

Paradigm Shift: Materialism to Consciousness

By Frank Conerton

A paradigm is a set of basic understandings and beliefs which shape our world. We filter all that experience through a paradigm, resulting in the thoughts, words and actions from which we make our reality. If there is to be a fundamental shift with the New Age, the old paradigm of materialism, on which our entire culture is based, must give way to a greater understanding.

Human senses informed our ancestors about the world around them and they concluded that everything in the world comes from matter and that matter is hard, dense and distinct. This paradigm is called Materialism and says that matter is the ground from which all else originates. Everything, from our culture and philosophy, to modern scientific developments, is considered to flow from matter. Life is only some accidental merging of just the right components of matter. Thought and awareness are both simply functions of the material brain.

Amit Goswami Ph.D. is a theoretical physicist who wrote a widely used college textbook on the mathematics of quantum mechanics. In the documentary “The Quantum Activist”, he describes his journey from materialism, the basis of all science, to a new understanding, that consciousness is the ground of all being, all reality. As a nuclear physicist, Dr. Goswami says that he, of course, was a materialist. Then, he had a great epiphany while talking to a mystic. Although he was familiar with the mystical saying that there is nothing but God, he finally understood that this mystical understanding in fact fit into quantum physics and resolved old paradoxes created by materialism.

Our ancestors used their senses and concluded that matter was dense, inert and separate. The world that we inherited from them is understood as flowing from matter. Decades ago nuclear physicists learned that all matter is made up of atoms. Dense, inert, matter is, in fact, more than 99% empty space! Nuclear physicists discovered that the atoms themselves are made up of even less “material” particles which can be said to be made up of energy and information. Now, quantum physics describes “waves of possibilities” which form matter when they are observed. At the quantum level, there is no material mass! Waves of probability are collapsed into actual things through the operation of non-localized consciousness. To continue to believe that our reality is based in matter is to ignore the new scientific knowledge.

This does not mean that materialism is totally wrong or that we must choose one or the other. All of the great scientific and technological achievements are still based on our knowledge about matter. But now, with the idea that our reality is based in consciousness, we are provided “space” in which to construct new ideas, free from paradoxes.

How can life emerge from matter? Is life really a highly improbable accident coming from some random mixture of chemicals as the materialists claim? With this new paradigm, life is simply another possibility which emerges from the non-localized consciousness through matter.

Is our human consciousness really only a function of the physical brain? With this new paradigm, consciousness is another possibility, actualized by the non-localized consciousness. Since the non-local consciousness can contain all possibilities, life and consciousness pose no problems.

Materialism is a subset within non-local consciousness. Matter itself is a possibility that is actualized by Non-Local Consciousness. This new paradigm provides space for an expansion of understanding which is not reliant on materialism. Spiritual ideas such as unity and connectivity need not be in conflict with materialism but can be based in consciousness.

Here is a new paradigm which supports not only the field of quantum physics, but also supports all of the experiences which spiritual seekers have known to be true but which materialism has rejected. From energy healing to intuition, E.S.P. to oneness, this new paradigm allows for all possibilities.

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