the purpose of survival. Survival is a purpose. It's not a property of molecules. So, when you properly understand biology, we have to reformulate it.

And then what is survival due to? Well, where does survival come from if not from the genes? Gene is a molecule. It has absolutely no interest in survival. Nothing of survival is written in the gene. Yet, gene has the program to make proteins. And yes, proteins can make bile. Proteins can help digestion. So, how does it do it?

So, consciousness uses fields, organizing fields. Rupert Sheldrake call these fields morphogenetic fields. So, these morphogenetic fields become the software that guides the organ, guides the organ hardware for making the right proteins to get the right function from an organ. So, if we understand this way, then the vital energy is the energy of these organizing fields of the software that is attached to the hardware.

So, organs provide hardware, matter produces hardware, and these subtle energies, thinking, feeling, these are associated with the software – movement of the software. Once you understand this, then we really get the idea of how a Gandhi is created.

So, we have, you know, the Indians discovered a long time ago that there are seven centers of feelings in our body. They call it chakras. Root chakra, and then chakra of sexual organs, sacral chakra. Then there is the navel chakra, that one is connected with self-esteem. Heart chakra connected with defensiveness, but transforms into love. And then we have throat chakra that's connected with the expression. Brow chakra connected with thinking and elevated thinking, intuition. And then crown chakra connected with wholeness.

So, once we get that, then also the transformation becomes clear. People become fearful. That's the root chakra function. List all illumination organs when they are not functioning. Constipation, for example, you will notice people become fearful. Gandhi did not have fear in his heart, in his mind, in his brain. How did he do that? So, he transformed the root chakra from fear into courage.

It transformed the energies of the navel chakra, which is connected to the digestive organs, so it can be very security oriented, gives us a little bit me-centeredness, narcissism. Gandhi transformed that into self-respect, self-esteem. And of course, he transformed defensiveness into love. He transformed the negative emotions in the midbrain into positive emotions of goodness.

So, in this way, I don't think that he would claim that he was enlightened in the spiritual sense. He did not go all the way, but he certainly was a very, very good man who was able to serve his people all through his life. And this is something very special. We have very few people in human history to the extent of being able to do what Gandhi did.

There are others, a few others who came close. You know, Nelson Mandela, for example, is one. Mahavira, a founder of Jainism, is another one. Mother Teresa is close to that same spirit. People become, when goodness is totally embodied in the brain, and balance is the negative, people really become exceptionally capable of being nonviolent. It’s just, you know, I'm still working on it. Being completely nonviolent is such a wonderful character trait that anybody can be, everybody can be proud of it. And, you know, Gandhi's nonviolence was of the purest kind.  

Michael: Wonderful. You know, these are basic clichés, if you will, that I've always entertained, that all arises from consciousness. But what you're doing is spelling out some of the intermediate stages, which are absolutely essential…

Amit: Yeah. It’s important, because how do we get from here to there? You know, we can talk about violence that are built into it. Everybody understands violence because we have all the tendency, you know. I don't know how many, how many boys I have fought with when I was younger. That comes so naturally.

But when you get the idea, it's still an idea. And it's nothing that manifests very easily. Then you discover that, okay, this altruistic tendency. In India is very easy to discover. You know, I was a 5-year-old and encountered the famine. And I encountered these beggars, and immediately something welled up in my heart. I could not understand it. But, certainly, the altruistic tendency was built into me, and my family likewise. So, I understood that very quickly. And had become a little bit of touch of compassion.

And so, these things – most people that we've talked to, like in this company have. Altruism is a doorway, and anthropological discoveries are now supporting it. Altruism is a doorway to goodness. But that's just a beginning. I mean, from there you have to discover the heart. We have to discover love. And then we have to go back to goodness and transcend evil.

So, that's what takes some work. And we are glad that Gandhi provided such a good example. Martin Luther King did that in America, and Nelson Mandela, Bishop Tutu in South Africa. So, these are very good examples.

Currently, these examples are what is lacking. There is the reason we see so much violence and sometimes grotesque, uncivilized violence, like in the case of Gaza, it's a very sad story. The heart bleeds when we think of the difficulties people have, coping with this kind of violence between two peoples which are completely, you know, beyond all civilized version of warfare. So, even this is happening.

