Send Them Peace

You are here in the STP virtual library.

An article about Sir Isaac Newton preceded this one, serving to open the doors of our library, and focused on exposing not only Newton's life story, a life leading to what people refer to as Classical Physics, but also a life that included his perhaps even greater involvement in spirituality and the occult.

Without a doubt, he is today better known for his Philosophica Mathematica, where laws of motion were posited for the ages to read. But Newton's search for a deeper level of meaning in all of his work and inventions throughout his life (from calculus to optics and telescopes), and evoking a much deeper level of spirituality should, in fairness to Newton and for our benefit, not be forgotten.

In contradistinction, let us move now from the 17th to our own century. Contradistinction certainly in use of scientific language, which has evolved from Newton's day, but is the quest for the central meaning of life, the central driver or spirituality if you like, any different?

And by way of introduction to that word, "quantum," here is an addition to the STP virtual library.

An exerpt from Amit Goswami's book, "How Quantum Activism Can Save Civilization: A Few People Can Change Human Evolution." Goswami is a quantum physicist by training, degree and practice, and more recently, turned a bit philosopher (as we all should).

In subsequent posts, a goal worth pursuing would certainly be to try and present the trail leading from an Isaac Newton to an Amit Goswami. Recall also from history, that whenever a fantastic leap ahead is made in science, once popularized, a crowd forms to latch onto the scientific information, and use it for a whole host of distantly related purposes: This, a phenomenon telling us much less about Science, than about Man.

So by way of introduction ...

How Quantum Activism Can Save Civilization

"In the interconnected oneness of consciousness, connections happen without signals; the technical name for such signal-less connections is quantum nonlocality. As you may know, in Einstein's theory of relativity, all interactions in space and time must occur via signals. Hence, to use the physicist Henry Stapp's words, nonlocal downward causation must take place from "outside" space and time, yet it can bring about an effect, the actuality, in space and time.

Local problems become global very quickly today. The solution of global problems requires no less than global creativity and transformation. How do we bring about transformational change on a global scale? A new kind of spirituality is needed. This is what quantum activism is about.

We need to change our social systems in order to give people opportunity for transformation.

Today's activists have no new paradigms to offer, no new paradigm for conflict resolution or for bridging differences or for demonstrating why arts, humanities, and spirituality are important. In the absence of new organizing paradigms, no long-term solution to the problems we face emerges.

Lack of synchrony between what we believe and how we live is due to the incongruence of our belief system.

We have forgotten to live this fundamental holistic nature of our being. Today our activists, not unlike the purveyors of good versus evil, perpetuate the separateness that creates the problems we want resolved. We supposedly "battle" the perpetrators of the problems, negativity with negativity. Look at the language we use to describe our struggle. It is separatist; we have already lost the wholeness that we wish to accomplish.

While doing a story on Gandhi, a news reporter was quite impressed that the leader spoke at huge gatherings without consulting any notes. When he asked Mrs. Gandhi about this, she said, "Well, us ordinary folks think one thing, say another, and do a third-but for Gandhiji they are all the same." Well, we cannot all be Gandhi overnight, but we can adopt a practice toward that goal. This is what quantum activism is about.

The new paradigm rests on two metaphysical assumptions. One assumption is that consciousness is the ground of all being. This one is age-old, the basis of already mentioned monistic idealism, or perennial philosophy. But our second assumption-that quantum physics is the law of the dynamic movement of possibilities from which consciousness manifests the worlds of our external and internal experiences-is what makes the new paradigm a scientific one. And it is this assumption that opens us to a new avenue of integral living and can guide us in how to institute both individual and social change. To embrace this new integral way of living, in which the goal is to achieve congruence between thinking, living, and livelihood, is one of the avowed objectives of quantum activism.

The word "quantum" literally means "quantity." The physicist Max Planck used the word to denote a discrete quantity of energy. In the year 1900, Planck proposed that the seeming continuity of energy is not the complete story. At its base, energy consists of discrete units that he called quanta. This idea seemed so revolutionary even to Planck himself that he struggled practically his whole life trying to reconcile this idea with his worldview, which was based on the physics that the famous Isaac Newton developed in the 17th century, now called classical physics. Classical physics gave us the great prejudices that these early pioneers of quantum physics struggled to overcome; the same paradigmatic battle continues even today. Among these prejudices are continuity of motion, determinism (the idea that all movements are determined by physical laws), locality (all interactions and communications are mediated by signals passing through space and time), objectivity (objects are independent, separate things), and of course, material monism or materialism (all is matter).

In 1935, Einstein introduced the concept of quantum nonlocality in a paper written with two other physicists, Nathan Rosen and Boris Podolsky, but rejected the idea because it seemed to contradict his prejudice that there can be nothing that is outside the space-time universe. Erwin Schrodinger could not handle the concept of the wave of possibility and tried to ridicule it via his paradox of Schrodinger's cat (see chapter 4). And Bohr felt compelled to assert that a measurement by a Geiger counter is enough to collapse the quantum possibility wave and thus missed a tremendous opportunity to overthrow the materialist worldview long before the 1950s, when it became entrenched.

When I woke up, I had it-the fundamental mystery of creativity and transformation. It is alternative doing and being. Do-be-do-be-do. Combine the strengths of both doing and being. Bring the lessons of quantum physics to creativity.

We have created the problems of our world; we have to recreate the world of solutions. Quantum creativity is our major tool. But that is by no means all of quantum activism. Conventional activism separates, us (those doing right) versus them (the wrongdoers). Quantum physics says that all is movement of consciousness; we are the world. There is no us versus them. There is only movement toward consciousness or away from consciousness, and it is not always easy to distinguish. The only thing of which we can be certain is that when consciousness is nonlocal, it is inclusive. When we practice inclusivity in resolving conflict, we are aspiring toward nonlocal consciousness.

Can we allow our activism to change us while changing the system? This is a tangled hierarchical relationship with the process of change: we recreate us as we recreate the world.
So quantum activism, the quantum manifesto for personal and social change, uses the transformational aspects of quantum physics-downward ward causation, quantum creativity, nonlocality, and the tangled hierarchy of relationship between subject and object-to change ourselves and our society.

In short, we have looked for reality, and it is consciousness in both its manifest and unmanifest (which in quantum physics we call potentia and which psychologists label as the unconscious) aspects! Are you excited? So what do you want to do about it?"


Amit Goswami. How Quantum Activism Can Save Civilization: A Few People Can Change Human Evolution (Kindle Locations 302-303). Kindle Edition.

Do follow along with us here at STP to see how these missing pieces fill in over time. 

But especially, 

Pre-study our current Target, participate in The Challenge, Each Day with Others at 12:00 noon GMT, and SendThemPeace.

It's the critical reason we're here for, and certainly, the reason you find yourself now at SendThemPeace.com.

Just 20 minutes each day. You'll feel better for it, and it's free.