“Science and the Akashic Field” – book report

2007-01-25

Richard Moore

"Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything", 
Ervin Laszlo, Inner Traditions, Vermont, 2004.

On Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Science-Akashic-Field-Integral-Everything/dp/1594770425/sr=1-1/qid=1169721697/

______________

In my mind, the classic paradigm of science was the confrontation 
between Galileo and the Bishop. Galileo said, "Look through the 
telescope and you will see the moons of Jupiter." The Bishop refused 
to look and said that he knew there were no moons because that's what 
can be concluded from scripture. This scenario is often characterized 
as a confrontation between science and religion. I see it rather as a 
confrontation between observation and theory. True science is about 
respecting observation above theory. For that reason, I see as many 
(or more) Bishops than Galileos in the 'scientific community' and 
among 'informed citizens'.

One sign of a Bishop is an over-emphasis on 'reliable sources'. I get 
so annoyed at readers who respond to postings with, "What are you 
posting that for? Haven't you seen some of outrageous things on their 
website?" I don't care whether or not Galileo has silly beliefs in 
some areas, or hangs out with shady characters -- I care about what 
he can teach me about Jupiter. Please spare me ad hominem responses! 
Refusing to look at sources because they're not kosher is what 
Bishops do.

As it turns out, the author of "Science and the Akashic Field" has 
very strong science-establishment credentials, and bases his book on 
hard-science results, well referenced. Nonetheless, I expect there 
will be some Bishops in the audience, as the observations he reports 
will contradict their theories / belief structures.

Lazlo reports on some very important findings in quantum theory, 
cosmology, biology, and consciousness. All of these challenge the 
belief system of today's dominant form of fundamentalism: materialism.

Let's start with quantum theory, because in that area what he reports 
is mostly mainstream. Scientists generally acknowledge that quantum 
theory is in a state of confusion. There is no consensus answer to 
what has been observed. Information is being communicated at 
faster-than-light speeds, for example, and there is no agreement on 
how that could happen. Some scientists offer mathematical formulas 
that match much of the phenomena, but that is not an explanation. 
It's just a mathematical description of the problem.

Lazlo, and some others, observe that the simplest explanation for 
such quantum phenomenon is to assume the existence of something very 
much like what used to be called the 'ether'. Some all-pervasive 
'field' or 'medium' that occupies all of space, something much finer 
grained than quantum particles, and something that conveys waves much 
faster than light. The ether was abandoned many decades ago, because 
experiments showed there was no 'etherial friction'. But now we know 
about super-conductivity, which shows the total absence of friction 
under certain circumstances. Hence those classic experiments were not 
conclusive after all.

Lazlo calls this hypothetical field the 'A-field', or the 'quantum 
vacuum field', or the 'Akashic field', in honor of the Sanskrit name 
for the same thing. In this as in many other areas, we seem to be 
finally rediscovering the wisdom of the ancients.

Cosmology is also in a state of confusion. Even assuming the maximum 
possible amount of 'dark matter' -- to pick just one area of 
confusion -- there is still not enough gravity to hold the universe 
together. There must be forces we don't know about, conveyed by some 
medium we don't know about, to explain the universe we observe. Once 
again, Lazlo demonstrates that an Akashic field could provide an 
'Occum's razor' basis on which to explain the observed anomalies. I'm 
not trying to give here the details of his arguments, but to outline 
the scope of his investigation, and hint at the kind of observations 
he is working from.

The Akashic field, according to Lazlo's reasoning, is ultra-dense, 
ultra-energetic, frictionless, and carries waves at several billion 
times the speed of light. Tesla was hot on the trail of tapping 
a-field energy, and finally scientists and engineers are again 
pursuing his long-suppressed work.

So far, most readers are probably not having much trouble with this 
material. I haven't asked you to look at any disturbing moons yet. 
It's been about physics, which most people don't try to understand 
anyway, and so there's no significant conflict with belief system... 
unless one is a fundamentalist about relativity, or the 
impossibility of 'perpetual motion' (zero point energy).  But things 
may get more disturbing as we get into biology and evolution...

