Chapter 1

The Scientific Rediscovery of God

The concept of a higher power, popularly called God, is millennia old. The idea is that we experience phenomena that cannot be explained on the basis of material, worldly causes alone; the only explanation possible is that the phenomena are caused by intervention from God. This divine intervention is called downward causation.

This concept conjures up an image of God as a mighty emperor sitting on a throne up in heaven and doling out acts of downward causation: acts of creation, different laws of movement for heavenly and earthly bodies, miracle healings for devotees, judgment of the virtuous and the sinners, and so forth. Support for this naïve, outdated picture is implicit in pop religions even today, especially popular Christianity.

Scientists take advantage of the naïveté of the populist God supporters to pooh-pooh this description as dualism that is philosophically untenable, impossible. God is dishing out downward causation, intervening in our world now and then, here and there? Hah! That's impossible, they assert. How does a nonmaterial God interact with things in a material world? Two entities of different kinds cannot interact without a mediator signal. But the exchange of a signal involves energy. Alas! The energy of the physical world alone is always conserved or is a constant. But that would be impossible if the world were involved in any interaction with an otherworldly God! Case closed.

The populists of Christianity strike back against this argument of science with attacks on one of the most vulnerable theories of materialist science—the theory of evolution called (neo-) Darwinism. But these populists, known as creationists and intelligent design theorists, do not deliver any credible alternative to neo-Darwinism, let alone to dualism.

Serious proponents of the God hypothesis respond to the criticism of dualism by stating that God is everything there is, that God is both otherworldly (“transcendent”) and worldly (“immanent”). This philosophy is called monistic idealism or perennial philosophy. Here “transcendent” means being outside this world but able to affect what is inside this world. Downward causation is exerted by a transcendent God.

But scientists, equally seriously, have questioned this sophisticated concept, disputing this definition of transcendence. How can something be otherworldly and yet be the cause of anything in this world? This concept also smacks of dualism, they insist.

Scientists long ago attempted to show that the phenomena of the world can be understood without the God hypothesis. René Descartes intuited the idea of a clockwork universe in which a supreme being caused the universe to exist as a system of bodies in motion, providing a fixed and constant amount of motion according to the laws of physics, mechanics, and geometry, and then did not subsequently intervene in any way. Galileo Galilei discovered the two-pronged approach of theory and experiment that we call science. Isaac Newton discovered the laws of physics behind the clockwork deterministic universe, laws that apply to heavenly and earthly bodies alike. Then Charles Darwin discovered an evolutionary alternative to Biblical ideas of life's creation that fits the fossil data to some extent.

These and other phenomenal successes of a Godless science have prompted the following hypothesis: All things consist of elementary particles of matter and their interactions. Everything in the world can be understood from this one hypothesis. Elementary particles form conglomerates called atoms. Atoms form bigger conglomerates called molecules. Molecules form cells; some of these cells (the neurons) form the conglomerate we call the brain. And the brain comes up with our ideas. These ideas include God, an idea that may be due to the arousal of a spot in the midbrain. In this philosophy called scientific materialism or material monism or simply materialism, cause rises upward from the elementary particles. All causes are due to “upward causation” producing all effects, including our God experiences (figure 1-1).

FIGURE 1-1. The upward causation model of the materialist. Cause rises upward from the elementary particles, to atoms to molecules, and so on to the more complex conglomerates that include the brain. In this view, consciousness is a brain phenomenon whose causal efficacy comes solely from the elementary particles—the base level of matter.

But the esoteric spiritual traditions say that God is beyond the brain. God is the source of our essence, the higher consciousness or Spirit in us. The question is: Does the upward causation model really explain us and our consciousness, including higher consciousness?

IS CONSCIOUSNESS A HARD QUESTION?

Currently, some philosophers have begun to call consciousness “the hard question” of science (Chalmers, 1995). Of course, such a designation depends on the context one chooses.

One context is neurophysiology, brain science, which considers that the brain generates all of our subjective experiences. Neurophysiologists posit that consciousness is an illusory ornamental epiphenomenon (secondary phenomenon) of the complex material box that we call the brain. In other words, just as the liver secretes bile, so the brain secretes consciousness.

