What’s Up with Amit? A University of Transformational Education, That’s What!
By Amit Goswami, Ph.D.
One big social issue today is education. The quantum worldview is going to radically change education. Today, education has ceased to be what was called liberal education. In fact, the whole concept of liberal education has changed substantially under scientific materialism. The word, “liberal,” now means supporter of science based on scientific materialism. Originally, liberal education meant education that liberates you from dogma. And that meant supporting science against religious dogma. But conventional science has now embraced scientific materialism, which is also a dogma, materialism in exclusion of spirituality as opposed to the religious dogma of spirituality exclusive of materiality.
We need integration to balance materiality and spirituality. The quantum perspective gives us that integrative worldview, but we have to bring its gift to education. We have huge steps that we must take for liberating secular education from scientific materialism, just as we did 400 years ago when liberating education from religion! And of course, the task of liberating spiritual education from religion still remains to be done as well. As I often emphasize, religions, even the Eastern religions, do have a prejudice against the material world. The spirit of the quantum worldview is that we need both spirituality and materiality, and this integrative concept has to be ushered in. That quantum integrative spirit that has to come into education as outlined above, has to come also in politics, economics, religion, and health.
When it comes to spiritual things, most people still consider them as something not reliable, a “woo-woo” kind of thing. This has been a barrier to spiritualizing the society. But notice what quantum physics is telling us. The quantum worldview says that material things also are “woo-woo.” When you say consciousness is “woo-woo”—it is hard to talk about it in concrete terms—realize that so is this pad, this pen, so are even these chairs and the table. All are possibilities. It is the interaction of consciousness with it that gives matter concreteness that we experience as a sensation. When we experience the mind, we experience meaning. When we experience matter, we experience this rigidity, fluidity: all the material qualities. We need the gross material experience because we need fixity to represent the subtle in the fixity. It doesn’t make the subtle superior, nor does it make matter superior. We need both, mind and matter, obviously.
I recently went to India for a conference on energy healing at a spiritual center at Pyramid Valley in Bangalore where my talk along these lines was well received. Afterwards I was invited for a private session with the spiritual Master of the place, Brahmarshi Patry. Frankly, I was venting my frustration with the current politics of worldviews:
“The Western public are so blindsided by their culture. Forty percent, science minded all, still sees science as synonymous with scientific materialism because historically that philosophy has brought the West much power over the rest of the world. Another religious forty percent holds on to the idea of God as a superior being but individual, King of kings, not cosmic. Caught between these two straightjackets, the Western mind is refusing to embrace the quantum worldview because to them it sounds too Eastern to trust.”
The Brahmarshi listened intently. Then he surprised me. “Why don’t you start a university that will teach everything—science including health, social science, business, arts and humanities, and spirituality based on the quantum worldview integrating science and spirituality, a university of spiritual transformation.”
Consequently, we, Americans and Europeans (from the twenty percent of true liberal Westerners still around) and spiritually-minded Indians (who are still a majority in that country), are busy doing just that—developing a university along these lines granting post graduate certifications, Masters and PhD, in Consciousness Studies and Psychology and Integral Medicine to start. The University is called Quantum Life University. The plan is to start operation as early as July 2017. Look for further announcements on this exciting development here at: www.amitgoswami.org.
