Tag Archives: The illusion of separateness

CHAPTER 11. IN SEARCH OF THE QUANTUM MIND

We saw in the previous chapter that none of the philosophical solutions to the mind-body problem can be considered completely satisfactory. Monistic idealism seems to be the most satisfactory philosophy, since it is based on the primary reality of consciousness, but even this leaves unanswered the question of how the experience of our individual, personal “I” arises.

Why is the personal self a difficult problem for idealism? Because in idealism consciousness is unified and transcendental. Then it is quite possible to ask why and how the feeling of separateness arises? The traditional answer given by idealists like Shankara is that the individual self, like the rest of the immanent world, is illusory. It forms part of what in Sanskrit is called maya – the illusion of the world. Similarly, Plato called the world a shadow theater. But no idealistic philosopher has ever explained why such an illusion exists. Some of them simply deny that explanation is possible at all: “The doctrine of Maya recognizes the reality of the multiple from a relative point of view (the world of subjects and objects) – and simply asserts that the relation of this relative reality to the Absolute (undifferentiated, unmanifest consciousness) cannot be known or described.” This is an unsatisfactory answer. We want to know whether the experience of the individual self is truly an illusion—an epiphenomenon. If this is the case, we want to know what creates this illusion.

If you saw an optical illusion, you would immediately look for an explanation, wouldn’t you? This experience of the individual self is the most permanent experience in our lives. Shouldn’t we be looking for explanations for why it occurs? Maybe if we figured out how the individual “I” comes into being, we could better understand ourselves? Can our model explain maya? In this chapter I will propose a view of the mind and brain (a system that may be called the mind-brain system) that, within the framework of monistic idealism, explains our experience of existing as a separate self.

Idealism and the quantum mind-brain

Over the past few years, it has become increasingly clear to me that the only understanding of the brain-mind that can provide a complete and consistent explanation is this: the brain-mind is an interacting system that contains both classical and quantum components. These components interact within the framework of a basic idealistic conceptual system where consciousness is primary. In this and the next two chapters I will explore the solution to the mind-body problem that this view offers. I will show that this view, unlike other solutions to the mind-body problem, explains consciousness, cause-and-effect relationships in mind-brain matters (that is, the nature of free will), and the experience of personal self-identity. In addition, we will see that creativity is a fundamental part of the human experience.

Of course, the difference between quantum and classical mechanisms here is purely functional (in the sense described in Chapter 9).

The quantum component of the mind-brain is restorative and its states are multifaceted. It serves as a means of embodying conscious choice and creativity. In contrast, because of its long recovery time, the classical component of the mind-brain can form memories and thus serve as a reference point for experience.

You may ask, is there any evidence at all that the ideas of quantum mechanics apply to the brain-mind? Apparently, there is at least indirect evidence on this matter.

David Bohm, and before him Auguste Comte, noted that the principle of uncertainty seems to operate in thinking. If we focus on the content of a thought, we lose sight of the direction in which the thought is going. If we focus on the direction of thought, then its content becomes vague. Observe your own thoughts and see for yourself.

One can generalize Bohm’s remark and argue that thinking has an archetypal component. Its appearance in the field of awareness is associated with two related variables: sign (instantaneous content similar to the position of physical objects) and association (movement of thought in awareness similar to the impulse of physical objects). Notice that awareness itself is similar to the space in which the objects of thought appear.

Thus, mental phenomena such as thought appear to exhibit complementarity. We can argue that although thought always manifests in a specific form (described by attributes such as attribute and association), between manifestations it exists as transcendental archetypes – like a quantum object with its aspects of transcendental coherent superposition (wave) and manifested particle.

In addition, there is ample evidence of a lack of continuity—quantum leaps—in mental phenomena, especially in the phenomenon of creativity. Here is a convincing statement from my favorite composer, Tchaikovsky: “Generally speaking, the germ of a future composition appears suddenly and unexpectedly… With extraordinary speed and force it takes root, sprouts, sends out branches and leaves and, finally, blossoms. There is no way I can define the creative process except through this comparison.”