So, literally, scientific materialism has contributed to that, in my opinion. We were not so bad, but now we have eradicated values because if everything is made of matter, literally, values like nonviolence cannot exist. And this is wrong. I mean, this is just wrong. And really, if we go back to, go back on our civilization, it will be a very hard road to come back to civilization that was before scientific materialism.

This is why I have been fighting for a paradigm shift – bring a paradigm shift to the science for so long. Now it is happening, gradually. Now there is some neural scientific evidence in favor of quantum level of consciousness. So, things are changing.

Michael: Yeah. What do you think of mirror neurons, in that the discovery only goes back to 1988? It seems to me it might be kind of a mediation between –

Amit: Yes. Mirror neurons is the local version from – evolution has some helpful aspects. Evolution giving us the negative emotional brain circuits, but it also has given us mirror neurons because it's a vital part of altruism, right? If we could not have, so easily, altruism so easily unless the mirror neurons will pick up someone is distressed and the mirror neurons will enable us to experience this other person's distress. And that's how we respond so easily. If we have to guess, then the response would not be so easy, I think.

So, mirror neurons is a contribution of evolution. So, these genes do contribute in the sense that, you know, that part of, the brain is built into us because there are the appropriate genes that automatically – brain is made automatically having these mirror neurons in every person. So, that's something that's the beginning of what I call sympathy.

From that grows compassion, which is empathy, which is the non-local quantum effect. That's the transformation that takes you towards beyond altruism. If I have altruism, then I can help people in distress. But if I have this unconditional goodness, or non-local empathy for another person, then I can go beyond just responding if a person is in trouble.

I can go on and help the person, even if the trouble is only future trouble and the trouble is in potentiality. Like I can try to help a person with the level of ignorance where the violence comes periodically, unexpectedly, and the person does the violent act ignorantly from ignorance, not from deliberation.

Of course, there is also deliberate violence. That's something else. And that there, it is much more difficult from the situation. Like, you know, that you have a warmongering king, or a president of a country that's much harder to control, and the situation becomes much more difficult.

But this inherent violence in people, we really can teach people. We can educate people. We can transform people sufficiently so that they have not only altruism, but a bit of compassion as well.

And then violence at the base level, like violence against women that we see so much today, you know, rape and sexual violence in the office, in the campus and all this. This could easily be eliminated by education.

Cassy: It reminds me that Gandhi once said that history is a record of interruption of nature. But because nonviolence, according to Gandhi, is truth force, is a soul force. He said it is a very subtle energy, is a very subtle force that that is why history cannot take notice of it. So, I wonder is it possible in even quantum physics and in science to explore that?

Is it because our unsuccessful attempt to locate inside us, the soul, which so many scientists now reject, is because the soul is this vital energy? It’s this quantum immaterial energy? What do you think about that?

Amit: Well, naturally, you know, when we do study the brain with the quantum science ideas, then the idea of soul becomes very clear. Consciousness collapses and becomes associated, or correlated, with the brain. Embodied is a better word, embodied in the brain as a self. But that self is still universal, quite cosmic, capable of love, capable of, you know, seeing all people as one. We call it the quantum-self. In spiritual tradition that is called, not soul, but something like great soul. Spirit is a better word. And so, let's use the word spirit for quantum-self. 

That the self at present center at the present, just when the wave has collapsed into particle, that moment. We don't experience that moment. The neuroscience has shown that we experience – every experience comes to us after about half a second of processing by the brain.

And that processing is that dependent co-arising that I mentioned in connection with Buddhism, that Buddha discovered thousands of years ago. So that gives us the ego. Then the question arises, what about this half a second? What is this half a second? 500 milliseconds? Can we shorten it? And we discover that if we meditate, that becomes shorter.

So, Freud actually knew about this because he introduced a concept called preconscious, where we can edit what we are going to experience in consciousness. So, this idea of preconscious is the idea that if we meditate, we get into preconscious, and we meditate more, we get more into preconscious. Then we can make – use creativity and make quantum leaps and then get situated in a station of relative homeostasis in this 500 milliseconds time.

In other words, if you are there, then you won’t take 500 milliseconds to experience an event. You would experience maybe 300 milliseconds. Maybe even 200 milliseconds. This is why if you meet a spiritual person that seems to be so spontaneous, because they are not waiting for 500 milliseconds to experience events. They're experiencing it before then. So, you become more alive.

