The way we think about reality has some built-in fault lines. This is the metaphor that the psychologist, Gus Diserega, uses. I think it fits pretty well. I’ll change his phrasing partly, but what these fault lines amount to are: number one, idealism versus realism.

We construct our constitution, for example. The American constitution is a good example among some ideal lines of what we should be like. But actually we fall prey when we actually behave and make our society to our base level human condition. This sets up a forever divided vision of what we should be like. Should we go on, try to be the ideal, or should we just accept the reality of our base level condition? Potentiality or actuality.

This is another way of putting it. In spiritual tradition, this is called transcendent versus immanent dichotomy, which is fundamental to the way that we see reality. Now, of course, this would not be so serious if it would be confined just in philosophy. What actually happens is that on the basis of realism, when you take it to an extreme, we tend to banish all the ways that we can investigate the ideals, the ways that we usually call archetypes. This leads us to a form of nihilism.

Right now, scientific materialism is a nihilism of sorts, which denies the validity of the archetypes completely. Of course, without archetypes, a society cannot be moral. And signs of immorality is showing up in a variety of cracks that has taken place in the very fabric of our society today. Succinctly speaking, the second one is: archetype or no archetype. That is the question.

The third one, again, quite serious. This is sometimes called secularism. This is the idea specific to the thinking age. This idea was not found in the thousands of years that we have lived as hunters and gatherers, and even garden agricultural societies, where we valued emotions quite a lot.

This secularism arises when we start valuing thinking much more. It’s a crack that occurs beginning with the agricultural societies, and then, becoming wider and wider in later industrial and technological and now high-tech societies. Everything is solvable by reason.

There is no scope for emotions. This is when we put things in this context and start eliminating archetypes in this context. It becomes very serious business because we not only eliminate the negative emotions or suppress, this better word, but we also suppress positive emotions.

A society truly becomes an unliveable society unless, of course, we bring back the archetypes in a backdoor kind of way. This also is happening today with scientific materialism. We have brought back the archetypes with the philosophy of humanism.

Archetypes are man-made philosophy, not fundamental. We also try to bring back archetypes to the science of pseudoscience, rather of panpsychism. Panpsychism is the idea that consciousness is fundamental to material objects. Matter is not only matter, but matter is conscious. All matter is conscious. But this is pseudoscience because nobody knows.

And most likely there isn’t any way to know how to construct the difference of consciousness between a chair and an atom or a human being. Now add to all this confusion the dream that practically everyone has that started in America and called the American dream that defines life’s purpose entirely on the basis of material affluence.

A car, a house and the problem is that you define it and then then you have it and then you find that it’s not finished the dream. It wants more of the same. Okay, so a very basic question arises: is there really idealism? Should one go for potentialities? Is reality two level or one level? Because if there are potentialities, then there must be a domain of potentiality, and from which the domain of actuality arises in some ways. So is there, is reality, two level or one level?

And then the question of morality. Is there scope of morality in life? Can one really live without morality? Can one have a society, especially without morality? We cannot have civilization without idealism, morality and archetypes.

And, finally, the question of American dream and the idea of solving everything by reason. Isn’t it a fact that we require satisfaction after every accomplishment that we have, and that satisfaction is basically an emotional quality of our state of mind, a positive emotion? And can matter ever satisfy us, however much we accumulate of it, however much we privatize of it, however much of the American dreams we fulfil?

Our meaning and purpose are entirely the gift of non-material stuff in our life, non-material entities that hang on, that we variously call feelings, emotions, archetypes, intuitions, all these terms that we are forced to use in describing some of our most satisfying experiences.

This talk would be in vain, just a talk about philosophical positions, unless I would have a solution to put before you. The solution is given to us by quantum physics, nothing less. Quantum physics, from the beginning, has been a very strange science of objects because in this science objects are not concrete objects like a thought, like we thought objects are when the idea of objects was introduced initially by Isaac Newton.

Quantum objects are both waves and particles. This is sometimes one of the ways that we posit the objects are, in order to point out how paradoxical they are because, of course, same object cannot be a wave which can expand, and be at many places at the same time, and a particle which never can expand and is always found in one place at a time. There have been many ideas of sophistry to solve this paradox, but ultimately the solution is simply what the mathematics suggest.