This is exactly the kind of comparison a quantum physicist would use to describe a quantum leap. I won’t quote more, but great mathematicians such as Jules Henri Poincaré and Carl Friedrich Gauss similarly described their own experiences of creativity as sudden and discrete, like a quantum leap.

The same idea is very well conveyed by the comic by Sidney Harris: Einstein, with his usual absent-minded look, stands at the blackboard with chalk in hand, ready to discover a new law. The equation E = ta ² is written on the board and then crossed out . Below it is written and also crossed out E = mb ² . The caption reads “A moment of creativity.” Will E = mс ² appear ? Unlikely. The comic strip is a caricature of the creative moment precisely because we all intuitively know that the creative moment does not follow such continuous, logical steps. (An excellent discussion of so-called sloppiness and lack of rigor in actual mathematics practice is given in George Paul’s delightful book How to Solve It.)

There is evidence of nonlocality in the functioning of the mind—not only the previously reported controversial data on far vision, but also data from recent experiments on brain wave coherence, which we will discuss later.

Tony Marcel’s research supports the idea of ​​a quantum component of the mind-brain. These data are quite important and deserve special consideration.

Returning to Tony Marcel’s data

For more than a decade, Tony Marcel’s data were not fully explained satisfactorily by existing cognitive models. These data concern the measurement of final word recognition times in three-word sequences such as tree-palm-wrist and hand-palm-wrist, where the middle ambiguous word was sometimes masked by a pattern so that it could be perceived only unconsciously. It turned out that the masking effect eliminated the congruent (in the case of hand ) and incongruent (in the case of tree) influence of the first (preparatory) word on recognition time.

The absence of masking in which subjects became aware of the second word provides evidence for what is called the selective antecedent theory of word recognition. The first word influences the perceived meaning of the ambiguous second word. Only the preset (by the action of the first word) meaning of the second word is perceived. If this meaning harmonizes (disharmonizes) with the meaning of the third word being recognized, we get easier (difficulty) recognition – a shorter (longer) recognition time. If we view the mind-brain as a classical computer, as functionalists do, then in this kind of situation the computer appears to operate in a sequential, linear, and unidirectional manner, from top to bottom.

When a polysemous word is masked with a pattern, both meanings appear to be available for subsequent processing—regardless of the presence of a priming context—since similar amounts of time are required to recognize the third word in congruent and incongruent conditions. Marcel himself referred to the importance of distinguishing between conscious and unconscious perception and noted that a non-selective theory should be applied to unconscious identification (the selective theory applies only to conscious perception). In addition, it appears that such a nonselective theory must be based on parallel information processing, in which multiple pieces of information are processed simultaneously, subject to feedback. These parallel distributed information processing models are examples of a bottom-up connectionist approach to artificial intelligence devices, in which connections between different elements play a central role.

Without getting too technical, the linear and selective classical functionalist models easily explain the effect of prepriming context in cases where no masking is used, but cannot explain the significant change observed in cases of unconscious perception in experiments using masking. The same is true for theories of indiscriminate parallel processing. They can be fitted to one set of data or the other—cases of conscious perception or unconscious perception—but they cannot logically account for both sets of data in a consistent manner. Therefore, Marcel concludes in the paper cited above, “these data [for camouflage cases] are inconsistent with and qualitatively different from the data for non-camouflage cases.” Therefore, the distinction between conscious and unconscious perception has been a problem for proponents of cognitive models.

Psychologist Michael Posner has proposed a cognitive solution in which attention plays a crucial role in the distinction between conscious and unconscious perception. Attention involves selectivity. Thus, according to Posner, we choose one of two meanings when we use attention, as in the case of conscious perception of an ambiguous word in Marcel’s experiment. When we are not mindful, no choice occurs. Therefore, both meanings of an ambiguous word are perceived, as in the unconscious perception of a word disguised by a pattern in Marcel’s experiment.

