The Spiritual Universe: How Quantum Physics Proves the Existence of the Soul

by Fred Alan Wolf

Taking the reader on a fascinating tour of both Western and Eastern thought, Wolf explains the differing views of the soul in the works of Plato, Aristotle, and St. Thomas; the ancient Egyptians' belief in the nine forms of the soul, the Qabalistic idea of the soul acting in secret to bring spiritual order to a chaotic universe of matter and energy, and the Buddhist vision of a "nonsoul." And Wolf mounts a defense of the soul against its modern critics who see the soul as nothing but the body or even as a computer.
Based on his sophisticated knowledge of contemporary physics as well as ancient philosophy and religion. Wolf uses his skill at popularizing difficult scientific research to explain how the key to the soul can be found in the deep connection between observer and observed. This interaction, at the quantum level, helps explain how the soul connects to what we understand as matter. The soul, Wolf says, must also be understood as a process, not as an entity opposed to matter.
Filled with provocative insights into the most profound questions of spirituality and the most difficult problems at the edge of science, The Spiritual Universe is a fascinating exploration of the realm where religion and philosophy, science and spirituality intersect.

Genres: Science, Spirituality, Philosophy, Physics, Metaphysics, Nonfiction

368 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Marc]

Tough read, concept wise, considering I'm not a physicist but great information, some real world applications for ethereal concepts. Loved it, definitely was not the same person I was at the beginning of the book as I ended up after reading it. :)

[Oruç]

Hi guys, I think this book about the common spirit of everyone which emerges through the feeling of affection felt by each other. It is good book

[Casey Carr]

Great book but an extremely hard read for me, took me forever I found myself often having to reread full chapters. The physics boggles your mind but the material can be pretty textbookish. Not that that is bad but I needed a guide for dummies. Would highly recommend this for anyone with a background in physics, and for lay folk who have the desire, patience and a good chunk of time

[Alex Lee]

A physicist tries to find a soul. His beginning is fairly weak; trying to decide what a soul is through a light history of thought. However he quickly dives into quantum mechanics trying to find congruence for the possibility of a thing like a soul existing and a matching physical expression. What he ends up with is a transcendental space expressed mathematically and quantumly. It's this arrangement of the non-null nothingness that is inherent in empty space that allows Wolf to draw a conclusion of a larger system arranged via formalisms. Nothing, vibrations of nothing, energy, matter.

It's interesting to see that Wolf hits upon souls by progressing through the possibility of a deeper reality: knowledge. Once he has knowledge from Plato's myth of the cave, he talks about illusion (bad knowledge). Which means knowing (who knows! We do.) Having made this distinction of knowledge, illusion and self, Wolf grounds the soul in the self as agency. The greatest agency was the big bang. After the big bang everything was possible. This possibility of everything is the "space" for nothingness; allowing Wolf to ground the soul as nothingness itself! What Lacan might call "petit object a". Zizek too would draw this point of the little "a" as pure nothing -- when we look at the petit object a we can see everything (the truth of ourselves). Having made the soul the very thing of space itself, Wolf projects backwards in a fairly standard transcendental view building up the entire space of God (the one who knows), Devil (the one who doesn't know but desires). He ends with a Buddhist notion of self in relation to experience to dispell our everyday-sense of self to get to the true self -- the zero ground of awareness that is I and everyone else.

Having, in this sense, proven God to prove I (and soul), or vis versa, Wolf really only in/((re)des)cribes the transcendental back again, and makes awareness of this singular awareness the moral imperative in a Buddhist sense... which requires dissolving slightly, the "reality" of civilization and its judgements about who we are should and who we really are. Wolf, like Buddha, shuffles the distortion of who we are as latent content gathered by people organizing. To organize people must come to believe that truth exists (and thus reward those who "know" truth and exclude those who "distort" truth -- creating and justifying power and greed). To put it in Christian terms, the apple is believing in the promise of the devil.

Having gone this far however, Wolf does not connect the last dot. He ends being satisfied that the self exists, which means God/the transcendental exists. He does not reconnect the start with the end. The presence of a soul is part of the promise of knowledge. Once we distinguish something as being actual, we make a judgement about the possibility of knowledge. This we mistake for knowledge, and start to create all the suffering inherent in the belief that knowing is 100% true. The reality of the very thing that proclaims that we exist as an ontological kernel of the universe is the cause of all suffering and greed.

In effect, Wolf discovered the reality that knowing engenders is the cause of all suffering and inequality and yet, Wolf rests pleased that he found the truth of us, and that knowing the truth would set us free is what would set us free.

