This section applies the Key Principles to reveal deeper insights into the nature of religious and spiritual beliefs.
This section will also include content from forthcoming books by author Steaphen Pirie. The extracts are generally in the form of question and answer dialogues, some of which will be as follows:
Process-relational theologians integrate implications of a thoroughly interdependent universe into how we live and express our faith.
We are convinced that everything is dynamically interconnected; that everything matters; that everything has an effect. Such insights can be adapted to many faith traditions, but this particular booklet applies them to Christian faith.
New Dimensions interview by Michael Toms with Danah Zohar
Program no. 2508, 1994.
https://programs.newdimensions.org/products/quantum-consciousness-with-danah-zohar
[posted with permission, New Dimensions]
...
Danah: I think we're missing something very critical. We now know that the brain is capable of doing three kinds of thinking. One is logical, rational thinking and serial computers duplicate that very well.
Another is associative thinking, you know linking if I feel hungry I think of an apple, or if I see you I think of a friendly person and in fact of Father Christmas 'cause you look a bit like him. So we associate ideas. Now the new parallel processing computers can do this very well. This is neural network theory and how it's related to parallel processing.
Now Artificial Intelligence and the computer lobbies, say that's all there is to consciousness because that's all they can account for with their machines. But we know in fact from our own intuition and experience, and experience of ourselves, and others, that we can also do creative thinking. Human beings come up with new concepts, come up with new categories, come up with new associations. We're constantly reinventing the scenario.
Now this I put down to quantum processes in the brain and this is something that existing computers cannot duplicate. I leave it open that if we one day invent a quantum computer it might be able to, but our existing serial and parallel computers cannot duplicate creativity, new thinking, new ideas and in fact conscious experience. Computers aren't conscious. They don't have a sense of humor, they don't have the sense of sorrow, and they don't relate the way we do. They can only do what's programmed into them.
Michael: Also, it seems to me that, just as you were talking about coming up with the idea of the book out of your anesthetized state, and coming up with insights through the dream process that somehow our consciousness is not just isolated to the brain. It seems that we're somehow in touch with a larger reality and that certainly would be comparable to ... the quantum model, wouldn't it?
Danah: Well I think this is one of THE most exciting things about the quantum model of consciousness because it actually begins to talk about the sort of origins and the modern nature of consciousness, well beyond the human brain.
Quantum physicists describe something they call the quantum vacuum. The vacuum is very badly named because it isn't empty. It's actually a sea of potential, replete with all possibility.
Quantum physics, as well as a number of other modern sciences, he feels, is demonstrating that the essential unity underlying all of reality is a fact which can be experimentally verified. Because of the enormous implications he sees in this scientific confirmation of the spiritual, Goswami is ardently devoted to explaining his theory to as many people as possible in order to help bring about what he feels is a much needed paradigm shift. He feels that because science is now capable of validating mysticism, much that before required a leap of faith can now be empirically proven and, hence, the materialist paradigm which has dominated scientific and philosophical thought for over two hundred years can finally be called into question.
I'm in the process of moving, and I've decided to give to friends various books that I've enjoyed, but no longer wish to keep.
When reading books that I've purchased I highlight sections for quick future reference, and any books in my library without highlights usually means I didn't find anything of particular interest in the book. So before handing on a few, I've decided those that did grab my interest, to transcribe the highlighted sections, and rather than put in some quote file (which I'll soon forget), I've decided to post here.
By Dr Johanna de Groot, [posted 1 Oct 2008]
[Paper read by author at the meeting held at Killarney Heights of the Sydney Science and Medical Network Group on 15th April 2007. Originally published at the smn.org.au website, and reproduced here with permission ]
[copyright Peter Russell, 2008]
(Chapter contributed to The Re-Enchantment of the Cosmos by Ervin Laszlo)
"The Dynamics of Gender and Life" ebook is now available at https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-dynamics-of-gender-and-life
and at Google books (PDF)
"All in all, a wonderful piece of work, which I earnestly hope will reach a vast multitude of readers."
Frank Juszczyk, PhD
Professor Emeritus of English, Western New Mexico University