This is the soul station. This is the station that people call the soul. Because what happens in that state is that quantum experiences, quantum self experiences, creative experiences happen much more frequently. Because we are closer to the quantum-self. Nonviolence is much more easier to intuit every now and then because you are closer to quantum-self.

It's easy to fall into – say I’m fighting with you. And then I fall into quantum-self. And then I'm not fighting anymore because I am not capable of fighting. I'm like seeing that you are one with me. That happens so differently that you know, it's amazing. It's really an amazing experience. I noticed myself, you know, I'm having a disagreement with a person – serious disagreement that you have to intellectualize about and sort it out.

And initially, there was a little bit of violence involved in it because you are opposing, you know, not feeling comfortable about the opposition. Opposition seems like violence eventually. And then suddenly the heart wakes up, and you feel that that oneness again. And so, then you can carry out the intellectual difference with the person with a persuasion, not violently try to establish your mental superiority over the other person.

Dominate the other person with your agility, mental agility. Instead, what you're trying to do is very humbly try to point out that there is another way of looking at it, and then persuade the other person, and that your humbleness get to the other person, and they reciprocate. And it becomes a beautiful discussion of things instead of being a hot back and forth, showing superiority of who can think faster and better than the other.

Michael: Yeah, “I can do it in 250 milliseconds, I’m much better than you.” Now, I once ran into a colleague of mine on campus, and I greeted him very warmly, and he looked at me a little bit strangely. I didn't quite know why. And then I realized later, I was supposed to hate him. He had blocked my most important project on campus.

And yet, when I just met him as a human being, there was no hostility. There was no separateness at all, you know, so we all. So, we all know it doesn't take more than one episode to know that it is possible to overcome disunity. What we have to do, and here's where your education project comes in, it’s where we have to make that the norm expand it and expand it and make it the norm.

Amit: Yeah. What is beautiful about quantum physics is that it makes it very clear. I mean, if you understand quantum physics, then you understand the process almost immediately. Because in quantum physics, forces, which is the way that we change people, subjugate people to our way of thinking, applying a force, that's Newtonian. But in quantum physics, forces can only give you possibilities to choose from, and you don't have to choose that one. You can choose also persuasion.

So, in quantum physics, force is a place by choice. The other is choosing the violent way. So, you can change her choice by being humble, by being persuasive, by being straightforward, by being authentic, by exemplifying what you are saying, not using violence, you know. Sometimes – it's just so funny, in one of my first meetings of nonviolence, somebody invited me to talk about Gandhi.

And then I went and there were portraits of Martin Luther King, which were greatly respected. And so, I remember that the discussion got heavy between two factions of the people. One was the militant side of the movement. They wanted to know nonviolence doesn't work, and the other was the nonviolence side. And the nonviolence side is shouting as much as the violence side is shouting.

Cassy: Dr. Goswami, I am just so glad that you mentioned about Newton. Because I am extremely, extremely interested in gravity. Because Newton called it a universal attraction. And recently, I mean, about 15 years or so now, Roger Penrose has this quantum theory of consciousness. He was trying to say that consciousness comes from gravity. He said, “It is gravity that caused consciousness that caused the collapse of the wave function.” His reasoning was that all great science, all paradigm shift, always goes back to a deeper understanding of gravity. 

And it cannot help but remind me to think of how Gandhi talks about gravity. And he said, “The law of love, which is nonviolence, works just like the law of gravity. It always works, whether you like it or not.” It is only that our exploration has not gone far enough. So, I would like to know, what do you think about that? Like, why would Gandhi, put them together?

Amit: What Gandhi was trying to say, I think, is that when you are in the path of transformation, then there's lots of nonviolence. Once that enters your character, it becomes something that you cannot not do. This is what Immanuel Kant called categorical imperative. It becomes compulsory for you. So, once you wake up to the archetype type of goodness, you are transformed, take a quantum leap. Then it becomes impossible for you to become nonviolent. 

This is when, truly, pacifism is so important to make room for it. Some people really cannot fight. They have that basic faith, a conviction that it is not possible to be violent to another person and then to ask them to fight because of nationalism or anything is not fair. So, I think countries do make room for pacifists, and that would be the right way to do it. 

What this other theory is, it's a speculative theory. But what you have to say is that the theory is fundamentally wrong. Because gravity, with all due respect to it, of course we must respect it. And you know, anybody who exercises would take a jump, you know that you have to fall down again. So, it does not, require much time to be respectful of gravity. I learned it pretty quickly. I think at age one, pretty much.