So who turns attention on or off? According to Posner, this is done by a central processing unit. However, no one has ever found a central processing unit in the mind-brain, and this concept conjures up a picture of a succession of little people, or homunculi, contained within the brain.

Nobel laureate biologist Francis Crick alludes to this problem in the following story: “I recently tried without success to explain to an intelligent woman the problem of understanding how we perceive anything at all. She couldn’t understand what the problem was. Finally, in desperation, I asked her how she thought she saw the world. She replied that she probably had something like a television somewhere in her head. “So who’s watching it?” – I asked. Now she immediately saw the problem.”

We can also face it: in the brain there is no homunculus, or central processor, which turns attention on and off, which interprets all the actions of mental conglomerates, attributing meaning to them and setting up channels from a central control post. Thus, self-reference—the ability to refer to our self as the subject of our experience—is an extremely difficult problem for any type of classical functionalist model. We seek what is sought – this inherent reflexivity is as difficult to explain in materialist models of the mind-brain as the von Neumann circuit is in quantum measurement.

However, suppose that when one sees a patterned word that has two possible meanings, the mind-brain becomes a quantum coherent superposition of states—each corresponding to one of the two meanings of the word. This assumption can account for both sets of Marcel’s data—conscious and unconscious perception—without invoking the idea of ​​a central processing unit.

The quantum mechanical interpretation of the data on conscious perception is that the context word hand projects from the ambiguous word palm (coherent superposition) a state with the value of hand (that is, the wave function collapses with the choice of only the value of hand). This state has a large overlap with the state corresponding to the final word wrist (in quantum mechanics, positive associations are expressed as large overlaps of meaning between states), and therefore recognition of this word is easier.

Similarly, in the quantum description of the incongruent case with no masking, the context word tree projects from the coherent superposition state palm to a state meaning tree; The overlap of meaning between the states corresponding to the tree and the wrist is small, and therefore recognition is difficult. When masking is used in both cases – congruent and incongruent – the word palm is perceived unconsciously, and therefore there is no projection of any specific meaning – no collapse of the coherent superposition. Thus, one can see direct evidence that the word palm leads to a state of coherent superposition containing both meanings of the word – both tree and palm (part of the hand). How else could we explain the fact that the effect of the priming (contextual) word in Marcel’s experiment almost completely disappears when the word palm is masked by a pattern?

The phenomenon of simultaneous access to both meanings of the word palm – the tree and part of the hand – is difficult to explain in the classical linear description of the brain-mind because it is an either-or description. The advantage of a quantum description based on the “both-and” principle is obvious.

I am aware that the evidence suggesting parallels between the mind and quantum phenomena—indeterminacy, complementarity, quantum leaps, nonlocality, and finally coherent superposition—is not conclusive. However, they might well point to something radical: that what we call the mind is composed of objects that are similar to the objects of submicroscopic matter, and obey rules similar to those of quantum mechanics.

Let me put this revolutionary idea in another way. Let us assume that just as ordinary matter is ultimately composed of submicroscopic quantum objects, which can be called archetypes of matter, so the mind is ultimately composed of archetypes of mental objects (very similar what Plato called “ideas”). I also assume that they are composed of the same basic substance that material archetypes are made of, and that they too are subject to quantum mechanics. Therefore, considerations regarding quantum measurement also apply to them.

Quantum functionalism

I’m not alone in this assumption. Decades ago, Jung intuited that mind and matter must ultimately be made of the same substance. In recent years, a number of scientists have made a serious attempt to explain brain research data by the existence of a quantum mechanism of the mind-brain. The following is a brief summary of their reasoning.

How does an electrical impulse travel from one neuron to another through the synaptic cleft (the point where one neuron contacts another)? According to the generally accepted theory, the signal is transmitted through a chemical change. However, the evidence for this is somewhat indirect, and E. Harris Walker called it into question, proposing a quantum mechanical process instead. Walker believes that the synaptic cleft is so small that the quantum tunneling effect may play a decisive role in the transmission of nerve signals. This effect is the ability of quantum objects to pass through an otherwise impenetrable barrier due to their wave nature. John Eccles discussed a similar mechanism, suggesting quantum effects in the brain.

