F. David Peat > Quotes

“..every time scientists try to observe the quantum world they disturb it. And because at least one quantum of energy must always be involved, there is no way the size of this disturbance can be reduced.

Our acts of observing the universe, our attempts to gather knowledge, are no longer strictly objective because in seeking to know the universe we act to disturb it. Science prides itself on objectivity, but now Nature is telling us we never see a pure, pristine and objective quantum world. In every act of observation the observing subject enters into the cosmos and disturbs it in an irreducible way.

Science is like photographing a series of close ups with your back to the sun. No matter which way you move, your shadow always falls across the scene you photograph. No matter what you do, you can never efface yourself from the photographed scene.”
― F. David Peat, From Certainty to Uncertainty: The Story of Science and Ideas in the Twentieth Century

“But if the individual is to sacrifice a measure of personal liberty within the social contract, then individual rights must be guaranteed by law. Thus, it has been said that, in law, rights are the fence an individual erects around himself for protection against his neighbors.
How absurd such a posture must seem from a worldview in which the individual emerges out of the society, rather than the other way around.”
― F. David Peat

“If you happen to hold that human consciousness is no more than the epiphenomenon, or secretion, of our individual brains then you are more or less trapped in your own skull. But if consciousness is open, if it can partake in a more global form of being, if it can merge with the natural world and with other beings, then, indeed, it may be possible to drop, for a time, the constraints of one's personal worldview and see reality through the eyes of others.”
― F. David Peat

“One thought follows on the other, they are not distinct objects with clear boundaries; rather, one thought anticipates the next and thereby contains it. The thought that comes afterward contains the memory or trace of the former. Thus, the movement of thought within the mind requires a mathematics of implicate forms.”
― F. David Peat

“Disease is a manifestation of human thought because it is ideas, worldviews, and beliefs that create the conditions in which a society can be riddled with disease, strife, and poverty, or can continue in health and harmony.”
― F. David Peat

“For the mystic, the ego does not have a primary reality in itself but is simply a pattern that, for a time, appears within the unknowable.”
― F. David Peat, Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind

“Time is therefore a creation of the mind that can be projected unto the processes of nature.”
― F. David Peat, Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind

“One of the most curious of these stories about Pauli concerns the number 137. One of the great unsolved mysteries of modern physics is the value of the fine structure constant, for while the other fundamental constants of nature are all immensely small or enormously large, this fine structure constant 1/137 turns out to be a human-sized number. This number 137 and its place in the scale of the universe particularly puzzled Pauli and continues to challenge physicists today. I was a mystery that Pauli was to take to his death, for on being admitted into the hospital, the physicist was told that he was being put into room 137. According to one version of this story on learning of his room number, Pauli said, "I will never get out of here." The physicist died shortly after.”
― F. David Peat, Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind

“As the subtleties of nature unfold, they are found to be further and further removed from simple mechanisms so that mind no longer appears to be alien to the universe. Likewise the synchronicities that form a bridge between matter and mind can not be be reduced to a single level of description. Rather, complementary descriptions, approaches, and metaphors are necessary so that synchronicity appears as through the facets of a rotating crystal, constantly displaying new forms and colors that are the reflections of an underlying ground.”
― F. David Peat, Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind

“It even appears that, during periods of excessive stress, the immune system's failure to fight off disease may be related to the whole organism's internal lack of, or confusion, of meaning. Indeed, if the meaning of the body is taken to be its intelligent, coordinated activity in health, then disease is a degeneration or breakdown in meaning.”
― F. David Peat, Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind

“Rather than nature being reduced to the material, the whole notion of the material has been extended into regions of indefinite intangibility.”
― F. David Peat, Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind

“The electron is continually being formed and sustained, while at the same time, it is dissolving into its background, where it transforms itself into other elementary particles, only to emerge back into itself again.”
― F. David Peat, Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind

“To plunge into the symbols and and images of the collective unconscious is to enter a realm that lies beyond space, time, and matter. It is like descending a dark passageway through a rockface and emerging into an underground ocean in which all minds have their origin. Within this hidden realm can be found the rhythms of the whole universe and the generative power of all that is matter and mind-the wellspring of synchronicity is uncovered.”
― F. David Peat, Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind