Can science and religion be integrated? What comes to mind immediately is that religions themselves cannot agree with one another whereas science is basically monolithic. How can there even be trade between the two, let alone integration?

First, it is only a perception that religions are pluralistic and science is not. Science is monolithic only so far as science of matter–physics and chemistry–is concerned. Psychology, the science of the psyche, has three different paradigms–behavioral-cognitive consisting of hard science orientation, depth psychology consisting of Freudian psychoanalysis and Jungian analytical psychology and their derivatives with psychotherapy orientation, and humanistic-transpersonal-yoga psychology with positive mental health orientation. Both the later paradigms of psychology acknowledge downward causation and subtle bodies in some form or other. Medicine has the conventional allopathic medicine and also alternative medicine practices that complement it. A prominent part of alternative medicine is Eastern medicine that emphasizes subtle energies called variously as prana, chi, and ki. And biology is in transition right now. The materialist biology is highly developed but with some unsolved (maybe unsolvable) problems. Alternative biology is biology that sees life as the handiwork of a purposive designer with the power of downward causation; but at present it is so poorly developed that hardly anyone can call it a genuine alternative biology.

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Health and healing the world over is in crisis primarily as the result of skyrocketing costs.  I submit that the rising costs are fundamentally due to the exclusive use of costly allopathic medicine which has harmful side effects and, brings only temporary relief often not healing the disease which ultimately returns.  Costs rise also because there is no real understanding of what healing consists of, or of what health actually is.  As a result of this non-understanding there is very little investment in the idea of disease prevention. Health, as I will show, is when not only the physical organs function properly, but also when all our other “subtle bodies” function properly.  Physical health is defined not only by the proper functioning of the physical organs, but also by the proper functioning of their correlated morphogenetic fields, and the correlated mental body that gives meaning.

The major shortcoming of the current philosophy of allopathic medicine-— is that it is based on scientific materialism—the idea that all things including our body are made of matter and its interactions. In contrast, there are alternative medicine practices gradually coming into vogue (because they are cheap and effective).  We see the rise of traditional Chinese medicine including acupuncture, traditional Indian medicine, homeopathy, mind-body medicine and last but not least, spiritual medicine as in Christian Science (Baker-Eddy, 1906).  The first three of these alternative medicine practices hold that we have not only our material bodies but also vital bodies connected with “life force” whose energies are variously called chi ((in Chinese), prana (in Sanskrit), and vital energy (in the West).

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Quantum physics in the form of its famous observer effect (how an observation transforms quantum possibilities into actual experiences in the observer’s consciousness) is forcing us into a paradigm shift from the primacy-of-matter to a new paradigm: the Primacy Of Consciousness (read my book The Self-Aware Universe for details). Quantum Activism is the idea of transforming ourselves and our societies in accordance with the transforming messages of quantum physics and the new paradigm.

So what are these transforming messages of quantum physics? First, consciousness is the ground of all being, and all objects of our experiences (of sensing, thinking, feeling, and intuition) are quantum possibilities for consciousness to choose from.

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An interview with Amit Goswami
by Craig Hamilton

Before you read any further, stop and close your eyes for a moment. Now consider the following question: for the moment your eyes were closed, did the world still exist even though you weren’t conscious of it? How do you know? If this sounds like the kind of unanswerable brain teaser your Philosophy 101 professor used to employ to stretch your philosophical imagination, you might be surprised to discover that there are actually physicists at reputable universities who believe they have answered this question—and their answer, believe it or not, is no.

Now consider something even more intriguing. Imagine for a moment the entire history of the universe. According to all the data scientists have been able to gather, it exploded into existence some fifteen billion years ago, setting the stage for a cosmic dance of energy and light that continues to this day. Now imagine the history of planet Earth. An amorphous cloud of dust emerging out of that primordial fireball, it slowly coalesced into a solid orb, found its way into gravitational orbit around the sun, and through a complex interaction of light and gases over billions of years, generated an atmosphere and a biosphere capable of not only giving birth to, but sustaining and proliferating, life.

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