The Self-Actualizing Cosmos: The Akasha Revolution in Science and Human Consciousness

by Ervin Laszlo

An exploration of the current revolution in scientific thought and the newest scientific findings in support of the Akashic field

• Explains how the new Akasha paradigm recognizes the interconnection of all things in space and time through the quantum resonance of the Akashic field

• Reveals the cosmos to be a self-actualizing, self-organizing whole, bringing forth life and consciousness in countless universes

• Explores the latest discoveries in the sciences of life, mind, and cosmos

Science evolves through alternating phases of “normal science” and radical shifts that create scientific revolutions. We saw this at the turn of the 20th century, when science shifted from a Newtonian worldview to Einstein’s relativity paradigm, and again with the shift to the quantum paradigm. Now, as we recognize the nonlocal interconnection of all things in space and time, we find our scientific worldview shifting once again.

With contributions by physicists Paul A. LaViolette and Peter Jakubowski, pioneering systems scientist Ervin Laszlo explores the genesis of the current revolution in scientific thought and the latest findings in support of the Akashic field. He explains how the burgeoning Akasha paradigm returns our way of thinking to an integral consciousness, a nonlinear mode of understanding that enables us to accept the reality of nonlocal interconnection throughout the world. This new inclusive way of understanding reaffirms the age-old instinctive comprehension of deep connections among people, societies, and nature, and it integrates and transcends classical religious and scientific paradigms.

Providing examples from cutting-edge science of quantum-resonance-based interactions among all living systems, Laszlo shows the cosmos of the Akasha to be a self-actualizing, self-organizing whole, where each part is in coherence with all others and all parts together create the conditions for the emergence of life and consciousness. The advent of the Akasha paradigm marks a new stage in science’s understanding of the fundamental nature of the world and offers unique guidance for contemporary efforts to create a peaceful and sustainable world.

Genres: Spirituality, Science, Philosophy

208 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2014

About the author

Ervin Laszlo is a systems philosopher, integral theorist, and classical pianist. Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, he has authored more than 70 books, which have been translated into nineteen languages, and has published in excess of four hundred articles and research papers, including six volumes of piano recordings.

Dr. Laszlo is generally recognized as the founder of systems philosophy and general evolution theory, and serves as the founder-director of the General Evolution Research Group and as past president of the International Society for the Systems Sciences. He is also the recipient of the highest degree in philosophy and human sciences from the Sorbonne, the University of Paris, as well as of the coveted Artist Diploma of the Franz Liszt Academy of Budapest. Additional prizes and awards include four honorary doctorates.

His appointments have included research grants at Yale and Princeton Universities, professorships for philosophy, systems sciences, and future sciences at the Universities of Houston, Portland State, and Indiana, as well as Northwestern University and the State University of New York. His career also included guest professorships at various universities in Europe and the Far East. In addition, he worked as program director for the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). In 1999 he was was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Canadian International Institute of Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics.

For many years he has served as president of the Club of Budapest, which he founded. He is an advisor to the UNESCO Director General, ambassador of the International Delphic Council, member of both the International Academy of Science, World Academy of Arts and Science, and the International Academy of Philosophy.

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author makes known "There is more to human freedom in the world that a science based on the old paradigm would have us believe" (61). Ervin Laszlo, twice nominated for the Nobel Prize, describes the new model involving two dimensions expanding our freedom.

There is no space around us. The scientist David Bohm explains, "What we experience through the sense as empty space is the ground of the existence of everything, including ourselves" (26). Laszlo finds interactions in the information from the manifest and Akasha (Sanskrit: aether).

We process the two-fold character of information: (1) neuroaxonal network of the brain for material facts and (2) subneuroaxonal network of networks for Akashic news. This multi-faceted information processing system coordinates human functioning: "governs actions, interaction, and reaction throughout the manifest (seen, formed, finite) world" (56).

For scientists, "A system consisting of finely tuned parts is a coherent (homeostatic) system" (66).

The range of human freedom is influenced by the internal and external aspects. The new paradigm opens our capacity for a vast array of multidimensional experience: expanding human freedom (self-actualization).

[Liam Wirvin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you Mr. Laszlo for sharing this wisdom. I liked the part where a priest gets people to mail him pictures of themselves and uses his special pendulum to telepathically cure their illness. I also liked that I saw many recognizable names. Mentioning well-known smart people like Einstein, Schrödinger, Plato, and the legendary Deepak Chopra assures me that your book is trustworthy. I will soon begin harnessing A-dimensional power to bring back traditional society, or to find the hubris of the Divine Feminine, or to bring balance to the force or something like that. I’m not sure yet.

[Kyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book is a journey not unlike entering a black hole: the first part of this impossible journey is familiar space with both classical and quantum physics defining how the universe works. By the end of Part One, Laszlo dazzles us with the accreted information from his theory's ergosphere, indicating the Akasha dimension just beyond the M dimension. Part Two brings us right up to the figurative event horizon, where both mind and matter meld together (I was sold by the time his chapter on consciousness makes a brief mention of the always thought-provoking Carl Jung and the unus mundus). By Part Three, I am pulled into the singularity, and can feel through these printed words what the other dimension must be like, beyond any rational attempt to quantify or qualify it. Of course, at this point in the imagined cosmic journey, nobody know what happen next, whether we are shot out from the white hole, torn apart by the opposite of gravity, or relativistically jetted off somewhere else. The last few sections of the book reverse the journey from the captivating middle section where Laszlo and his like-minded colleague try to explain the science behind this new paradigm, and the further away that I get from the feel-good singularity, the less this self-actualizing cosmos makes sense. The final two hypotheses that attempt to prove that the A dimension is the basis for everything that science can determine may well have been written in Greek, as that is all it was to me! Not to say that some parts of their arguments were not convincing, just that it didn't seem to match with the experience of reading those few inner chapters where it seemed like all possibilities were there to be intuited rather than understood. Back to cold comfort of a M dimension much like clockwork planets rotating distant stars.

[Geoffrey Arnold · Rating 5 out of 5]

A timely explanation of how “hard” and “soft” science come together to create an understandable whole. Considering the age-old Akasha paradigm in a ne and inclusive manner. Demonstrating the connection through quantum science and, crucially, the sub-quantum level where science continues to delve. Completing the circle of Life.
For many readers there will be questions about Laszlo’s views. The second half of the book provides confirmation of his premise through the factual contributions of experts in a variety of fields.

[EarthArchangel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second spiritual book I read. This took years to get through as it is chock full of scientific explanations and overly intelligent quantum mechanic terms. If you are sift through the very dense material and interpret what is being said into more common knowledge, it’s a great read. Nothing is fun about this book but it’s ridiculously full of factual information that supports the idea that the spiritual and scientific are one and the same!!

[John J · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unconvincing at best

I bought this book because of the very high marks other reviewers gave it and because it was supposedly based on recent, cutting-edge scientific theory. I expected to find a mathematical description of how nonlinear systems self organize by employing feedback, and how this principle applies to the Cosmos as a whole. Instead, the book offered a mishmash of pseudoscientific "facts" along with a heavy dose of metaphysics.

The book starts out with a more-or-less scientific presentation of quantum mechanics. But then the unsubstantiated claim is made that only quantum mechanics is real and the world of observation is an illusion. This is certainly at odds with the Copenhagen interpretation, which insists that only things that are observed are real. Oddly, Laszlo highlights experiments , such as Alain Aspect's experiments that violated Bell's inequality, Leggett's experiments, the quantum eraser and delayed choice experiments, etc., all of which prove there are no hidden variables, making the universe entirely indeterminate and non-mechanistic. Yet Laszlo proposes that a deterministic mechanism exists within the Akasha field. But if such a mechanism really existed, the experiments he cited surely would have detected it.

Laszlo seems to Everett's many worlds hypothesis and Susskind's cosmic landscape to the Akasha field, although neither of those theories are supported by one iota of evidence, and the completely-debunked idea of hydrogen existing in a negative ground state. The latter has something to do with a Grand Unified Theory, but I could find no connection with this to the Akasha field.

The remainder of the book delves into metaphysics and philosophical questions concerning goodness, morality, and s forth, which have nothing to do with science.

The two appendices at the end of the book are completely incomprehensible. They are filled with scientific-sounding jargon that makes absolutely no sense, seemingly written by someone tripping on LSD. The gist of the second appendix (revealing the Grand Unified Theory of Everything) is that every physical constant in the universe can be expressed by different combinations of Planck's constant and the elementary charge of the electron. Really?

If Laszlo really wants to make a contribution, he should write about the sickness that pervades science today instead of adding even more pseudoscience to the literature.

https://sites.google.com/site/amateus...

[Diane · Rating 2 out of 5]

I came to read this book after it showed up in a library order I'd made for an entirely different book. I looked at it and told the librarian "I didn't order this one." But, since they had it on my order and since I like science books, I took it home to read out of curiosity.

Upon finishing the book, my reaction is amazement that it took all of that convoluted twisting and scientific explanation to propose and accept something that has been such a basic belief beginning with ancient cultures: an unseen element in our universe, whether physical or metaphysical, that causes or guides energies to make things happen. Lazlo's arguments about how Akasha fields address open issues in quantum physics are interesting and his explanations for complex scientific concepts are clear and understandable. Yet he works too hard to connect his theories with a cause - effect - redistribution view of world economics, environmentalism and social order.

Maybe the ether sent the book to me to read and stimulate my scientific thinking?

[Michael Gajda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eye opening. Read it!