What is the Science of the New Idealism

Saturday, 21 February 2026 Written by Michael Dargaville Views: 16624

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Part 3: The Science of the New Idealism explores how quantum physics dismantles centuries-old philosophical materialism and reveals a mind-dependent universe, aligning with ancient spiritual wisdom and New Age thought. ~AndEl

The Climate of How the New Idealism Evolved

This is the third article and is a segment from my book called THE NEW IDEALISM (published as instalments with Crystal Wind) that outlines the spiritual New Age movement and the science behind it.

This article especially looks at the quantum theory of the New Age movement.

This article especially concentrates on the work of physicist Fritof Capra who was one of the founders of the Physics of Consciousness movement. Capra is one of my great heroes and Galactic Federation alien leaders especially asked me to use Fritof Capra's work in explaining the quantum physics of New Age spirituality because it is so important and so succinct.

So please bear in mind that I stress Fritof Capra here because he is so vital to the New Age and strongly endorsed by Galactic Federation alien leaders. So as you read through this presentation I use Capra's utterly brilliant work to fully explain the implications of THE NEW IDEALISM. The fact that top level benevolent aliens back Fritof Capra reveals how utterly important he is. Later I go into the work of David Ash, an extraordinary New Age physicist who I regard as the new Einstein and who fully explains alien space travel.

The climate of how the new idealism evolved involves the work of extraordinary physicists.

The major philosophical system that ruled the hearts and minds of men and women for the past four centuries is what is termed philosophical materialism. This historical concept cannot be overstressed here, at the beginning of this treatise.

Right up to the end of the 20th century the concept of philosophical materialism is taught throughout most western universities. Philosophical materialism is also throughout virtually all societies on Earth, embedded into our medicine, economics, virtually all our sciences and in every structure of thought.

Philosophical materialism grew from the Scientific Revolution of more than four hundred years ago, which was initiated by two towering figures of the seventeenth century, Descartes and Newton.

Rene Descartes is usually regarded as the founder of modern philosophy who had written that, “all science is certain, evident knowledge”. It is this certainty of scientific knowledge which lies at the heart of Cartesian philosophy, and it is from this paradigm where some of the major philosophical flaws of thought started.

All branches of modern science were hugely influenced by Descartes. At the centre of Descartes’ method is what he termed radical doubt until he reaches the realisation that one cannot doubt the existence of ourselves as a thinker. The famous “Cogito, Ergo sum” or “I think, therefore I exist” came from this position.

Descarte’s cogito made mind more certain for him than matter which lead to the conclusion that there were two separate and fundamentally different substances, that of mind, and that of matter. “There is nothing included in the concept of body that belongs to the mind; and nothing in that of mind that belongs to the body."

This Cartesian division between mind and matter has remained with Western thought right up to present day and lays the very foundations of philosophical materialism, along with the essence of Greek philosophy, which will be discussed later. In the life sciences, the Cartesian division led to endless confusion about the relation between the mind and the brain, while in physics it made it extremely difficult for the founders of quantum theory to interpret their observations of atomic phenomena.

The entire philosophy of Descartes was based on the fundamental division of two independent and separate realms – that of mind, the res cognitans, the “thinking thing” – and that of matter, or res extensa, the “extended thing”. In Descartes view both mind and matter were the creations of God, who represented their common point of reference, being the source of the exact common point of reference and natural order and of the light of reason that enabled the human mind to recognise this order.

As Fritof Capra outlined in his brilliant book called THE TAO OF PHYSICS the existence of God was essential to Descartes scientific method, although, and this is important, scientists omitted any explicit reference to God and developed their theories according to the Cartesian division, with the humanities concentrating on the “thinking substance” and the natural sciences on the “extended substance”.

Capra says that to Descartes the material universe was a machine and nothing but a machine. This is at the very heart of the concept of philosophical materialism. In this philosophy there was no purpose, life, or spirituality in MATTER. Nature worked according to mechanical laws, and everything in the material world could be explained in terms of the arrangement and movement of its parts. The mechanical picture of nature became the dominant paradigm of nature and guided all scientific observation and the formulation of all theories of natural phenomena until 20th century physics shattered all of these concepts.

The entire elaboration, says Fritof Capra, of mechanistic science in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries , including Newton’s grand synthesis, came from the development of the Cartesian idea which saw nature (or matter) as being a perfect machine, governed by exact mathematical laws.

Capra stresses that this rampant philosophical materialism was also extended to the natural sciences and plants and animals were considered simply machines, which also included human beings, although we fortunately had a “rational soul” connected to the body by the pineal gland. The biological function of the body could be reduced to mechanical operations, in order to show that living organisms were nothing but automata. This view had a huge impact on biologists, physicians and psychologists for the past 200 years and encouraged scientists to view all organisms as nothing but machines, a reductionist fallacy that became especially apparent in medicine where the adherence to the Cartesian method of the human body as clockwork has prevented medical practitioners many of our major illnesses.

In this background, Isaac Newton developed the achievement of 17th century science by providing a consistent mathematical theory of the universe that remained the solid foundation of scientific thought well into the 20th century. The Newtonian universe was one huge mechanical system, operating according to exact mathematical laws.

The Newtonian universe in which all physical phenomena took place was the three-dimensional space of classical Euclidean geometry. It was an absolute space, an empty container that was independent of the physical phenomena occurring in it. Newton wrote that absolute space, in its own nature, without regard to anything external, remains always similar and immovable. All changes in the physical world were described in terms of a separate dimension while time, which again was absolute, had no connection with the material world and flowed smoothly from the past through the present to the future. All matter which moved in this absolute space and absolute time consisted of material particles. This is an important notion to the understanding of materialism, and the philosophy behind it. The Newtonian particles were small, solid and indestructible objects out of which all matter was made.

This, of course, is the very heart of the doctrine of philosophical Materialism. While the Newtonian model was atomistic, it differed from the modern notion of atoms of different weights or densities but in terms of more or less dense packing of atoms.

Physicist Fritjof Capra says that the Newtonian concept saw the basic building blocks of matter could be of different sizes but consisted of the same “stuff”, and the total amount of material substance in an object was given by the object’s mass.

In Newton’s view, the motion of the particles was caused by the force of gravity and acted instantaneously over a distance. The material particles and the forces between them were of a fundamentally different nature, with the inner constitution of the particles being independent of their mutual interaction. Capra says that Newton saw both the particles and the force of gravity as created by God and thus not subject to further analysis.

The Cartesian-Newtonian world machine formed the core of all major materialist thought since that time. All physical phenomena in this scheme, are reduced to the motion of material particles, caused by their mutual attraction. The concept of a perfect world-machine also implied an external creator, a sort of monarchical god who ruled the world from above imposing his divine law on it. Capra points out that the physical phenomena themselves were not thought to be divine in any sense, and when science made it more and more difficult to believe in such a god, the divine disappeared completely from the scientific world view.

“The philosophical basis of this secularisation of nature was the Cartesian division between spirit and matter. As a consequence of this division, the world was believed to be a mechanical system that could be described objectively, without ever mentioning the human observer, and such an objective description of nature became the ideal of all science,” writes Capra in The Turning Point.

Newtonian mechanics was used widely throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, writes Capra. The Newtonian theory was able to explain the motion of the planets, moons, and comets down to minute detail. With the success of the Newtonian-Cartesian world machine philosophical system during this time led directly to the emphasis on “hard science” and “hard” technology in our culture.

Because of the materialist conception world view, physics naturally became the basis of all the sciences.

The nail on the coffin for opponents of the Newtonian-Cartesian world machine during these centuries was Charles Darwin’s origin of Species. This theory forced biologists to fit the Darwinian theory into the Cartesian framework, thus paving the way for the doctrine of philosophical materialism within all layers of the life sciences.

The New Physics

Albert Einstein published two articles in 1905 and thus changed the future of physics completely. These articles also lay the foundations for the destruction of the concept of philosophical materialism and reintroduced the concept of philosophical Idealism, that of a Mind Dependent Universe. The revolution which Einstein initiated was twofold. Firstly was his special theory of relativity while the other was a new way of looking at electromagnetic radiation which was to become characteristic of the quantum theory of atomic phenomena.

According to Capra, Einstein’s scientific papers are intellectual monuments that mark the beginning of 20th century thought. He says Einstein strongly believed in nature’s inherent harmony, and throughout his scientific life his deepest concern was to find a unified foundation of physics. He began to move toward this goal by constructing a common framework for electrodynamics and mechanics, the two separate theories of classical physics.

According to Capra, this theory unified and completed the structure of classical physics, and at the same time importantly involved radical changes in the traditional concepts of space and time, and by so doing completely undermined the foundations of the Newtonian world view. Einstein proposed the general theory of relativity 10 years later, where the framework of the special theory is extended to include gravity.

The other major development in 20th century physics was a consequence of the experimental investigation of atoms. Physicists discovered at the turn of the century several phenomena connected with the structure of atoms, such as X-rays and radioactivity, which were inexplicable in terms of classical physics.

Capra states that besides being objects of intense study, these phenomena were used, in most ingenious ways, as new tools to probe deeper into matter than had ever been possible before. He says this exploration of the atomic and subatomic world brought scientists in contact with a strange and unexpected reality that shattered the foundations of their world view and forced them to think in an entirely new way.

It was to be a complete revolution and nothing like this had ever happened before. It made physicists conclude that their basic concepts, their language, and their whole way of thinking were inadequate to describe atomic phenomena and that the paradoxes they encountered were an essential aspect of atomic physics, and that classical concepts were useless.

Quantum theory, or quantum mechanics, was formulated during the first three decades of the century by an international group of physicists including Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Louise De Broglie, Erwin Schodinger, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg and Paul Dirac.

Capra states that the scientists deeply interested in the philosophical implications of modern physics have been trying in an open minded way to improve their understanding of the nature of reality. “In contrast to the mechanistic Cartesian view of the world, the world view emerging from modern physics can be characterised by words like organic, holistic and ecological. It might be called a systems view, in the sense of a general systems theory. The universe is no longer seen as a machine, made up of a multitude of objects, but has to be pictured as one indivisible, dynamic whole whose parts are essentially interrelated and can be understood only as patterns of a cosmic process,“ Capra writes.

When physicists started investigating atoms at the start of the 20th century some extraordinary and completely unexpected results occurred. Far from being the hard, solid particles of time-honoured theory, atoms turned out to consist of vast regions of space in which extremely small particles – the electrons – moved around the nucleus. Also, it was found that electrons and the protons and the neutron in the nucleus were nothing like the solid objects of classical physics and were very abstract entities which had a dual aspect, depending on how they were observed. They could sometimes be particles and sometimes could appear as waves. The dual nature is also exhibited in light, which can take the form of electromagnetic waves or particles. These particles of light were first called “quanta” by Einstein, which became known as quantum theory.

Capra states that this dual nature of matter and of light is very strange because it seemed impossible to accept that something can be, at the same time, a particle, which is an entity confined to a very small volume, and a wave, which is spread out over a vast region of space. However, this is the reality that was being proved until it was realised that the terms “particle” and “wave” refer to classical concepts which could not describe atomic phenomena. In the case of an electron, it is neither a particle nor a wave, but it may show particle-like aspects in some circumstances and wave-like aspects in others. When it is acting like a particle, it is capable of developing in its wave nature at the expense of its particle nature, and vice versa, which means that it is always in transformation from particle to wave and from wave to particle and means that particles have no intrinsic properties independent of the environment. The properties it shows – particle-like or wave-like – will depend on the experimental situation, that is, on the apparatus it is forced to interact with, writes Capra.

The physicist Niels Bohr introduced the term or notion of complementarily to describe this situation in that the particle picture and the wave picture were two complementary descriptions of the same reality. The concept of complementarily is now an essential part of the way physicists think about nature.

The wave/particle paradox had forced physicists to question the very nature of philosophical materialism, or the mechanical world view which is, the concept of the reality of matter. Matter does not exist with certainty at the subatomic level but rather shows “tendencies to exist”, while atomic events do not occur with certainty at definite times and in definite ways, but rather show “tendencies to occur”, and that the “tendencies” are expressed as probabilities.

As Capra explains: “In the formalism of quantum mechanics, these tendencies are expressed as probabilities and are associated with quantities that take the form of waves; they are similar to the mathematical forms used to describe, say a vibrating guitar string, or sound wave. This is how particles can be waves at the same time. They are not ‘real’ three-dimensional waves like water waves or sound waves. They are ‘probability’ waves – abstract mathematical quantities with all the characteristic properties of waves – that are related to the probabilities of finding the particles at particular points in space at particular times. All the laws of atomic physics are expressed in terms of these probabilities.”

Furthermore, these atomic events do not describe probabilities of things, but rather probabilities of “interconnections” and that isolated material particles are indeed abstractions, with their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems, as Niel Bohr stated. Thus, subatomic particles are not “things” but are interconnections between “things”, and these “things” in turn, are interconnections between other things.

Capra says that this is how modern physics reveals the basic oneness of the universe. He says that as physicists penetrate further and further into the nature of matter, nature does not show any isolated building blocks, but rather appears as a complicated web of relations between various parts of a unified whole.

Capra states that when these quantum considerations are combined with Einstein’s theory of relativity, many interesting notions start developing. Relativity theory showed that space is not three-dimensional and time is not separate. Both are intimately connected and form a four-dimensional continuum, “space-time”.

The concepts of space and time are so basic for the description of natural phenomena that their modification of the whole framework that is used to describe nature. The major consequence of this is the realisation that mass is a form of energy and that even an object at rest has energy stored in its mass, and the relation between the two is given by the famous equation E=mc(2), c being the speed of light. Thus, what is being stated is that everything in the universe is a form of energy, including the interconnections that occur at the sub-atomic level. In modern physics, matter is no longer associated with a material substance, and particles are not seen as consisting of any basic “stuff”, but as bundles of energy. This is a truly extraordinary concept because if the universe and all the matter in the universe is energy, then the very nature of energy comes to be examined.

Capra states that energy, however, is associated with activity, with processes, and this implies that the nature of subatomic particles is intrinsically dynamic. Particles can no longer be pictured as small billiard balls, or grains of sand, but as patterns of activity, or movement itself, which have a space aspect and a time aspect. Their space aspect makes them appear as objects with a certain mass, their time aspect as processes involving the equivalent energy. Capra points out that the being of matter and activity, thus, could not be separated as they are different aspects of the same space-time reality.

Our view of the forces between these particles has been radically altered by these developments. In a relativistic description of particle interactions, the forces between the particles, which includes their mutual attraction or repulsion, are pictured as the exchange of other particles. Capra says this concept is very difficult to visualise, but it is vital to understand for understanding of subatomic phenomena. He says it links the forces between constituents of matter to the properties of other constituents of matter, and thus unifies the two concepts, force and matter, which had seemed to be fundamentally different in Newtonian physics. Also both force and matter are now seen to have their common origin in the dynamic patterns that we call particles. These energy patterns of the subatomic world form the stable nuclear, atomic, and molecular structures which build up matter and give it its macroscopic solid aspect, which makes us believe that it is made of some material substance. Although the notion that matter or substance can be helpful, at the atomic level it no longer makes sense and that in fact everything that is being witnessed in the world is a form of energy. Capra states that atoms consist of particles, and these particles are not made of any material stuff. He says when we observe them we never see any substance; what we observe are dynamic patterns continually changing into one another – the continuous dance of energy.

From here we start asking what in fact is energy. And those physicists asking the most vital question of exactly what energy is, have been forced to introduce the concept of Consciousness into the arena. Many physicists are now saying the Consciousness produces Energy, which is a form of philosophical Idealism. This is very much a revolutionary philosophical position but those physicists at the cutting edge of research are saying that particle research is suggesting that the particles are merely patterns of Consciousness. Now we will examine some of these theories.

This Leads to How the New Physics as a Form of Philosophical Idealism

As Capra states the two most basic theories of contemporary physics has shown that the Cartesian world view and Newtonian physics have been superseded, although, of course, they still exert a huge influence on our way of thinking. Quantum theory shows that matter is made up of “probability patterns”, which represents an inseparable cosmic web that includes the human observer and their consciousness. On the other hand, relativity theory has made this cosmic web a dynamic character by showing that its activity is the very essence of its being and that at the sub-atomic level the interrelations and interactions between the parts of the whole are more fundamental then the parts themselves.

Fritjof Capra says research in physics has aimed at unifying quantum mechanics and relativity theory into a complete theory of sub-atomic particles. In the area of this form of research there are basically two different kinds of “quantum-relativistic” theories. The first deals with field theory while the second is known as the S-Matrix theory. The other is super string theory.

Capra says that the S-matrix theory has been successful in describing the strong interactions of particles. The theory was founded by the physicist Geoffrey Chew in the 1960s and was developed as a comprehensive theory of strongly interacting particles which was tied into a more philosophical system in itself. Capra writes that according to the bootstrap philosophy, nature cannot be reduced to fundamental entities, like fundamental building blocks of matter, but has to be understood entirely through consistency. All physics has to follow uniquely from the requirement that its components be consistent with one another and the themselves, writes Capra. He says that this idea radically departs from the traditional spirit of basic research in physics which has always been the search for the fundamental nature of matter. Bootstrap philosophy, or the S-matrix theory, is the culmination of the conception of the material world as an interconnected web of relations that emerged from quantum theory. Capra writes that the bootstrap philosophy not only abandons the idea of fundamental building blocks of matter, but accepts no fundamental entities whatsoever – no fundamental constants, laws or equations and the universe is seen as a dynamic web of interrelated events. The important aspect of the theory is that none of the properties of any part of this web is fundamental because they all follow from the properties of the other parts. The overall consistency of their interrelations determines the structure of the entire web.

Capra writes that in the framework of S-matrix theory, the bootstrap approach attempted to derive all properties of particles and their interactions uniquely from the requirements of self-consistency. He says the only fundamental laws accepted are a few very general principles that are required by the methods of observation and are essential parts of the scientific framework. “All other aspects of particle physics are expected to emerge as a necessary consequence of self-consistency,” Capra writes.

Capra points out that if this bootstrap approach can be carried out successfully, the philosophical implications will be extremely profound. “The fact that all the properties of particles are determined by principles closely related to the methods of observation would mean that the basic structures of the material world are determined, ultimately, by the way we look at the world; that the observed patterns of matter are reflection of patterns of mind,” Capra writes profoundly.

This, of course, clearly posits a philosophical Idealist position in that if the structures of the material world are determined, fundamentally, through reflections of mind, or intelligence, or Consciousness, and is a complete breakthrough in which we perceive the world, the universe and everything in it.

Capra writes that the phenomena of the subatomic world are so complex that it is envisaged that a series of partly successful models will continue to be developed. He says that each would be intended to cover only a part of the observed phenomena and would contain some unexplained aspects, or parameters, but the parameters of one model might be explained by another. Thus more and more phenomena could gradually be covered with ever increasing accuracy by a mosaic of interlocking models whose net number of unexplained parameters keeps decreasing. The adjective bootstrap is thus never appropriate for any individual model, but can be applied only to a combination of mutually consistent models, none of which are any more fundamental than the others, Capra says.

Geoffrey Chew has stated that a physicist who is able to view any number of different partially successful models without favouritism is automatically a bootstrapper. One of the major new insights of the bootstrap theory of subatomic particles is the notion or order as a new and important aspect of particle physics, says Capra. In this context, order means the interconnectedness of subatomic processes.

Capra writes that when the concept of order is incorporated into the mathematical framework of S-matrix theory, only a few special categories of ordered relationships turn out to be consistent with that framework and that the resulting patterns of particle interactions are precisely those observed in nature. This is an extraordinary concept in itself but when the picture of subatomic particles that emerges from the bootstrap theory is combined with the revelation that every particle consists of all other particles, then a truly revolutionary philosophical position starts developing.

Capra points out that the particles should not be imagined that they contain all the others in a classical, static sense. Rather, subatomic particles are not separate entities but interrelated energy patterns in an ongoing dynamic basis, says Capra. He says these patterns do not ‘contain’ one another but rather ‘involve’ one another in a way that can be given a precise mathematical meaning but cannot easily be expressed in words”.

The significance of order in subatomic physics plays a very basic role in the scientific approach to reality, and is a crucial aspect of all methods of observation and is essential to the rational mind and that every perception of a pattern is, in a sense, a perception of order. Capra stresses that the clarification of the concept or order in a field of research where patterns of matter and patterns of mind are increasingly being recognised as reflections of one another has forced physicists to include our conception of macroscopic space-time and our conception of human consciousness. Increased use of the bootstrap approach opens up the unprecedented possibility of being forced to include the study of human consciousness explicitly in future theories of matter. The question of consciousness has already arisen in quantum theory in connection with the problem of observation and measurement, but the pragmatic formulation of the theory scientists use in their research does not refer to consciousness explicitly.

Capra says some physicists argue that consciousness may be an essential aspect of the universe, and that we may be blocked from further understanding of natural phenomena if we insist on excluding it.

What is being posited again here is a form of philosophical Idealism and Capra says that there are two main approaches in physics that come very close to dealing with consciousness explicitly. The bootstrap theory is one that has received considerable attention while the other has been developed by the maverick physicist David Bohm.

Bohm’s theory begins with the notion of “unbroken wholeness” and his aim was to explore the order inherent in the cosmic web of relations at a deeper, “nonmanifest” level. Bohm called these the “implicate” order, or “enfolded” order, and compares it to the analogy of a hologram. Holograms are three-dimensional images created with the aid of a laser. For example, when a person shines a laser beam through a piece of photographic film containing the encoded image of an apple, a three-dimensional image of the apple will appear on the other side of the film. If the film is cut in half and a laser is shone through each piece, two complete three-dimensional images will appear. Then again, if the film is cut into four pieces, four apples appear.

Each piece of holographic transparency contains the entire image, in which each part, in some sense, contains the whole. If any part of the hologram is illuminated, the entire image will be reconstructed. Bohm believed the real world was structured according to the same general principles, with the whole enfolded in each of its parts.

Capra says Bohm realised that the hologram was too static to be used as a scientific model for the implicate order at the subatomic level and coined the term “holomovement”. The holomovement was a dynamic phenomenon out of which all forms of the material universe flowed. Bohm found it necessary to regard consciousness as an essential feature of the holomovement and to take it into account explicitly in his theory. Mind and matter were simply interdependent and correlated mutually enfolding projections of a higher reality.

During his life Bohm stated his position philosophically: “The mental and the material are two sides of one overall process that are (like form and content) separated only in thought and not in actuality. Rather, there is one energy that is the basis of all reality…There is never any division between mental and material sides at any stage of the overall process.”9

This eventually led Bohm to consider the presence of “proto-conscious” properties at the level of particle physics. He used the analogy to illustrate this apparent “knowing” properties of subatomic particles, of the movements of electrons in the laboratory to those of ballet dancers responding to a musical score, with the score itself constituting “a common pool” of information that guides each of the dancers as he takes steps.

Bohm wrote that in the case of the electrons, the ‘score’ is of course the wave function. As with the dancer, the electrons are thus participating in a common action based on a pool of information, rather than pushing or pulling on each other mechanically according to laws like those of classical physics.

For Bohm, this sharing of information, this mutual “knowing”, could be the elementary conscious awareness of each particle. Bohm is positing a pan physicist notion here similar to the thinking of Spinoza. A major aspect of the holographic view of consciousness is the implications it has for consciousness as a field because if consciousness is a field and only one vibration then all other fields are enfolded into this. The holomovement points out that physics cannot undertake the project of ascertaining the law of the whole because relativity and quantum theory had shown that Newtonian laws had only limited relevance. The notion of the implicate order becomes the totality of what constitutes the holomovement, which in itself is “undefinable and immeasurable”, which is what mind or consciousness would be.

Bohm believes that just as quantum systems are essentially unified, so are our thought processes. He writes: “Thought process and quantum systems are analogous in that they cannot be analysed too much in terms of distinct elements, because the ‘intrinsic’ nature of each element is not a property existing separately from and independently of other elements but is, instead, a property that arises partially from its relation with other elements.”

The Oxford physicist Roger Penrose has supported a great deal of what Bohm is suggesting. Penrose has stated that quantum theory and the physics of consciousness, as it is now called, clearly indicates that the universe as a whole could be a form of consciousness. He has stated his position with these words: “Quantum physics involves many highly intriguing and mysterious kinds of behaviour. Not the least of these are the non-local quantum correlations which can occur over widely separated distances. It seems to me to be a definite possibility that such things could be playing a role in conscious thought modes. Perhaps it is not too fanciful to suggest that quantum correlations could be playing an operative role over large regions of the brain. Might there be any relation between a ‘state of awareness’ and a highly coherent quantum state in the brain? Is the ‘oneness’ or ‘globality’ that seems to be a feature of consciousness connected with this? It is somewhat tempting to believe so.”

Bohm pointed out more than 40 years ago that there were many striking similarities between the behaviour of our thought processes and that of some quantum processes

Bohm states that just as life as we know it would be impossible if quantum theory did not have a present classical limit, though as we know it would be impossible unless we could express its results in logical terms. Bohm points out that the vital link between thought processes and quantum processes, between ourselves and electrons, is clearly explaining how consciousness can be seen in terms of quantum mechanical features. This is truly a revolutionary concept and once again is clearly a form of philosophical Idealism in that both quantum reality and the actual structure and functioning of the brain are reflections of the same thing – that reality, or rather quantum reality, is being structured in exactly the same way that mind is being structured. That the entire universe is a form of thought because it is a macroscopical reflection of quantum consciousness and even the very internal processes of the brain.

What is being suggested here is that Consciousness itself is the quantum process and produces matter.

Matter is being produced by the quantum process of consciousness. Now this form of philosophical Idealism is very much a Berkleyian form of Idealism in this instance.

Some Other Theories of Physics Which Posit Idealism

One of the most impressive theories to come from the New Age that posits philosophical Idealism is that put forward by two British thinkers, David Ash and Peter Hewitt. Both Ash and Hewitt were trained as scientists at London and Cambridge universities and have come up with a theory which says that Thought itself is creating the Material Universe. Firstly they posit the notion that an elementary particle is a vortex of energy. They say that energy is not material and that it is dynamic in that it involves action and change, and that in fact it could be pictured as simply movement.

“Just as movement cannot exist without direction, so energy cannot exist without form,” they write in their book Science of the Gods. The two fundamental forms of energy in our world are matter and light and that light is often taken to be a wave form of energy.

Ash and Hewitt say that the two major pillars of 20th century physics are relativity and quantum theory, and that the concept of the vortex will complement significant areas of both these achievements. “In Quantum theory, for example, it can begin to provide models which give physical reality to otherwise obscure concepts. Take, for instance, the enigma of quantum spin. Quantum theory regards this elusive property as somehow intrinsic to the particle, but insists that it is not a form of particle rotation. The vortex shows quite clearly that spin is absolutely intrinsic to the particle, being fundamental to its very existence,” they write.

