PBS (KBTC) aired a highly unusual program last night as a feature of their current listener support campaign. Any tube watcher has caught some of their other such programs pitching health, nutrition, folk music, etc.
This documentary featured an East Indian educated, now retired professor from the University of Oregon, Dr. Amit Goswami. Dr. Goswami is a physicist who supports the most popular theory of how life is structured, called Quantum Theory. The theory contends that at the basis of life there is nothing, i.e. no things, just an unmanifest field of possibilities or potentialities. Relative to the human experience, it says that, at our core, we are not our bodies, we not our minds, we are not our memories, we are not our egos, we are not our emotions. At our essence we are unrestricted, unlocalized consciousness, devoid of matter.
As humans, we see the relative world of objects and events and we mistake it for reality. When we use the mind to rationalize that only what we can see is the ultimate reality, we can’t help but fall victim to the results of a false understanding. That is why we often experience life as a struggle and unfulfilling. It is like the gardener who tends to the health of a tree by attending only to the surface values, i.e. the leaves, branches and trunk. Although we can’t see the roots of the tree, the wise gardener knows it’s most valuable to water and fertilize at the level of the roots.
Although Dr. Goswami comes from an evidence backed, scientist’s perspective, he advocates regular contact with that which can’t be seen or measured, the inner state of Being or pure consciousness. By contacting that field which is most fundamental and the ground state from which everything manifests, our thoughts, actions and achievements will be more powerful, successful and fulfilling. At this point, he stole a line from a Sinatra song, “Do, be, do, be, do”. In other words, alternate your doing with being. Find a way to experience Being, and alternate it with your regular thinking and actions. As Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was fond of saying, “Water the root (and then) enjoy the fruit.”
This point of view is controversial and Goswami said many of his fellow Quantum Theory physicists still fall prey to the illusion that reality is that which is perceived through the senses. But who can be blamed? The experience of pure Being or pure consciousness has been elusive. Dr. Goswami does not offer a means of contacting that field of life within.
If you are interested in pursuing this subject, here is a link to Dr. John Hagelin, another Quantum physicist, corroborating the conclusions of Dr. Goswami. He also suggests a way to contact the “Be” within all of us.
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