Goswami’s Self-Aware Universe

Quantum physicist Amit Goswami proposes that consciousness, not matter, is the primary “stuff” of creation, and indeed it is consciousness that creates the material world, not the other way around. He uses quantum physics, particularly the Copenhagen interpretation (where an “observer” is required for the collapse of the wave function), to disabuse us of the false notion that matter is simple, solid and foundational. Consciousness, he says, “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” (Goswami, 1993; Woronko, 2020).

Goswami sees Idealism as not only the most parsimonious theory of consciousness but also mitigating and perhaps solving the famous paradoxes of quantum mechanics, such as entanglement, superposition and non-locality.

The key, Goswami offers, is that there is only one consciousness in the universe, one subject of experience, in which we all (somehow) participate. The ego, he says “is constricted consciousness, much like a localized object. You cannot understand consciousness without experiencing expanded states of consciousness.”

Consciousness, according to Goswami, plays an active role in constructing physical reality by “choosing” the results of a measurement. He views our mental activities, our thoughts and feelings, as “mental objects” in a sense similar to material objects, subject to the same laws of physics, particularly quantum mechanics. Thus, Goswami envisions the brain, not simply as a passive measuring device that intervenes in the quantum world, but more significantly as an active quantum system that selects and determines which unconscious processes become conscious. Goswami concludes that all creation is interconnected, including us (Goswami, 1993).