With regard to relativity, they say that the vortex account of space is entirely compatible with Einstein’s theory.

Ash and Hewitt stress, and this as an extremely important concept, that realising our world is nothing but energy is the crucial step for an understanding of the universe. They say that energy is the prime reality. “Energy is the prime reality. Energy is the foundation of everything in the universe, from the minute atom to the mighty galaxy. But is the physical universe the only reality? If matter and light – its building blocks – are purely two forms of energy, could there be other energy, in non-material forms?” Ash and Hewitt write.

Ash and Hewitt say that a particle of matter is a swirling ball of energy, a spherical vortex of movement. Light is a different form of energy, but according to Ash and Hewitt, it is obvious from Einstein’s E=mc(2) equation, that matter and light share a common movement. In E=mc(2), they say, it is c, the speed of light, which relates matter to energy. “From this, we can draw a simple conclusion. It is obvious: the speed of movement in matter must be the speed of light. This is the only possible sense we can make of Einstein’s equation. If, in a particle of matter, the vortex movement is at the speed of light.”

Then Ash and Hewitt say that as energy has been equated with movement, why is all movement constrained by the speed of light. They say that science has come to the conclusion that nothing can move faster than the speed of light. This applies to all forms of energy, including particles of matter and light. But Ash and Hewitt ask if it applies to the movement which underlies energy itself, the primal movement from which matter and light themselves arise.

“This is the crucial question. It all boils down to what energy is. Whilst physicists will not commit themselves to saying what energy is, they are adamant that energy cannot move faster than the speed of light. But if forms of energy are intrinsically forms of movement, then movement is more fundamental than energy. Why should pure movement be limited to the speed of light?”

Ash and Hewitt then add that if movement could have a faster speed, it would give rise to a completely different type of energy which they call super energy. “Energy and super energy would be different in substance. Movement at the speed of light could be described as the substance of energy in the physical world. The substance of super energy would be movement at a faster speed.”

Ash and Hewitt say that objects of super energy could share the same form as things in our world, but their substance would be entirely different because matter would not interact with them and light would not reflect off them.

Ash and Hewitt have called this the theory of transubstantiation. They say that science is concerned mainly with the changing forms of energy but that this theory explains the barrier between the natural and the supernatural, the normal and the paranormal. “Through transubstantiation, an object could materialise or dematerialise…Transubstantiation would take an object through the light barrier and into the realm of the super-physical. The light barrier would be the dividing line between the physical and the super-physical.”

Ash and Hewitt say movement and not material is the reality underlying the universe. They say there is nothing concrete in the universe and there is no underlying material there at all, with movement the sole reality. “This is a staggering thought. People mostly imagine our world to be made up of substantial things that move. In reality, it is quite the opposite. Movement exists first and foremost. Everything in the universe is relative to the speed of light, which is itself a measure of movement. Pure movement creates our world – from light and warmth to the wind and rain, from trees and mountains to the laughter of children playing.”

Then they ask the question what could movement be? How can there be movement if there is nothing to move. They claim that this movement appears to be an abstraction. “Could it be that the movement underpinning the universe is an abstract reality? Could it be purely the idea of movement? Is the universe but a vision of movement, a pure act of imagination,” they write.

They say that if the movement underlying energy is an act of pure imagination, then every particle of matter is simply “imagined” into existence and that every bit of energy and super energy is nothing but an idea, which is a pure form of philosophical Idealism. But this is very much a new form of Idealism because obviously there could be various speeds of the flow of ideas. If the universe is nothing but a dream, then the dream has various speeds of being recorded.

Ash and Hewitt also distinguish between the concept of the dream and the dreamer. They say that a dream is distinct from the dreamer. “Likewise the creation is quite distinct from the creator. This account of the universe is not a form of pantheism. Pantheism claims that God is the substance of everything, that all things are formed out of God. The universe is formed out of movement which has no substance, be it material or God. Movement is the act of God, not the substance of God,” they write.

They ask the question that if the universe is an unfolding act of imagination, it could be viewed as a vast body of thought. Every movement, every bit of energy, would be a thought form and that every particle of matter and light, as an act of imagination, would be thought in the mind of God. “Could it be that the universe in its entirety is simply the mind of God?” they write.

They say that in mind, we see the conjunction of consciousness and thought. Mind could be the body of thought but consciousness is quite distinct from thought. They say that consciousness is not thought, it is the awareness that lies behind thought. “Consciousness can exist without thought, but without consciousness there is no awareness of thought,” Ash and Hewitt write. In the end, they say, that perhaps there are only two fundamental realities; consciousness and thought. They say that if the universe is the mind of God, then god would be the consciousness underlying it.