Wolf has, in effect, led us to the context of finishing his dichotomy. He has failed to go to the limit; and that is to see that creating/showing the dichotomy is the very thing that is teleological and that knowledge (and un-knowledge) is the very thing that cannot be truly known or unknown.

In a way, Wolf has only used Quantum Mechanics to justify knowledge, as a congruency of "finding" the soul somewhere even if its nothing can match the description of religious texts talking about the soul as nothing. And that matching is kind of boring, and expected. Even if his attempt to go that extra distance and find religion again in a science world, is hella ambigious.

[Sherry]

Another great book from the mind of Fred Alan Wolfe. This I grabbed as soon as it came out. His vision of spirit, Soul, Matter, and Self made great sense to me and resonated with my own. His analysis is articulate and deep.

[Andrine Morse]

Loved it way back then. I plant o re-read soon.

[Kane Mason]

A brilliant read for people interested in mystical spirituality and what science suggests is possible when it comes to the soul and God.

[Steven H]

A PHYSICIST ATTEMPTS TO ADDRESS THE MYSTERY OF MORTALITY, AND MORE

Fred Alan Wolf (born 1934) is an American theoretical physicist (and former physics professor at San Diego State University) specializing in quantum physics and the relationship between physics and consciousness. He has helped popularize science on the Discovery Channel, and has produced a number of audio and video presentations.

The introductory section of this 1996 book explains, “What do we mean by the soul? This word… remains a mystery when we attempt to define it. Solving this mystery is the goal of this book! However, while few of us doubt that we live in a physical universe, we rarely stop to think we also live in a spiritual universe. How does spirit exist in this universe?… Is it the same as the soul? Can science help to define spirit and soul? To answer these questions and many more … we need to go back in time and set a foundation for inquiry… We look at many soulful questions as we ponder our spiritual existence… So let us see how we came to consider the biggest mystery facing all of us---the mortality of individual life and the survival of something so mysterious and yet so much felt by each of us.”

He asks, “How should I, as a scientist, look for a scientific proof of the soul? My physics knowledge is both a gift and a curse insofar as it is needed to define the spiritual universe and its agent, the soul. The gift is that I see, OBJECTIVELY, how much of the physical universe works. That perspective gives me a certain peace of mind in knowing that the universe is not an accident and that human life is meaningful and purposeful. The curse is that when it comes to seeing essential matters of the heart, SUBJECTIVELY, I often see nothing. My scientific mind habitually takes over, and I become skeptical and unfeeling. But my path in this life is through the mind and my intuition. So I have to work to gain subjective spiritual insight that is heartfelt as much as most nonscientists may have to work to gain objective scientific knowledge.” (Pg. 23)

He states, “What do I mean by spiritual evidence? The soul is often referred to as the spiritual part of a human being, distinct from the physical. As a spiritual part, it is often believed to survive death. From a moral aspect, a soul can be either good or evil. Consequently, the soul is subject to happiness or misery not only in its present life, but also in its life to come. It is even possible for the soul to move from death of the body in the present to the past. This latter sentence may throw the reader. We might think the soul moves through time toward the future. But to the past?… However, considering that the soul is ethereal one might conclude that it could move faster than light… If the soul is not material, it would certainly be able to do that, for what would slow it down?… accounting for the modern theory of special relativity that predicts faster-than-light objects moving backward as well as forward through time, we conclude that the soul, if it is immaterial, should be able to move both ways through time.” (Pg. 37)

He asserts, “All these gods and goddesses arise from the supreme vacuum… [that] seemingly reversed entropy and separated air from moisture and then condensed them into sky and earth… [This view] is not far different from the big bang modal of modern cosmology, wherein … all that exists, spontaneously burst from the vacuum, reversing entropy like crazy. This conception is the clue to our new model of the soul. The home of the soul is not the physical world, it is the vacuum world, the world that is able to be potentially anything.” (Pg. 88-89)

He asks “why write the soul’s instructions in a coded language?… description cannot be complete. It can point to but never replace experience… So the early Bible writers would be in a predicament. How can what can’t be described be conveyed as a teaching? The answer was to base the Bible in an arcane language with hidden meaning that could only be appreciated through work and study. What was the meaning? That the souls acts in a concealed or secret manner on matter always attempting to influence existence by bringing spiritual order into the chaotic universe of matter and energy.” (Pg. 101)