Australian physicist L. Bass, and more recently American Fred Alan Wolf, noted that for intelligence to work, it is necessary that the impulse activity of one neuron be accompanied by the activity of many neurons correlated with it at macroscopic distances – up to 10 cm, which is the width of cortical tissue. According to Wolf, in order for this to happen, non-local correlations (of course, such as those suggested by the EPR experiment) are required that exist in the brain at the molecular level, in synapses. Thus, even our everyday thinking depends on the nature of quantum events.

Princeton University scientists Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunn used quantum mechanics as a model—though only metaphorical—of the paranormal abilities of the brain-mind.

Consider again the model used by functionalists—the classical computer. Richard Feynman once proved mathematically that a classical computer cannot simulate nonlocality. Therefore, functionalists are forced to deny the reality of our non-local experiences, such as ESP, since their model of the mind-brain is based on a classical computer (which is incapable of modeling or illustrating non-local phenomena). What incredible myopia! Recall again Abraham Maslow’s phrase: “If all you have is a hammer, you approach everything as if it were a nail.”

However, is it possible to simulate consciousness without non-locality? I’m talking about consciousness as we humans experience it—a consciousness capable of creativity, love, free choice, ESP, mystical experience—a consciousness that dares to create a meaningful and evolving worldview in order to understand its place in the universe.

Perhaps the brain harbors consciousness because it has a quantum system working side by side with the classical one, according to University of Alberta biologist C. Stewart and his collaborators, physicists M. Yumezawa and Y. Takahashi, and a physicist from the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Henry Stapp. In this model, which I adapted for this book (see next section), the mind-brain is viewed as two interacting systems—quantum and classical. A classical system is a computer running programs that, for all practical purposes, obey the deterministic laws of classical physics and can therefore be modeled in algorithmic form. However, a quantum system operates on programs that are only partially algorithmic. The wave function evolves in accordance with the probabilistic laws of new physics – this is an algorithmic, continuous part. There is also a fundamentally non-algorithmizable discreteness of the collapse of the wave function. Only a quantum system exhibits quantum coherence, a nonlocal correlation between its components. In addition, the quantum system is restored, and therefore can deal with the new (since quantum objects remain forever new). The classical system is necessary for the formation of memory, for recording events of collapse and for creating a sense of continuity.

Interesting and thought-provoking ideas and data may continue to accumulate, but the point is simple: there is a growing belief among many physicists that the brain is an interactive system with a quantum mechanical macrostructure as an important addition to the assembly of neurons. Such an idea cannot yet be called generally accepted, but it is not the only exception.

The mind-brain is both a quantum system and a measuring device

Technically, we view the quantum mind-brain system as a macroquantum system consisting of many components that not only interact through local exchanges, but are also correlated in an EPR fashion. How to represent the states of this kind of system?

Imagine two pendulums hanging from a taut string. Or better yet, imagine you and your friend swinging like pendulums. Now you both form a system of conjugate pendulums. If you start to move, but your friend is motionless, then very soon he will also begin to sway – so much that very soon he will take all the energy and you will stop. Then the cycle will repeat. However, something is missing. There is a lack of unity in your actions. To fix this, you can both start swinging at the same time in the same phase. Once you start this way, you will swing together in a motion that would go on forever if there were no friction. The same would be true if you started swinging together in antiphase. These two modes of swinging are called normal modes of a double pendulum. (However, the correlation between you is entirely local; it is made possible by the stretched string that supports your pendulums.)

One can similarly represent the states of a complex system, albeit a quantum one, by its so-called normal excitation modes, its quanta, or, more generally, conglomerates of normal modes. (It’s too early to give these mental quanta names, but at a recent consciousness conference I attended we were playing around with names like psychons, mentons, etc.)

