CosMos: A Co-creator's Guide to the Whole World

by Ervin Laszlo, Ph.D. Jude Currivan

We stand at the threshold of a revolutionary and empowering new vision of the world. The discoveries of leading-edge science and the insights of spirituality are converging to reveal that the CosMos and all that we term reality is wholly integrated, and that at its most fundamental level, it is a field of information. This is the elemental cosmic mind from which everything emanates, is manifested, and to which all ultimately returns. Research is also demonstrating what the mystics of all traditions have that we have the innate ability to envision, understand, and experience the CosMos at levels far beyond the limitations of our human persona. CosMos is co-authored by two explorers who combine almost a century of seeking to understand not only how the world is as it is, but why. Philosopher Ervin Laszlo, Ph.D., and healer and scientist Jude Currivan, Ph.D., offer a revisioned view of the world that is no longer fragmented, but is at last, whole. Theirs is a perception of a meaningful and co-creative world that is exquisitely tuned to be “as simple as it can be” for consciousness to explore itself. In these momentous times, the vision shared in Cosmos invites us to open our hearts and minds to re-member who we really are and to take our places as conscious co-creators of our realities and of our evolving cosmic destiny.

Genres: Philosophy, Science

239 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2008

About the author

Ervin Laszlo is a systems philosopher, integral theorist, and classical pianist. Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, he has authored more than 70 books, which have been translated into nineteen languages, and has published in excess of four hundred articles and research papers, including six volumes of piano recordings.

Dr. Laszlo is generally recognized as the founder of systems philosophy and general evolution theory, and serves as the founder-director of the General Evolution Research Group and as past president of the International Society for the Systems Sciences. He is also the recipient of the highest degree in philosophy and human sciences from the Sorbonne, the University of Paris, as well as of the coveted Artist Diploma of the Franz Liszt Academy of Budapest. Additional prizes and awards include four honorary doctorates.

His appointments have included research grants at Yale and Princeton Universities, professorships for philosophy, systems sciences, and future sciences at the Universities of Houston, Portland State, and Indiana, as well as Northwestern University and the State University of New York. His career also included guest professorships at various universities in Europe and the Far East. In addition, he worked as program director for the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). In 1999 he was was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Canadian International Institute of Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics.

For many years he has served as president of the Club of Budapest, which he founded. He is an advisor to the UNESCO Director General, ambassador of the International Delphic Council, member of both the International Academy of Science, World Academy of Arts and Science, and the International Academy of Philosophy.

Reviews

[Julian Hadlow · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is sub-titled: "A Co-creator's Guide to the Whole-World."

Essentially, the title says it all. It explores how we can act as co-creators with the Creator, and help move humanity forward.

It is written in a very clear manner, and well worth reading.

[Guy Sandison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some intriguing, if fringe ideas. The first half is largely based in sound if tangential science, but then moves into a new take on the Gaia hypothesis, and turns into a self help book in the last two chapters.

[Graham Bear · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative , well written book.

[John J · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit too heavy on metaphysics and social science

I was hoping CosMos would concentrate on physics, and it does -- in the beginning. But toward the end it really delves quite heavily into metaphysics and social science. Maybe this was unavoidable for a book of this type, but I found the last two chapters very depressing: It seems we're either inevitably heading toward a total economic, societal and ecological collapse or we will experience a consciousness shift that will save us from extinction. But look around. Does it really seem like the majority of humans are evolving into a higher mental plane? Or is it more likely that the human race is devolving into kind of people depicted in the movie "Idiocracy"?

The beginning of CosMos was actually quite good and it explores some fairly cutting-edge science. It shows that physical reality -- space, time, matter and energy -- are comprised of information and that consciousness forms the bedrock of reality. It correctly identifies entropy and information as being one and the same thing. So many popular science books present a very confused and erroneous treatment of entropy. CosMos points out that Boltzmann's equation for entropy is identical to Shannons equation for information -- information equals entropy divided by Boltzmann's constant.

CosMos touches on the fractal nature of space and time with a very brief discussion of Laurent Nottale's work on scale relativity. I wish the authors would have spent much more time on this, because I believe this could hold the key for unifying GR and quantum physics.

There is a fairly comprehensive treatment of cellular biology and evidence of psi phenomenon. I think the authors could have expanded this into a hypothetical explanation of consciousness, but they stopped short of doing that.

I found a few minor inaccuracies here and there, but nothing worth mentioning in this review. There was one very irritating thing about the Kindle version of this book: Words were broken up quite frequently, which made the book difficult to read. For example, a word like "fortunate" would appear with a space in the middle like this: "fort unate". This didn't happen only a few times, but several times on every page.

The part I found most objectionable was the one on "harmonizing" with the environment, including physical alignments with planets and the center of the galaxy. These alignments supposedly have something to do with astrology and the "Shift" that occurred in December, 2012 when the Sun aligned with the Earth's orbit and center of our galaxy. Fine, but at least provide some hypothetical rationale why that alignment should matter.

I gave CosMos a rather mixed review because parts of it were scientifically spot on while the later parts incorporated a New Age belief system with very little to back it up. Appeals to ancient religious beliefs, such as shamanism, are worthless in my opinion.

The final chapters that delved into social patterns were worthwhile from the standpoint that they served as a warning that humanity is standing on the precipice of destruction and we had better get or act together -- and soon. But I'm not convinced that we're getting closer to a shift in consciousness where we become enlightened; in fact, it seems we're pretty much heading in the opposite direction.

I'd give CosMos a partial thumbs up, but I recommend reading only the first half carefully and skim the second half.

https://sites.google.com/site/amateur...

[M.v · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this book for the fact that it used studies and research of other different cultures and scientific theories to back up the theme: to be more aware and to use one's mind more. However, there were some instances that I felt it didn't cover as much as it should have on certain topics like holographics, the Akashic mind and studies done on the electromagnetic wave connection between the human species and planet Earth. I think at some point it felt like there was more generalization than facts. At the end I realized I like this book because it inspired me to find out more about certain subjects, that before it, I didn't know about. I would say I would recommend this book to beginners or people curious about the cosmos and our connection to the world but I wouldn't use this as the basis of facts backing up a debate.

[Benzion Weiss]

That we are all in this together for better or for worse!