Laszlo - The self-actualizing cosmos : the Akasha revolution in science and human consciousness

THE
SELF-ACTUALIZING
COSMOS

In his new book, Ervin Laszlo, the worlds foremost systems theorist, summarizes his evolutionary connectivity hypothesis and his concept of the Akashic field. He offers a brilliant solution for the paradoxes and anomalous phenomena that emerged in the course of the twentieth century in a broad variety of fieldsfrom astrophysics, quantum-relativistic physics, and chemistry to biology, anthropology, thanatology, parapsychology, and psychology. In this tour de force, Laszlos renaissance intellect spanning a broad range of scientific disciplines offers the reader a breathtaking vision of a self-actualizing cosmos. A book that should not be missing in the library of any scientist seeking to understand the nature of reality.

STANISLAV GROF, M.D., AUTHOR OF HOLOTROPIC BREATHWORK, PSYCHOLOGY OF THE FUTURE, AND WHEN THE IMPOSSIBLE HAPPENS

The modern idea of a mindless, purposeless, directionless universe will take its place as a morbid relic in the history of ideas. It is being replaced by the vision expressed in The Self-Actualizing Cosmos. This important book restores hope and meaning and shows that the cosmos is a friendlier home than we have recently taken it to be.

LARRY DOSSEY, M.D., AUTHOR OF ONE MIND: HOW OUR INDIVIDUAL MIND IS PART OF A GREATER CONSCIOUSNESS AND WHY IT MATTERS

Forty years ago Ervin Laszlo changed the way we saw the world with his classic book The Systems View of the World. Today he changes the way we understand the cosmos and our own place in it. This is a groundbreaking and very readable work.

ALLAN COMBS, PH.D., AUTHOR OF CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED BETTER, SYNCHRONICITY, AND RADIANCE OF BEING AND DIRECTOR OF THE CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF INTEGRAL STUDIES (CIIS) CENTER FOR CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank cutting-edge physicists Paul LaViolette and Peter Jakubowski for contributing the pioneering hypotheses that lay the foundations of the Akasha paradigm in physics.

I wish to express my thanks and appreciation to Edgar Mitchell, Stanley Krippner, David Loye, Kingsley Dennis, David Lorimer, Deepak Chopra, and Ken Wilberlong-standing friends and colleaguesfor comments and suggestions that helped me achieve a comprehensive formulation of the science and philosophy of the Akasha paradigm.

I likewise acknowledge the contribution of Dr. Maria Sgi, another long-standing friend and colleague, whose discoveries regarding space and time-independent nonlocal healing have motivated my development of the Akasha paradigm and have also kept me in good health for nearly three decades.

My sincere thanks to David William Gibbons and Gyrgyi Szabo for conversations that helped me spell out for the reader basic questions about the meaning and relevance of the new paradigm.

I am grateful to Marco Antonio Galvan for his deep interest in this paradigm and his remarkable acumen in finding and calling to my attention the cutting-edge scientific findings that testify to its scientific foundations.

It gives me particular pleasure to acknowledge the expert contribution of my sons Christopher and Alexander in bringing to my attention findings and ideas relevant to the exposition and implications of this paradigm.

Last but by no means least, I thank my wife Carita Marjorie, without whose unfailing patience and constant love and support I could not have had the endurance, the inspiration, and the concentration to work on the concepts and ideas I have attempted to express in this, my latest and perhaps most definitive Akashic field book.

Prologue

There is a major revolution under way in science today, a transformation that is both profound and fascinating. It changes our view of the world, and our concept of life and consciousness in the world. It comes at a propitious time.

We know that the world we have created is unsustainable: we need new thinking to avert a collapse and set us on course for a sustainable and thriving society. The inspiration for the new thinking can come from science but not, or not only, from science as a source of new technologies. Rather, we need to view science as a source of orientation and guidance, as a wellspring of trustworthy ideas for rediscovering our relations to each other and the universe. The revolution under way in science offers a paradigm that can fill this need.

A paradigmin science is the sometimes tacit but always effective foundation of the way scientists conceive of the world, including the objects and processes they investigate. A new paradigm is an important innovation in science: it allows scientists to piece together the emerging elements of scientific knowledge and perceive the meaningful whole that underlies this complex mosaic of data, theory, and application.

A new paradigm has meaning and interest well beyond science. It provides a holistic, integral view of life and universe, lifting these vistas from the realm of speculation into the domain of careful observation and rigorous reasoning. Although based on sophisticated theories and wide-ranging observations, the now emerging paradigm is basically simple and inherently meaningful.

The book in the hands of the reader is dedicated to conveying the principles of the new paradigm in language that, to paraphrase Einstein, is as simple as possiblebut not simpler. It outlines the principles of the new paradigm and applies them to enhance our understanding of cosmos and consciousness. It then turns to such matters of human concern as how we perceive the world; how we can use the information we receive from the world to maintain our health; what kind and level of freedom we enjoy in the world, and, last but not least, how we can strive for the highest value in life, which philosophers called The Good.

The author has been engaged in exploring and elaborating the paradigm coming to light in science for more than four decades. He hopes that this study, the latest and most mature fruit of his endeavors, will live up to the expectation his friends and readers attach to it. And that it will prove to be an effective scheme for investigating and elaborating the new paradigm emerging in science in order that we may reach a better understanding of who we are, what the world is, and what our mission is in this crucial epoch of our history.