Suppose – what if these normal modes constitute the mental archetypes I mentioned earlier? Jung found that mental archetypes are universal; they are independent of race, history, culture and geographic origin. This fits quite well with the idea that Jung’s archetypes are conglomerates of universal quanta – the so-called normal modes. I will call the states of the quantum brain system consisting of these quanta pure mental states. This formal nomenclature will be useful in the following discussion.

Suppose also that most of the brain is the classical analogue of a measuring instrument that we use to magnify submicroscopic material objects to make them visible. Suppose a classical brain instrument magnifies and records quantum objects of the mind.

This resolves one of the most persistent mysteries of the mind-brain problem—the problem of the identity of mind and brain. Currently, philosophers either postulate the identity of the mind and the brain, without explaining what is identical to what, or try to define one or another type of psychophysical parallelism. For example, in classical functionalism it is impossible to truly establish the relationship between mental states and computer states.

In the quantum model, mental states are states of a quantum system, and when measured, these states become correlated with the states of the measuring device (just as in Schrödinger’s cat paradox, the state of the cat becomes correlated with the state of the radioactive atom). Therefore, in every quantum event, the brain-mind state that collapses and is experienced is a pure mental state measured (amplified and recorded) by the classical brain, from which follows a clear definition of identity and its justification.

Recognizing that much of the brain is a measuring device leads to a new and useful way of thinking about the brain and conscious events. Biologists often argue that consciousness must be an epiphenomenon of the brain because changes in the brain due to trauma or drugs alter conscious events. Yes! – says the quantum theorist – because changing the measuring device certainly changes what it can measure, and therefore changes the event.

The idea that the formal structure of quantum mechanics should be applied to the mind-brain is not new at all and has developed gradually. However, the idea of ​​viewing the brain-mind as a quantum system/measuring device is new, and it is the implications of this hypothesis that I want to explore here.

Materialist-oriented brain researchers will object. Macroscopic objects obey classical laws, albeit approximately. How can a quantum mechanism be applied to the macrostructure of the brain so that it makes enough of a difference?

Those of us who want to explore consciousness will reject this objection. There are some exceptions to the general rule that objects in the macrocosm obey classical physics, even approximately. There are a number of systems that cannot be explained using classical physics even at the macro level. One such system, which we have already discussed, is a superconductor. Another well-known case of a quantum phenomenon at the macro level is the laser.

The laser beam travels to the moon and back while remaining pencil thin because its photons exist in coherent synchronicity. Have you ever seen people dancing without music? They move completely uncoordinated, right? But start tapping the rhythm and they will be able to dance in perfect harmony with each other. The coherence of laser beam photons arises from the rhythm of their quantum mechanical interactions, which operates even at the macro level.

Could it be that the quantum mechanism in our brain, which operates similarly to a laser, is opening up to the guiding influence of non-local consciousness, with the classical parts of the brain acting as a measuring device, amplifying and recording (at least temporarily) quantum events? I’m convinced it can.

Does the type of coherence that the laser demonstrates actually occur between different brain regions during certain mental actions? Some experimental data indicate the existence of such coherence.

Meditation researchers have studied brain waves from different parts of the brain—front and back, right and left—to find out the extent to which they are in phase. Using sophisticated techniques, these researchers showed the presence of coherence in bioelectrical brain wave activity measured in leads from different areas of the scalp of subjects in a state of meditation. Initial reports of spatial coherence in brain waves were subsequently confirmed by other researchers. Moreover, the degree of coherence was found to be directly proportional to the degree of direct awareness reported by meditators.

Spatial coherence is one of the amazing properties of quantum systems. Thus, these coherence experiments perhaps provide direct evidence that the brain acts as a measuring instrument for the normal modes of a quantum system, which we can call the quantum mind.

More recently, experiments with EEG coherence in meditating subjects have been extended to measuring brain wave coherence in two subjects simultaneously, with positive results. This is new evidence of quantum nonlocality. Two people meditate together, or become correlated through vision, and their brain waves exhibit coherence. What else, besides EPR-type correlation, can explain such data?