He reports that the Dalai Lama said in an interview when asked about artificial intelligence, “It is very difficult to say that it’s not a living being, that it doesn’t have cognition, even from the Buddhist point of view… I can’t totally rule out the possibility that, if all the external conditions and the karmic action were there, a stream of consciousness might actually enter into a computer… There is a possibility a scientist… would be reborn in a computer… Then this machine which is half-human and half-machine has been reincarnated.” (Pg. 121-122) Wolf comments, “I still think that … His Holiness [is] missing something very important. Mainly myself… Where am I in all of this? … I have a feeling, an intuition, that I have always been here, and that I will always be here...” (Pg. 123)

He states, “I am … concerned with the computer-cold and soulless image proposed by the Dalai Lama. Is this all there is to being a human being? Namely, as put by His Holiness, ‘if all the external conditions and karmic action were there, a stream of consciousness might actually enter into a computer.’ Although the scientist in me is excited by the idea, my sense of sacredness and spirituality certainly is not. If life is somehow not that precious---and it seems not to be if I can find myself existing as a computer program in lifeless technocrystals of sand---then why all the bother?” (Pg. 140)

He notes, “Strangely, the theories of quantum physics, ancient Buddhist teachings, and visions of shamans in the jungles of Peru agree on this point: Addiction is universal to all life forms, and any addictive behavior arises because of the soul’s desire for material form. Consequently, addiction cannot be cured without considering the spiritual dimension in human beings. We need to grasp that desire for material form is the root cause of any and all addictions.” (Pg. 196)

He summarizes, “what I have tried to establish so far is the need for a new vision of the soul as a PROCESS, something that exists beyond the confines of the flesh yet is intimately tied to the body boundaries---a NEW PHYSICS OF THE SOUL, if you like.” (Pg. 262)

He suggests, “When the self talks to the soul, the box expands. In such a moment the self feels release from tension and in self-less communion with God and all sentient life forms in the universe. Buddhists call this Nirvana. Christians call it Faith or Consciousness of God. I call it ‘realized compassion.’” (Pg. 298)

He cautions, “You can also lose your soul at any time by going on automatic addictive pilot and behaving nonconsciously toward everything, including yourself. What happens to a world that behaves this way? What happens to a person who behaves nonconsciously? Since there is no awareness of soul, no responsibility for anything can occur. The world becomes lost in an illusion of uncaring mechanical action and reaction. Since this is an illusion, suffering mounts to unbelievable heights and violence erupts. A soulless person responds in the same way. A soulless world is nearly unthinkable, but the danger of the world becoming this way is always present. So awareness must be brought into the intellectual world of science.” (Pg. 308)

I think this book’s original subtitle (‘How Quantum Physics PROVES the Existence of the Soul’) is at least misleading, or at least was not achieved. But those who like ‘scientific’ speculations may find the book interesting.

[Ali Shahbaz]

As a trained physicist and teaching Physics for more than 15 years, I found the argument pretty ignorant. After Kant, Physics has nothing to do with Metaphysics in the traditional sense. Unless you're willing to define spirituality through your own subjective personal lens (language problem?) and unless you're already into mixing science with spirituality, this book will further try to bring your biases and ignorance of Physics towards your spiritually inspired hypotheses. I didn't enjoy it personally. It appeals to emotions more than reason.

[Michael Struk]

my vó gave me this; it's pretty much your standard science-philosophy book. read this at a time when i was first developing my personal perspectives on the mind-body, and i'm glad i did because i got to see it freshly through the lens of a physicist.

[Gerardo]

Fascinating and excellent!

[jeffrey]

The author spends much of this amalgam of words in an endless overview of historical theories on the nature of the soul, spirit, etc. Though illustrated with nonsensical diagrams and supremely dull, the worst was yet to come. No, the nadir of the book was the attempt to analogize Quantum Mechanics with the concepts of spirit, soul and self. I am not a physicist, so I don't doubt the author's knowledge of physics. But I do question the use of formulae and models to calculate concepts of spirit, soul and self which cannot be measured, proved or disproved. This attempted mashup of science and faith doesn't work at all. To paraphrase Monty Python, skip this incomprehensible 'heap of parrot droppings'.

[Gilles Dumoulin]

D'entrée de jeu j'aime beaucoup cet auteur, pour sa façon enjouée et passionnée d'expliquer la science. La physique quantique nous réserve de belles surprises et Fred Alan Wolf fait le lien entre le spirituel et le scientifique magistralement. Ceci étant dit, j'enlève une étoile pour le fait que certains schémas peuvent être rébarbatifs et un peu ardus à comprendre. Mais somme toute un très bon auteur et un très bon livre.