Let's start with 'rate of information transfer' in biological 
systems. Observations show that organisms (including humans) respond 
with a whole-body coherence that exceeds the speed of nerve 
transmissions, let alone hormone diffusion. It appears that every 
cell is instantaneously 'in touch' with the state-of-the-whole, and 
responds to events even before nerve signals get the news out. Cells 
seem to interact at the quantum level as well as at the biochemical 
level. Each cell seems to be 'conscious and intelligent'. Again, the 
a-field provides a basis for explanation.

Now here's a disturbing moon: natural selection, based on random 
genetic variations, simply fails as an explanation for evolution. 
Entirely new major species appear too quickly  (10,000 years in some 
cases) for randomness to be enough.  There must be some connection 
between a living organism and its genetic machinery, something that 
in some way informs DNA in an intelligent way. And in fact 
experiments have been carried out, with tiny organisms, where a 
created environment results in genetic adaptations within a 
generation or two. I'm not talking about a 'range of mutations', in 
which some turn out to be adaptive, but about isolated genetic 
adaptations, related specifically to the environmental conditions. 
With just a tiny bit of 'intelligent help' at the DNA level, the 
observed rates of evolution begin to make statistical sense.

It turns out that some of the arguments put forth by creationists 
actually do make sense, even if they are motivated by dubious 
mythology. There are many examples of evolutionary developments where 
none of the intermediate stages are adaptive, but the final result 
is. People like Dawkins try to explain this kind of thing away, but 
their explanations are a long ways from Occum's razor, more like 
Occum's axe. The evidence for a 'design' influence is strong, but 
there is no reason to assume a Grand Designer in the Sky. We need 
only assume, Lazlo argues, a quantum-level a-field, which carries 
information everywhere instantly, and with which cells (including 
those related to DNA sequencing) can interact in intelligent ways 
that we don't yet understand.

The subject of consciousness also brings in disturbing moons. The 
experiments here have been repeated all over the world, time and time 
again, under the strictest scientific constraints, in respected 
research institutions. Telepathy is real. Consciousness and memory 
formation in the absence of all electrical brain activity is real. It 
can still be the case that there's lots of fakery and suggestibility 
involved in 'psychic circles', but the fact remains -- if you believe 
in science -- that these phenomena really happen as well. 
Consciousness, Lazlo argues, seems to be a phenomenon that happens in 
the a-field, below the level of neurons. The brain is a tool of 
consciousness, but does not provide the basic mechanism of 
consciousness. By means information carried by waves in the a-field, 
resonance can occur between minds (consciousnesses), over long 
distances and instantly, particularly when the people have strong 
emotional connections (ie, they're on a similar 'frequency').

The ability to tap into this a-field resonance seems to be something 
that occurs relatively frequently, except in cultures where people 
have been conditioned to filter it out. Lazlo reports a case, which 
he says is typical, where someone from an indigenous culture sits up 
in bed, says with total certainty "my father just died", and gets up 
immediately to make his travel preparations for home, where it turns 
out his father has indeed just died. And by setting up suitable 
conditions, not even involving anything so strong as psychedelics or 
hypnosis, most people are able to 'tune in' to remote resonance.

In all of these areas, these latest scientific observations echo the 
'wisdom of the ancients', what has been reported by sages, and what 
some indigenous cultures have always believed. With the a-field, 
statements which seemed like conundrums begin to make some kind of 
sense: 'Consciousness is in all things', 'we are all connected', 'the 
universe is intelligent', etc.

Let me now be a bit more specific about Lazlo's model of this 
'a-field'. His presentation of scientific 'anomalies', and 'new 
observations' are solid. And his assumption of an a-field seems to be 
inescapable. But his specific model of the a-field can only be 
speculative, an 'early hypothesis' in an expanding field of research.