Quantum objects really are waves: when we try to measure them they become particles. In other words, we never see the wave when we try to observe. The wave never appears in daylight for us to see. When we see, we only see objects as particles. This solves the problem, but this also completely sides in favour of idealism. There must be two domains of reality, domain of potentiality where these possibility objects reside. The waves must be waves of possibility and the domain of space and time must be the domain in which only actualities appear when waves become particles of actuality. In this way, the idealism-realism question is solved.

Of course, one can still say that, do the concepts of quantum physics apply to the macroscopic reality where we live. Maybe in the macroscopic reality where we live all this talk about quantum reality or the reality beyond second domain of reality or domain of potentiality is moot. But experiments have actually resolved this question in the sense that there is the concept of non-locality signalless communication between objects and we have found that not only objects in the sub-microscopic world of elementary objects have this ability of non-local communication suggesting that there is a domain of reality in which communication can occur without signals, which is instantaneous faster than the speed of light surpassing the realm of relativity of space and time. There’s also experiments showing that macroscopic objects like human beings are capable of non-local communication.

So that issue should be addressed from an experimental point of view. From a theoretical point of view also, we have made a tremendous improvement in terms of how quantum measurement actually occurs, quantum measurement theory. This was one of the first contributions and this was John Paul Newman’s idea, John Paul Newman’s theorem, it is called no material interaction can ever change a wave of possibility into a particle of actuality.

Now this brings the subject of non-material absolutely in forefront because without non-material to interact we cannot convert material objects, waves of material objects into particles of material objects. Non-material is an essential part of reality. Non-material is an essential part of reality not only as a non-material object, but also the subject is involved.

Why? Because the observer without the human observer, you cannot tell when the experiment has been completed. Human observer seems to be an essential part of the quantum measurement process. In this way we have a material object, non-material object, and also the subject of consciousness, the observer, experiencer, all are important for shaping a theory of reality.

All those fissures we saw are artificial fissures, artificial fault lines that occur not because reality is that way, but because our constructions of reality has been along those fault lines. Can we then breach these fault lines because they are false, they are not real, they are appearances. Can we then breach them and develop a pathway for human being to develop without these fault lines in thinking and removing the fault lines from breathing, does that improve the quality of living? This is the question then that becomes most important.

These questions have been answered by developing a full-fledged quantum science of various aspects of our life like consciousness, experiences, experiences that give rise to biology, experiences that give rise to psychology, experiences that give rise to social sciences, in other words the whole gamut of human phenomena. What we find, what is most important is that the human being is completely capable of living at the base level human condition, which is basically an ego level of constricted consciousness. But it can also rise above that ego level, become aware that there is possibility of expansion of consciousness.

Consciousness is not limited to the ego, which is me-centered. The I of consciousness becomes the me, an object, whereas the I is expansive, can include others, me cannot. Me is centered along the experience of subject being itself.

And then we find that the level of consciousness or the state of consciousness that a person experiences can be better than this me level, constricted ego level. And then we say that the person has acquired a soul. A soul is a sort of time sharing between ego level of consciousness, which is most of the time and then an ever-increasing level of expanded consciousness that we call the soul.

So, ego level is the lowest level and then ego plus glimpses of the soul and then ego plus leaving the soul to various extents. This is the way now we see the human condition. The basic question is, do you want to be aware of your soul, live in the soul? And how to ‘’recover’’ the soul? Because obviously if we are careful to look at children, we find that the children do have a soul-level of living without making any effort, and then the soul becomes covered with defects that make develop the character, the way we live. So, is there a way of recovering the soul and removing all these defects that cover the soul? This, then becomes the project. John Keats, the romantic poet, wrote to a friend once, a beautiful couple of lines: see the world as a veil for soul-making. A place where soul can be made. And this seems to be the really meaning and purpose of our life.

If these ideas appeal to you then please look us up on our website, amitgoswami.org. We have various programs of soul-recovery and soul-making that you might like, and answers to all of the questions that we have raised in a very complete way.

Thank you.