The most compelling evidence to date in support of the idea of ​​quantum phenomena in the mind-brain is the direct observation of ESR correlations between two brains by Jacobo Greenberg-Silberbaum and his associates (Chapter 8). In this experiment, two subjects interact with each other for some time until they feel that a direct (nonlocal) connection has been established between them. Then the subjects maintain direct contact while in separate shielding chambers (Faraday cages) located at a distance from each other. When one subject’s brain responds to an external stimulus with an evoked potential, the other subject’s brain exhibits a “carryover potential” similar in shape and strength to the evoked potential. This can only be interpreted as an example of quantum nonlocality, due to the quantum nonlocal correlation between two brain-minds established through their nonlocal consciousness.

Don’t worry if a quantum computer seems similar to Eccles’ link brain and thus dualistic. A quantum computer is formed by quantum cooperation between some as yet unknown brain substrates. Unlike the hypothetical connection brain, it is not a localized part of the brain, and its connection to consciousness does not violate the law of conservation of energy. Before the directing influence of consciousness, the brain-mind (like any object) exists as a formless potency in the transcendental realm of consciousness. When non-local consciousness collapses the brain-mind wave function, it is through choice and recognition, not through any energetic process.

What about the fact that the quantum brain is a promising hypothesis, not an observed fact? It is true that the quantum mind-brain is only a hypothesis. However, this hypothesis is based on a strong philosophical and theoretical foundation and is supported by much suggestive experimental evidence. (The circulatory theory was formulated before the final piece of this puzzle, the capillary network, was discovered. Likewise, for mental processes to manifest and circulate in the brain, we need an EPR-correlated quantum network. It must exist.) Moreover, this hypothesis is quite specific in order to enable further theoretical predictions that can be subjected to experimental testing. In addition, because this hypothesis uses the classical (behavioral) limit as a new correspondence principle (discussed in Chapter 13), it is consistent with all the data that the previous theory explains.

All new scientific paradigms begin with hypotheses and theorizing. Philosophy turns into empty promises precisely when it does not help formulate new theories and ways of testing them experimentally, or when it does not want to deal with old experimental data that have not received an adequate explanation (as happened with material realism regarding the problem of consciousness).

The principle of complementarity between living and nonliving may be applicable here – the impossibility of studying life separately from a living organism, which Bohr pointed out. The dual mind-brain as a quantum system/measuring device is characterized by intense interaction, and it is this interaction, as we will see, that is responsible for the emergence of individual and personal self-identity. Apparently, there may also be additionality here. It may be impossible to study the brain’s quantum system in isolation without destroying the conscious experience that is its hallmark.

To summarize: I have proposed a new point of view on the mind-brain as including both a quantum system and a measuring device. Such a system includes consciousness collapsing its wave function, explains cause-and-effect relationships as the result of free choices of consciousness, and assumes creativity as a new beginning, which is what every collapse is. The following is a theoretical framework for understanding how this theory explains the subject-object division of the world and, ultimately, the personal self.

Quantum Dimension in the Brain-Mind: Collaboration of Quantum and Classical

Classical functionalism assumes that the brain is hardware and the mind is software. It would be equally unfounded to say that the brain is classical in nature and the mind is quantum. Instead, in the idealistic model proposed here, experienced mental states arise from the interaction of classical and quantum systems.

Most importantly, the causal efficacy of the quantum mind-brain system comes from a non-local consciousness that collapses the wave function of the mind and experiences the result of this collapse. In idealism, the experiencing subject is non-local and united – there is only one subject of experience. Objects move out of the realm of transcendental possibility into the realm of manifestation when the non-local unified consciousness collapses their wave functions, but we have proven that to complete the dimension, the collapse must occur in the presence of brain-mind awareness. However, in trying to explain the manifestation of the brain-mind and awareness, we find ourselves in a vicious circle of causality: without awareness there is no completion of dimension, but without completion of dimension there is no awareness.

