The Self-Aware Universe Quotes

“the fundamental process of Nature lies outside space-time but generates events that can be located in space-time.”
― Amit Goswami, The Self-Aware Universe

“Naturally we project that the moon is always there in space-time, even when we are not looking. Quantum physics says no. When we are not looking, the moon’s possibility wave spreads, albeit by a minuscule amount. When we look, the wave collapses instantly; thus the wave could not be in space-time. It makes more sense to adapt an idealist metaphysic assumption: There is no object in space-time without a conscious subject looking at it.”
― Amit Goswami, The Self-Aware Universe

“Once we accept quantum nonlocality as an established physical aspect of the world in which we live, it becomes easier within science to conceive of a transcendent domain outside the manifest physical domain of space-time.”
― Amit Goswami, The Self-Aware Universe

“Consciousness is the agency that collapses the wave of a quantum object, which exists in potentia, making it an immanent particle in the world of manifestation.”
― Amit Goswami, The Self-Aware Universe

“The world is not determined by initial conditions, once and for all. Every event of measurement is potentially creative and may open new possibilities.”
― Amit Goswami, The Self-Aware Universe

“There was once a Cossack who saw a rabbi walking through the town square nearly every day at about the same time. One day he asked curiously: “Where are you going, rabbi?” The rabbi answered: “I am not sure.” “You pass this way every day at this time. Surely, you know where you’re going.” When the rabbi insisted that he did not know, the Cossack became irritated, then suspicious, and finally took the rabbi to jail. Just as he was locking the cell, the rabbi faced him and said gently: “You see, I didn’t know.” Before the Cossack interrupted him, the rabbi knew where he was going, but afterward, he no longer knew. The interruption (we can call it a measurement) offered new possibilities. This is the message of quantum mechanics. The world is not determined by initial conditions, once and for all. Every event of measurement is potentially creative and may open new possibilities.”
― Amit Goswami, The Self-Aware Universe

“With nonlocal connection, we are forced to conceptualize a domain of reality outside space-time because a nonlocal connection cannot happen in space-time.”
― Amit Goswami, The Self-Aware Universe

“Moreover, it seems absurd that an epiphenomenon of matter can affect matter: If consciousness is an epiphenomenon, how can it collapse the spread-out wave of a quantum object to a localized particle when it takes a quantum measurement?”
― Amit Goswami, The Self-Aware Universe

“Quantum physics presents a new and exciting worldview that challenges old concepts, such as deterministic trajectories of motion and causal continuity. If initial conditions do not forever determine an object’s motion, if instead, every time we observe, there is a new beginning, then the world is creative at the base level.”
― Amit Goswami, The Self-Aware Universe

“Why, then, in our ordinary experience do we feel so separate? This separateness, insists the mystic, is an illusion.”
― Amit Goswami, The Self-Aware Universe

“THE ANTITHESIS OF MATERIAL REALISM is monistic idealism. In this philosophy, consciousness, not matter, is fundamental. Both the world of matter and the world of mental phenomena, such as thought, are determined by consciousness.”
― Amit Goswami, The Self-Aware Universe