But the point is that the gravity still belongs to objects. Gravity is an object, an object of force. Object can never give you the answer to consciousness, because consciousness is also a subject experiencer. Objects can be experienced, but objects have to have objects to make something which experiences the object.. What we are looking for is what is looking. The subject is looking. That you cannot get a subject that is looking by looking at objects that are being looked at.

So fundamentally, that theory is wrong. What they try to do is materialistic theories of the brain. They tried to find a quantum brain. They tried to show that there is something very special in the brain that happens. And when that happens, then consciousness follows. But this has the basic understanding of consciousness as an object. And so, they're bound to fail from the beginning because the basic assumption is wrong.

Michael: Would we rather say that, not that consciousness occurs, but that consciousness descends into the structure of neurons at that moment?

Amit: Yeah. Something non-material has to happen. And quantum physics makes it so clear. Because in quantum physics theory, mathematical theory. That no material interacts can ever change possibilities into actuality.

So, this collapse possibility can only happen by non-material agency. To say that it happens because of quantum gravity is hocus-pocus. It’s a theoretical assumption, of course, we must permit such assumption because assumption give us consequences that can be checked experimentally. So, I have nothing against making a theory like that.

What I'm saying is that the theory is bound to fail, because from the beginning it's omitting the subject aspect of consciousness. Consciousnes has multiples of awareness, subject and object, experiencer around the experience, all come from consciousness.

Michael: Now, back on what you were saying about society. Henry Stapp, in one of his articles, said that quantum discoveries – I'm quoting here, “Must lead to an expanded sense of self and therefore to great changes,” which we would call a paradigm shift. But it doesn't seem to be happening quickly enough to rescue us. I wonder what you think we might do to facilitate the recognition of the implications of quantum reality.

Amit: Well, you know, I have started a movement called Quantum Activism, started in 2009. What we tried to do is to teach people quantum principles. We say that, look, our experiences are certainly quantum experiences. It's very easy to prove that mental and vital energies, mental thinking, intuition, intuitive archetypes, these are all quantum events. Why? Because we feel them internally. 

All Newtonian events would have to be external to our brain. That's how we see physical objects. But mental objects we see inside of us. These are the reason. Because they're quantum, you and I cannot share quantum events. Because quantum objects change too much between collapses. Quantum is always moving. Quantum cannot be put to rest. This is the special quantum aspect of things. Quantum changes all the time.

So, between your thinking and my thinking, possibilities will change so that we cannot select the same possibility. We cannot choose the same one. It would be very unlikely. So, in that way, we make thoughts and feelings as internal. We experience them internally, to us private. Whereas material objects are public. Everybody can see them in the same way.

So, once you understand this, then it becomes very clear that what we need to do is to focus on the internal aspects. And this focusing on the internal aspects is what gets us into consciousness. If we focus too much, if you look at society today, the basic problem is people have become very externally oriented.

They become so used to, get our – whatever kicks we need. Like avoiding boredom, we look at the cell phone. Before, in the previous time, avoiding boredom means to contemplate. Okay, so what is the meaning of my life? Let's think about that one. But today, cell phone is the ready answer. Let’s look at what the scores are in this game or that game, and so forth.

So, this shift is fundamentally a problem that we have to teach people, not to use that one because it's making them emotionally very callous. And part of the nonviolence is due to callousness. Just ignorance. Ignorance that we have these brain circuits, and we have to do something to control them, to balance them positive emotions. We need to engage into that relationship in order to get to positive emotion. We have to control our defensiveness and so forth.

So, these teachings are lacking in our educational system. This has to be brought back. And this is, I mentioned Transformational University. These are the goals of our education. We teach people how to become emotionally intelligent.

In other words, they are trying to make a relationship. It should be a happy relationship. It would be unintelligent not to make a happy relationship to make a violent relationship. So, of course, you have to look at your violence, look at your negativity and balance them with positivity.

Cassy: And I'm just so glad, Dr. Goswami, that you talk about happy relationship, because I remember in one of your books that you want to do happy physics. And you talk about this quantum activism is mostly stop focusing so much on the outside, but start turning inwards. And there is something that I really would love to hear your thoughts on that. Is that one of my favorite psychologists, C.G. Jung, he said that, sooner or later, nuclear physics and the psychology of the unconscious will draw closer and closer together. What do you think he means by that?