As a metaphor he talks about the wakes left by ships in the sea. If 
the water is very calm, and you're looking from an airplane, you can 
see the wakes for miles behind a ship. You can see interference 
patterns among wakes of different ships. If the sea is really calm, 
and you can sufficiently examine a small patch of interfering wakes, 
you can calculate the sizes, speeds, and directions of the various 
ships that contributed to the interference pattern.  The 
'interference patch' acts as a kind of hologram, containing within 
itself 'information about the whole'. This is, by the way, how 
holograms work: they are interference patterns of light waves, where 
each patch is about 'the whole'.

In the ocean these wake-waves travel slowly, and are eventually 
damped out by friction, even if the oceans could be totally absent of 
other disturbances. In the frictionless a-field, however, the 'wakes 
of events' would last forever, and spread everywhere almost 
instantly. At each point in space, the a-field contains a 'hologram' 
of all events everywhere, past and present. That's the essence of 
Lazlo's model.

It's an appealing model, and I imagine this hologram-effect could be 
part of the truth. It addresses the universal availability of 
information, but it doesn't really address consciousness itself. It 
tells us  how we can know things at a distance, but it doesn't tells 
us what knowing is.

I'd like now to turn to a less famous investigator in this same 
field, someone whose basic line of investigation is the same as 
Lazlo's, but who doesn't have the track record to get his stuff 
widely published or seen in scientific circles. He also sees the need 
for an a-field (which he calls something else) and his reasoning and 
evidence are very much the same as Lazlo's. But his model is a richer 
one, and explains much more. Not only does it have an explanation for 
consciousness, but it presents a simple mechanism for how an a-field 
might have come into existence.

This researchers name is Ronald D. Pearson, and I posted his theory 
last summer:
         22 Aug 2006   CONSCIOUSNESS AS A SUB-QUANTUM PHENOMENON
            http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/?id=1594&lists=newslog

I didn't spend much time trying to defend or promote Pearson's model 
to you at the time, because I figured I'd be a Galileo among an 
aroused posse of Bishops, unnecessarily damaging my credibility, such 
as it is. Not only is Pearson's model 'way outside the box', but I 
could only find his material on the Internet (the presumed land of 
nutters and conspiracy theories). It would be too easy for everyone 
to dismiss. I posted it for the few who might appreciate it, and left 
it with little comment.

Lazlo's book, however, is more difficult to dismiss. He's done 
everything right from an academic point of view, he's got very 
impressive credentials, and his book has loads of commendations from 
respected big names. I'm assuming only a small posse of Bishops will 
rise up against Lazlo, and I'd like to build on that.

The only difference between Lazlo's theory and Pearson's, is in their 
speculations about the detailed nature of the a-field. It seems to me 
that in a very real sense Pearson deserves to 'inherit' whatever 
credibility Lazlo has, and that we should be able to judge for 
ourselves the merits of the two models.

Pearson starts with a simple sub-quantum model. He assumes two kinds 
of particles (much smaller  than the quantum level or strings). A 
'positive' particle accelerates things in the direction they are 
going, and a 'negative' particle slows things down. When these 
particles collide, depending on the angle and directness of impact, 
sometimes they annihilate one another and sometimes they give birth 
to yet another particle, and the collisions generate energy at the 
level of the a-field.

A set of  assumptions like this might seem arbitrary, but it's no 
more  arbitrary than string theory, to pick just one example. That's 
what physicists do, they build their models by dreaming up mechanisms 
that would lead to observed results. No one's ever seen a 'string', 
but if strings existed they would explain some of the anomalies in 
quantum physics. That's the only reason people believe in string 
theory -- because it works (to a limited extent). Pearson's mechanism 
is worth looking at for exactly the same reasons, and it is much 
simpler and more explanatory than most such models.

