The Visionary Window: A Quantum Physicist's Guide to Enlightment | 
 enlarge | Author: Amit Goswami
Publisher: Quest Books
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
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Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 93182
Media: Paperback
Pages: 342
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 0.9
ISBN: 083560845X
Dewey Decimal Number: 291
EAN: 9780835608459
Publication Date: July 25, 2006
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Product Description
A thrilling synthesis of science and mysticism by a quantum physicist reared in the Hindu tradition with a thorough knowledge of Indian sacred literature. Goswami offers solid, scientific explanations for the concept of universal consciousness and the existence of mind beyond the function of the brain. Thoughtful readers will love his ingenious mix of data and ideas from Eastern philosophy, transpersonal psychology, and quantum physics to explore the scientific principles for why and how spiritual practice works.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Spirituality Linked to Physics and Explained June 15, 2008
MommyLyn (Clifton, NJ United States)
An excellent discussion of subjects way over my head but explained so that I can understand.
Excellent and understandable October 31, 2008
Juan Jose Reynal
Once again a book by Amit Goswami is clear, concise and understandable. I find his arguments and explanations for the beliefs he proposes believable and coherent.For anyone interested in getting past promisory materialism this will be of much help.
This book explains many aspects of quantum physics in very understandable manner and is of great help.
 Consciousness--The ground of all being August 12, 2007
David J. Kreiter (Iowa City, Iowa USA)
14 out of 15 found this review helpful
Seventy years after the quantum revolution began, Amit Goswami peered through the visionary window to behold a truth that Eastern traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism have known for centuries: "Consciousness is the ground of all being". For him this revelation synthesized the two disciplines of science and spirituality.
Traditional Western science has treated consciousness as an epiphenomenon of matter, an emergent property of the brain. But Goswami insists that this produces a paradox. If consciousness is necessary for decoherence, the process by which quantum possibilities become reality, how is it possible that consciousness can arise from the very material consciousness creates?
If however, we turn this idea on its head, and show that matter is an epiphenomenon of consciousness, then the paradox disappears. Matter is within consciousness. "We don't have consciousness, rather consciousness has us" (52). It is only because of our memory that we have a secondary awareness, which creates the illusion that consciousness is an individual experience.
A universal consciousness helps explain some quantum decoherence experiments in which a conscious observer has been illiminated from the experiment. For example, in an experiment called the "Quantum Pinball (Scientific American, November 1991) the results showed that just the mere possibility that knowledge could be gained, was sufficient to collapse the quantum potential into reality.
Another advantage emerges from the hypothesis that consciousness is the ground of all being. It once and for all relieves us of the anthropocentric burden that the univese was created just for us. It isn't our own consciousness that has brought us into being, but rather the result of the constant self-referential communication between universal consciousness and matter, in an endless scurring toward greater and greater complexity and meaning.
In the last portion of the book, Amit Goswami includes chapters on subjects such as reincarnation, angels, and quantum healing. If this makes you queasy, rest assured, Goswami is a physicist to the core. This book was well worth the read, and a very good follow-up to his book, "The Self-Aware Universe" (see my review on Amazon).
This review by David Kreiter, author of Quantum Reality: A New Philosophical Perspective.
Spirituality grasping for acceptance in science October 23, 2007
Remco D. Van Santen (Scarborough Western Australia)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is a truely remarkable read that makes the connection of eastern beliefs and quantum physics like Fritjof Capra's, "The Tao of Physics". It is written by someone who has a thorough grounding in Hindu tradition and ancient beliefs and the basis of his PhD, quantum physics. The spiritual beliefs are remarkably well reviewed in the rigorous manner of a scientist that Goswami is by profession.
Basically this is a review of beliefs and his theses on consciousness but the link to quantum physics are wishy washy and his own concepts. To wit just a few.
P 118: "Perhaps the best evidence of the quantum nature of thought, however, is its nonlocality, as demonstrated in telephathy" Really? Telepathy is still contentious and not substantiated and not referenced in his book.
p 157: Goswami responds to a question of whether there are scientists that support cosmology as science. He responds with a reference to "several international conferences..." without naming them or anyone in particular.
p 158. A similar question about biologists who have proposed ideas similar to his own whereupon he refers to his own books and citing just one man, contentious in his right, Rupert Sheldrake.
Elsewhere he often refers to unpublished papers, conversations and unreferenced citations.
Yet Goswami raises significant questions and solutions even if the connections between the beliefs and modern science upon which this book is based are weak and for these, I am still giving it 4 stars. After all, cutting edge evolution cannot always rely on previous research. Einstein only had theory in 1918. I learned much about the nature of the core religions and beliefs even if the links to quantum physics are at best, weak.
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