In this theory, consciousness is not energy, nor is it the consequence of any form of energy. Rather, consciousness is the source of all energy, pervading the whole of creation even to the sub-atomic level. Ash and Hewitt say that Consciousness could be taken to correspond to “spirit”. They say that it is as if God creates the universe and then experiences through every single part of it. God experiences being a blade of grass and a tree, being an eagle and a dolphin.

Ash and Hewitt’s theory of transubstantiation has some astounding philosophical implications and is clearly a form of philosophical Idealism. This is also the theory that would aptly describe what mystics for thousands of years have said: that we see only 10 per cent of the universe. Using the theory of transubstantiation, the other 90 per cent of the universe would exist in super energy, in the super-physical world. It would also describe a great deal of paranormal phenomenon because objects could go through the light barrier at will. But also, and very profoundly, it makes the universe itself much vaster for if we see only 10 per cent of the universe in our space-time, then the other 90 per cent would make the universe truly enormous. It also gives scientific evidence to what the Indians calls Prana and what the Chinese call Chi energy – but has never been verifiable. These energies, then, would be low levels of super energy. At faster levels of super energy, the mind of God would move at faster speeds. Thus, what is happening here is that the mind of god works at much slower speeds in our space-time and is restricted to the speed of light. But in the speeds of super energy, there are, presumably, various dimensions of speed, such as the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth dimensions.

And very importantly the theory of super energy also fully explains how aliens travel the vast distances they do.

Their ships use bio crystal energetic computers to register super energy which gives messages to conscious energy which in turn sends the ship through the light barrier and into inter-stellar travel. This is how Galactic Federation alien spaceships travel. This is the science of interstellar travel. Galactic Federation alien leaders talked to me extensively about David Ash's theory of super energy. These top level aliens said it was vital for people to understand it. The Galactic Federation aliens call super energy plasma energy.

Super energy also fully explains how Sai Baba teleports and bi-locates, and archangels exist in super energy. This is where Archangels flex their real power because super energy can impinge on energy.

There are many other theories which deal with the New Physics that have not received the same attention as some of the previous ones that also offer support for a form of philosophical Idealism. Robert Jahn, who was a professor of aerospace sciences and dean emeritus of the School of engineering and Applied Science at Princeton has been collating evidence over more than a decade of research that mind can interact with physical matter. In a series of lengthy experiments Jahn had people sit in front of a random number generator, which is an automatic coin flipper, in a bid to get the machine into producing more heads than tails. After virtually hundreds of thousands of trials he discovered that volunteers could indeed exert a small but statistically significant effect on the random number generator’s output.

Jahn and physicist Brenda Dunne’s book titled The Margins of Reality: The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World looks carefully at a number of aspects at the claim that the world is a construct of consciousness. They claim that it is the interaction between consciousness and reality described in quantum theory that provides the key. Since all quanta can manifest either as a wave or a particle, it is not unreasonable to assume that consciousness does as well. It is particle-like when it appears to be inside our heads, but in its wave-like phase it can interact with the physical world. Both believe that consciousness cannot exist separately from the physical world because the process is much more subtle. “It may be that such concepts are simply not viable, that we cannot talk profitably about an abstract environment or an abstract consciousness. The only thing we can experience is the interpenetration of the two in some way,” writes John.

Physicists T. Gornitz and C. C. von Weizsacker have stressed that mind plays a role in the creation of the material universe but they want to bring the observer more explicitly into our understanding of quantum physics. They have tried to formulate meaningful ways to relate quantum phenomena to states of mind.“There is no distinction between substances called mind and matter,” says Weizsacker.

Roger Sperry of the California Institute of Technology, who won a Nobel Prize for his pioneering split-brain studies, has stated that he became extremely disillusioned with the materialist and behaviourist doctrine that has dominated neuroscience for most of the 20th century. He has stated that science should never have disregarded the concept of consciousness as a guiding force in the world. “Instead of renouncing or ignoring consciousness…(we should) give full recognition to the primacy of inner conscious awareness as a casual reality.”

Prominent physicist John Wheeler has said that the mind may be responsible for the creation of the universe but condemns the use of the term consciousness. He prefers the term “intelligent observer”, which he defines as anything that is “meaning sensitive”.

Wheeler coined the term geometrodynamics for a theory developed by himself and others from Einstein’s general theory of relativity. The theory is concerned with the dynamics of curved space, and proposes that the Einsteinian concept of four-dimensional space-time is limited and has introduced the concept of “superspace” because it is multidimensional. The theory implies that space-time is “multiply connected” and that people have to forgo the view of nature in which every event, past, present or future, occupies its preordained position in grand category called “space-time”.

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