> First of all, on what basis would Pagels have changed his opinion? It is true > Pagels trashed the TM theory of quantum mechanics. This was based on things > Larry Domash had written. As I recall, Domash used the vacuum state of > quantum mechanics as an analogy to explain TM, much in the way one might use > an orange and a golf ball to create an analogy describing how the Moon and > Earth, orbit around a common centre of gravity. I am not acutally aware of > how the quantum vacuum analogy morphed into TC *is* the quantum vacuum, or > how this subsequently morphed into the Unified Field equivalency that we see > today under Hagelin. Hagelin is still of course talking about this. I do not > know what Domash's view would be today. > > I recently re-listened to a debate with woo meister Deepak Chopra, > neuroscientist Sam Harris, skeptic Michael Shermer, and scholar Jean Houston > that took place in 2010. Though Chopra is not in the movement any more, he > does hew to the new age quantum nonsense that many, including the TMO, make > their stock in trade. In this debate, the skeptics raked Chopra over the hot > coals repeatedly for this. What was really interesting about this debate was > it was a Cal Tech, and physicist Leonard Mlodinaw was in the audience stood > up and offered Chopra a short course of quantum mechanics to straighten out > his misuse of quantum notation. Mlodinaw, whose field is mathematical > physics, recently wrote a book with Stephen Hawking (The Grand Design). > Mlodinaw said he had never come across a definition of consciousness that > made any sense. It was clear that for Mlodinaw the correlations between > consciouness and quantum mechanics that Chopra was presenting made no sense > whatsoever, that is, it was nonsense. > > The full debate: http://youtu.be/wi2IC6e5DUY > The debate covers much more ground than just this aspect of spiritual > nomenclature and physics. >
Science is based on materialism. All scientific theories are likewise based on materialism.Obviously that would include quantum mechanics. Materialism proposes that consciousness is an epiphenomenon and has no existence independent of matter( i.e. consciousness is an emergent property of matter e.g the human nervous system). Given the latter it would seem illogical to assert that "pure consciousness" is the same as the vacuum state.The real question is whether consciousness is of a completely different order of reality then matter/energy. IMHO that question can't be answered by science which is grounded in materialism.Chopra et al are making a fundamental error in attempting to describe the nature of consciousness using constructs taken from a materialistic/scientific framework.