Amit: Yeah, it is true. Because they, you know, directly you can see that the psychology of the unconscious, that Freud discovered, is really a prelude to quantum physics, which is saying that the waves of possibility and particles of actuality, they are defining separate domains of reality.

Waves of possibility cannot exist in space and time. There is no such thing as possibility in space and time. So, when we say waves of possibility, there must be outside of space and time. And indeed, in space and time, objects have a speed limit, and therefore all our experiences or communication has to be taking a finite amount of time, cannot be instantaneous.

Whereas using this, outside of space and time, we can have instant communication, which you call non-local communication. And this has now been discovered, and a Nobel Prize was given last year to Alain Aspect for that discovery. So, it is getting some acceptance that we do live in a reality which has two domains. Domain of potentiality, which psychologists call unconscious.

So indeed, that statement has literally come true. Physics and psychology of the unconscious have come together, just as science and spirituality have come together.

Stephanie: Thank you, so much, everybody, all of you, for this conversation. As we wrap up, maybe you can tell us, a little bit more – tell our audience, our listeners, about the, center for Quantum Activism.

Amit: Okay, we call it the degrees in Quantum Science of Health, Prosperity, and Happiness. It's really a supplement of what people get in medical school, which treats only physical health. We talk about health of all the experiences gives us software. So, we have five kinds of software. So, it’s the five bodies of the human being, not only the physical body, but a vital body, a mental body, an archetypal supplemental body, and then finally the spirit itself.

So, these five bodies, they all have to be taken care of. So, it is the final word on holistic health. So, we teach that, how to take care of the body, how to provide nutrition to all the five bodies, how to heal in the quantum way, quantum healing. So, this kind of thing.

And then prosperity is about business, economics. Quantum physics has there effect also, because economics right now is, of course, mostly material economics. But we do have something about meaning, mental books and stuff. And we are talking, this will be made into a streamed video. So, that's also a mental object, I guess. So, we do have some mental aspects of the business. But mainly it's all physical technological aspect, technological products. That has to shift. Why? Because, you know, everybody knows about this artificial intelligence programs, and they now can do all that human beings can do with just our thinking. Already they are doing even better than human beings.

So very soon, you know, if a teacher just teaches things that can be found in the internet and a computer can do better than the teacher, almost any teacher, because we cannot hold that much information in our brain. Of course, we can understand and make up for it to some extent, but not to a whole bunch of extent, unless they are creative and using the intuitive dimension.

So, it is very clear that some of the businesses have to orient itself towards growing human capital. Human capital that would supplement the artificial intelligence programs. Artificial intelligence program can never intuit. Can never have nonlocality, can never use quantum discontinuity, can never have creativity. So that's what the human beings have to do.

We have to train people to grow this human – so we’ll then be able to help with those departments like relationship, love, nonviolence, goodness, to bring into society because we need that too. In fact, we need that more to have civilization, not just material products to keep us sidetracked from our growth – personal growth.

Human beings care about relationship. It's very clear even in Darwin's theory. Human beings are about relationship. And we have to learn relationship. And to learn relationship we have to have quantum effects, quantum principles, especially nonlocality. The empathy that we talked about earlier. So, it is very, very clear that, economics have to be changed. Being in the subtle aspect of economic, economy.

And then happiness, of course, is the subject that psychology has long time avoided. Basically, people come to psychologists for when they're sick, but that has to change, and it is changing. People are more and more coming to ask about, “Okay, tell me about the meaning of life. Tell me how I choose my profession.” It's called life coaching. So, we have a very advanced courses on quantum life coaching. We want to give people direction. So, how to live their life, how to integrate their way of living with their thinking and even how they earn their livelihood to be congruent with how they think and how they live.

So, this kind of education, we call it transformative education. We do not pretend that all the basic stuff that they learn in schools and colleges, they are meaningless. They are, of course, the other half of things that people need to know we don't need technology for. We are not going to go backwards. You know, that part of Gandhi's vision I do not support, that one has to go back to the old ways of living.

New ways are here to stay. But within that, we still have to recognize that the intuition aspects, creative aspects, meaning aspects, purposive aspects are important to us. That's what defines the human being. And we have to make room for that growth. So, this kind of education that we are building is to provide leadership in those aspects where humanness is essential.

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