This reminds me of a Zen story. A man meets a family of four (parents and two grown children), all of whom are enlightened. This is his opportunity to find out if enlightenment is hard or easy to attain. So he asks the father, who replies, “Enlightenment is very tough.” He asks the mother, who replies, “Enlightenment is very easy.” He asks the son, who replies, “It is neither difficult nor easy.” Finally, he asks the daughter, who says, “Enlightenment is easy if you make it easy; it is difficult if you make it difficult.”

If you think of consciousness as an epiphenomenon (secondary effect) of the brain, consciousness is a hard question indeed; you are making it hard. Consider that an objective model always seeks an answer to the question in terms of objects. Thus neurophysiologists seek to understand consciousness in terms of other objects: brain, neurons, etc. The underlying assumption is that consciousness is an object. But consciousness is also a subject—that which does the looking at and thinking about object(s). This subject-aspect of consciousness exposes one weakness of the neurophysiological brain-based model.

The truth is that consciousness is not only a hard question, but also an impossible question for materialists. This is because even pop religions, simplistic as their view of downward causation may be, have always been clear about one thing: that we have free will, and that without our free will to choose God, His power of downward causation would be in vain. If we are choosing God, defined as the highest good, we are choosing values and ethics. But we need free will to be able to make that choice.

But if we have free will, there must be a source of causality outside of the material universe. So the proponents of upward causation vigorously dispute the concept of free will. If we have free will, then the behaviorist's depiction of us as the products of psychosocial conditioning does not work so well. They challenge the concept. Like our consciousness, our free will must also be an illusory epiphenomenon of the brain. Insisting that we are behaviorally determined machines or walking zombies, their science not only undermines God and religion but also values and ethics, the very foundations of our societies and cultures.

So is there God and downward causation? Is consciousness an epiphenomenon of matter? Do we have free will? Is the dictum of the upward causation model final? Or is there new scientific evidence to suggest otherwise?

Yes, there is evidence. A revolution in physics took place at the beginning of the last century with the discoveries of quantum physics. The message of quantum physics is: Yes, there is a God. You can call it quantum consciousness, if you like. Some people call it by a more objective phrase, quantum vacuum field, or following Eastern wisdom, akashic field (Laszlo, 2004). But a rose by any other name retains its fragrance.

QUANTUM PHYSICS: THE BASICS

The essence of quantum physics is difficult for scientists to understand; but in my experience, nonscientists have an easier time comprehending it. There are books that explain the scientists' difficulty at length. Here we can present only a quick overview.

Quantum physics is a physical science that was discovered to explain the nature and behavior of matter and energy on the scale of atoms and subatomic particles, but now is believed to hold for all matter. Scientists can describe subatomic particles only in terms of how they interact. That's how the quantum theory started, as a way to explain the mechanics of very small things. But quantum physics is now also the basis for our understanding of very large objects, such as stars and galaxies, and cosmological events, such as the Big Bang.

The foundations of quantum physics date from the early 1800s. However, what we know as quantum physics started with the work of Max Planck in 1900. The mathematics of quantum physics was discovered by Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger in the mid 1920s.

In his quantum theory, Planck hypothesized that energy exists in units in the same way as matter, not as a constant electromagnetic wave, as had been formerly believed. He postulated that energy is quantized—consisting of discrete units. The existence of these units—Planck named the unit quantum—became the first great discovery of quantum theory.

Central to the theory of quantum physics is that all matter exhibits the properties of both particles (localized objects such as tiny pellets) and waves (disturbances or variations that propagate progressively from point to point). This central concept, that particles and waves are two aspects of a material object, is called wave-particle duality. It is also universally agreed that waves of quantum objects are waves of possibility.

Various interpretations have been proposed to explain this duality and other subtleties of quantum physics. One that dominated for years is known as the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory. This term actually refers to several interpretations, some quite at odds.

The Copenhagen interpretation is usually understood as stating that every quantum object is described by its wave function, which is a mathematical function used to determine the probability for that object to be found in any location when it is measured.

Each measurement causes a change in the state of matter from a wave of possibility to a particle of actuality. This change is known as the collapse of the wave function. In simple terms, this is the reduction of all the possibilities of the wave aspect into one temporary certainty of the particle aspect.

Unfortunately, neither the quantum mathematics nor the Copenhagen interpretation can give a satisfactory explanation of the event of collapse. But quantum physicists have been unable to eliminate the concept of collapse from the theory. The truth is, an understanding of collapse requires consciousness (von Neumann, 1955). If we follow this thinking, it means that without consciousness there is no collapse, no material particles, no materiality.

OK, so there are the bare basics of quantum physics. Now, back to the application.

QUANTUM PHYSICS AND CONSCIOUSNESS

To be sure, the mathematics of quantum physics is deterministic and based on the upward causation model. Yet it predicts objects and their movements not as determined events (as in Newtonian physics) but as possibilities—waves of possibility mathematically described by this wave function as mentioned above. The probabilities for these possibilities can be calculated with quantum mathematics, enabling us to develop a very successful predictive science for a large number of objects and/or events. This is the part of quantum physics that does not embarrass materialists.

Unfortunately, there is a very embarrassing aspect to quantum physics—the collapse event: a proper understanding of it revives God within science. When we look at a quantum object, we don't experience it as a bundle of possibilities, but as an actual localized event, much like a Newtonian particle. And yet, as mentioned above, quantum physics does not have any mechanism or mathematics to explain this “collapse” of possibilities into a single event of actual manifest experience. In fact, quantum physics flatly declares that there is a limit to the mathematics-based certainty of physics. There cannot be any mathematics that would allow us to connect the deterministic quantum possibilities with the actuality of a single observed event. So then, how do the quantum possibilities become an actuality of experience simply through the interaction of our consciousness, by simply us observing them (figure 1-2)? How do we explain this mysterious “observer effect”?

FIGURE 1-2. Quantum possibility waves and downward causation as conscious choice producing collapse.

In quantum language, the neurophysiologists' upward causation model translates like this: possible movements of elementary particles make up possible movements of atoms, which make up possible movements of molecules, which make up possible movements of cells, which make up possible brain states and make up consciousness. Consciousness itself, then, is a conglomerate of possibilities; call it a wave of possibility. How can a wave of possibility collapse another wave of possibility by interacting with it? If you couple possibility with possibility, all you get is a bigger possibility, not an actuality.

Suppose you imagine a possible influx of money in your bank account. Couple that with all the possible cars that you can imagine. Will this exercise ever actualize a car in your garage?

Face it. In the neurophysiological epiphenomenal model of consciousness, the assertion that our looking at something can change possibility into actuality is a logical paradox. And a paradox is a reliable indicator that the neurophysiological model of our consciousness is faulty or incomplete at best.

The paradox remains until you recognize two things. First, that quantum possibilities are possibilities of consciousness itself, which is the ground of all being. This takes us back to the philosophy of monistic idealism. Second, that our looking is tantamount to choosing, from among all the quantum possibilities, the one unique facet that becomes our experienced actuality.

To clarify the situation, let's examine how gestalt pictures are perceived—what appears at first to be one picture is actually two pictures. You may have seen the one that depicts both a young woman and an old woman, which the artist calls “My Wife and My Mother-in-Law.” Another one depicts both a vase and two faces (figure 1-3). You notice that you are not affecting the picture when you shift from one perception to the other. Both possibilities are already within you. You are just making a choice between them by choosing your perspective. In this way, a transcendent consciousness can exert downward causation without dualism.

The strict materialist can still object: how can reality be so subjective that each of us observers can choose our own realities from quantum possibilities? How can there be any consensus reality in that case? Without consensus reality, how can there be science?

FIGURE 1-3 The vase and two faces. You don't have to do anything to the picture to choose either meaning.

Surprise, surprise. We don't choose in our ordinary state of individual consciousness that we call the ego, the subjective aspect of ourselves that the behaviorist studies and that is the result of conditioning. Instead, we choose from an unconditioned, objective state of unitive consciousness, the non-ordinary state where we are one, a state we can readily identify with God (Bass, 1971; Goswami, 1989, 1993; Blood, 1993, 2001; also see chapter 5).

THE QUANTUM SIGNATURES OF GOD

Here, then, are the crucial points that are worth repeating. We experience a quantum object, but only when we choose a particular facet of its possibility wave; only then, the quantum possibilities of an object transform into an actual event of our experience. And in the state from which we choose, we are all one: we are in God-consciousness. Our exercise of choice, the event quantum physicists call the collapse of the quantum possibility wave, is God's exercise of the power of downward causation. And the way God's downward causation works is this: for many objects and many events, the choice is made in such a way that objective predictions of quantum probability hold; yet, in individual events, the scope of creative subjectivity is retained.