To clearly see both this vicious circle and the way out of it, we can apply the theory of quantum measurement to the brain-mind. According to von Neumann, the state of a quantum system changes in two separate ways. The first of these is continuous change. The state propagates like a wave, becoming a coherent superposition of the states allowed by the situation. Each potential state has a certain statistical weight corresponding to the amplitude of its probability wave. A measurement introduces a second, discrete change to the state. Suddenly the state of superposition – a multifaceted state existing in potency – is reduced to only one actualizable facet. Think of the propagation of a superposition state as the development of a set of possibilities, and of measurement as a process that, through selection (according to the rules of probability), manifests only one state from the set.

Many physicists consider the selection process to be purely random. It was this view that prompted Einstein’s protesting remark that God does not play dice. But if God does not play dice, then who or what selects the outcome of a single quantum measurement? According to the idealistic interpretation, choice is made by consciousness – but a non-local unified consciousness. The intervention of nonlocal consciousness collapses the cloud of probabilities of the quantum system. There is additionality here. In the manifest world the selection process associated with collapse appears to be random, while in the transcendental realm the selection process appears to be choice. As anthropologist Gregory Bateson once noted, “Chance is the opposite of choice.”

In addition, the quantum mind-brain system must evolve over time according to the rules of measurement theory and become a coherent superposition. The classical functional systems of the brain play the role of a measuring device and also become a superposition. Thus, before collapse, the brain-mind state exists as potentialities of many possible patterns, which Heisenberg called tendencies. Collapse actualizes one of these tendencies, which, once the measurement is complete, leads to conscious experience (with awareness). The important thing is that the result of the measurement represents a discrete event in space-time.

According to the idealistic interpretation, the outcome of the collapse of any and all quantum systems is chosen by consciousness. This also applies to the quantum system we have postulated in the mind-brain. Thus, speaking about the interacting classical/quantum mind-brain system in the language of measurement theory, interpreted from the position of monistic idealism, we come to the following conclusion: our consciousness chooses the outcome of the collapse of the quantum state of our brain. Because this outcome is a conscious experience, we choose our conscious experience—but we are not aware of the process underlying that choice. It is this unconsciousness that leads to illusory separateness—identification with the separate “I” of self-reference (rather than with the “we” of the unified consciousness). The illusion of separateness occurs in two stages, but the underlying mechanism associated with it is called complex hierarchy . This mechanism is discussed in the next chapter.

The book “The Self-Aware Universe. How consciousness creates the material world.” Amit Goswami

Contents

PREFACE
PART I. The Union of Science and Spirituality
CHAPTER 1. THE CHAPTER AND THE BRIDGE
CHAPTER 2. OLD PHYSICS AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL HERITAGE
CHAPTER 3. QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE DEATH OF MATERIAL REALISM
CHAPTER 4. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MONISTIC IDEALISM
PART II. IDEALISM AND THE RESOLUTION OF QUANTUM PARADOXES
CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS IN TWO PLACES AT THE SAME TIME AND EFFECTS THAT PRECEDE THEIR CAUSES
CHAPTER 6. THE NINE LIVES OF SCHRODINGER’S CAT
CHAPTER 7. I CHOOSE WITH THEREFORE, I AM
CHAPTER 8. THE EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN PARADOX
CHAPTER 9. RECONCILIATION OF REALISM AND IDEALISM
PART III. SELF-REFERENCE: HOW ONE BECOMES MANY
CHAPTER 10. EXPLORING THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
CHAPTER 11. IN SEARCH OF THE QUANTUM MIND
CHAPTER 12. PARADOXES AND COMPLEX HIERARCHIES
CHAPTER 13. “I” OF CONSCIOUSNESS
CHAPTER 14. UNIFICATION OF PSYCHOLOGIES
PART IV . RETURN OF CHARM
CHAPTER 15. WAR AND PEACE
CHAPTER 16. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CREATIVITY
CHAPTER 17. THE AWAKENING OF BUDDHA
CHAPTER 18. IDEALISMAL THEORY OF ETHICS
CHAPTER 19. SPIRITUAL JOY
GLOBAR OF TERMS