By considering how these particles would interact over time, Pearson 
concludes that they would naturally cluster themselves into 
neural-net formations. Neural-net formations are how the brain is 
structured, they are the 'architecture' of natural information 
processing, of thinking. Computers, although very fast, are primitive 
by comparison. Neural nets act in parallel and in a distributed 
fashion, every cell in essence a 'processor' in its own right. And 
they grow new connections as they operate, like a computer that could 
keep changing its wiring so as to compute better.

Pearson's model of the a-field arises from the assumed  behavior of 
these two simple particle types. The a-field is the fundamental 
reality of the universe, and it is made up of local neural nets 
(locally intelligent clusters of particles) connected by 
information-carrying filaments of particles. These filaments are not 
themselves intelligent, they are 'neutral' carriers of information 
between clusters.

Now let's compare Lazlo's and Pearson's models. Both provide a medium 
than can transmit information super-quickly, a mechanism for 
long-distance resonance, and an explanation for a 'holographic' 
distribution of information in the universe. Lazlo's idea about 
interference patterns is not I think mentioned in Pearson's work, and 
I would count that as a valuable addition, as a mechanism of compact 
information storage. But in every other way I see Pearson's work as a 
major advance on Lazlo's. Lazlo makes the case for 'an' a-field of 
some kind, with waves and resonance, but Pearson goes on to provide a 
mechanism for those phenomena, and for others that Lazlo dismisses.

In Pearson's model consciousness exists only in the a-field. Your 
consciousness and mine is a property of the a-field which co-exists 
in the same space  as our bodies and brains. It is the combined 
activity of the billions of neural clusters that exist in that space. 
The brain is the sense organ that, among other things, filters and 
categorizes incoming signals from the gross physical world and makes 
that information available to our consciousness.

But why does the a-field need the brain? If the a-field is 
universally connected and intelligent, our local clusters could get 
any information they need quicker through the a-field than through 
the relatively slow and clumsy brain. Here's where Pearson's model 
gets really interesting. Pearson sees the physical world as something 
that was consciously created by, is consciously maintained by, and is 
energized by the intelligent intention of the a-field. There is a 
Creator and it is the universe, one might say, the real universe 
being the a-field itself.

The mystics of the East, who claim to speak from special experience 
and not from theory, have always said that this world is an illusion, 
and that there is a real world apart from the material world, that is 
all pervasive and all conscious. Pearson gives us a non-mysterious 
way to 'hold' such concepts. Or at least the mystery is pushed back 
several levels: where did these two kinds of particles come from? 
(Let's leave that for another day.)

The physical universe, then, is a simulation, a bit like in The 
Matrix, or the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. When local 
consciousness takes up attachment to an organism, part of the game is 
that it is intentionally cut-off, to one degree or another, from the 
larger a-field universal consciousness. In living a life on this 
plane, we are 'taking a trip', 'having an experience', in the 
simulation. We (that is our consciousnesses) are temporarily, and 
presumably voluntarily, being confined to the Holodeck of the 
Starship Enterprise!

I recently read Jung's, "Memories,Dreams, and Reflections". Jung 
talks about consciousness as being apart from the body, and surviving 
death. He goes on to suggest that we come into this world to learn 
things that cannot be learned by the a-field (what he calls the 
'universal consciousness') directly. It's sort of like the a-field 
doesn't have much of a 'left brain'. It can know everything, but it 
can't do much in the way of linear reasoning. Something vaguely like 
that. He suggests, and it seems to be based on his experiences rather 
than his theorizing, that when we die we 'report back' and 'debrief' 
to our 'friend consciousnesses.' What did we learn on this plane?

Personally, I am drawn to the idea that our 'trip' on this plane has 
an element of fun to it, adventure, challenge, and  even 
entertainment. Just as we like to descend into a DVD, and 
'experience' the drama, excitement, and catharsis of a staged story, 
so our 'consciousness' likes to have experiences, rather than just 
sit there in the universe knowing everything without adventure or 
constraints.

         Row, row, row your boat
         gently down the stream.
         Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
         life is but a dream.

cheers,
richard
-- 

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