In this way, the first and foremost scientific evidence for the existence of God is the vast array of evidence that supports the validity of quantum physics (which hardly anybody doubts) and the validity of our particular interpretation of quantum physics (for which there are some doubters).

Fortunately, there are two scientific ways to resolve these doubts: first, by demonstrating that this interpretation resolves logical paradoxes (rather than raising them, as does the upward causation model), and second, by making predictions that can be experimentally verified. The scientific evidence for the existence of God, based on the primacy of consciousness (the theory that consciousness creates reality) and the interpretation of quantum physics that I am presenting, passes both these tests of scientific validity. For future reference, we call this science within consciousness (a term first proposed by philosopher Willis Harman) or simply idealist science.

Phenomena resulting from downward causation in our model sometimes come with specific quantum signatures that upward causation cannot generate. If caused by upward causation—that is, if possible movements of elementary particles cause a linear hierarchy of increasing complexity that results in our consciousness—macroscopic phenomena of the mundane world would always be continuous, always consist of local communications with clear signals, and always be hierarchical in one way. The quantum signatures of downward causation are discontinuity (as in our experience of creative insight), nonlocality (as in the signal-less communication of mental telepathy), and circular hierarchy, also called tangled hierarchy (as sometimes experienced between people in love). This first kind of evidence for the existence of God I call the quantum signatures of the divine. The details will come later (see chapter 5); here I give you a sneak preview of one of these signatures.

It was Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum physics, who first unambiguously stated that quantum possibilities reside in transcendent potentia, a domain outside space and time. Quantum collapse, downward causation (the effect of our consciousness), must then be nonlocal: something outside space and time is affecting an event inside space and time. And then Alain Aspect, Jean Dalibar, and Gérard Roger (1982) brought quantum nonlocality (which implies that causes and effects can occur at a distance without an exchange of energy signals) to the experimental arena by demonstrating nonlocal connection between correlated photons (discrete objects called quanta of light) across a distance in a laboratory. Later measurement increased the distance of nonlocal communication between the correlated photons to more than a kilometer. Quantum nonlocality is for real.

Two things to bear in mind. First, it has become a bad habit of scientists to claim that science is about finding a “natural” explanation for phenomena while defining “nature” as the space-time-matter world. In this view, God and the subtle worlds of spiritual traditions belong to “supernature.” In view of quantum nonlocality, clearly we must broaden this narrow view of nature. If science is to include quantum physics, then nature must include the transcendent domain of quantum potentia, the resident address of all quantum possibilities. In the view of quantum physics, all attempts to distinguish between nature and “supernature” have lost complete credibility.

Second, quantum nonlocality completely clarifies one confusing component of the esoteric spiritual model of God, that God is both transcendent and immanent: how some cause outside can affect something inside. This can happen because both the cause and the effect involve quantum nonlocality—signal-less interaction or communication.

A SECOND KIND OF EVIDENCE: IMPOSSIBLE PROBLEMS REQUIRE IMPOSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

Materialist science has had much spectacular success and has given us many useful technologies, but the more we apply it to biological and human problems, the less it seems capable of giving us palpable solutions. One key to developing a science with real solutions for human problems is to realize that what we experience as matter is but one important domain of the many domains of quantum possibilities of consciousness—the domain that we experience through our senses.

The psychologist Carl Jung discovered empirically that there are three more domains of conscious possibilities that we experience: feeling (of vitality), thinking (of meaning), and intuition (of supramental themes—archetypes—that we value) (figure 1-4). Recent work by Rupert Sheldrake (1981), Roger Penrose (1989), and the author (Goswami, 1999, 2001) has established that feeling, thinking, and intuition, respectively, cannot be reduced to material movement; they really do belong to independent domains or compartments of consciousness. These domains are variously recognized as the vital energy body that we feel, the mental meaning body that we think, and the supramental theme body of consciousness (archetypes) that we intuit. All these compartments are nonlocally connected (without signals) through consciousness; consciousness mediates their interaction and there is no dualism involved (figure 1-5).

FIGURE 1-4. The four ways of experiencing according to Jung. The dominance of one or another gives us four personality traits.

FIGURE 1-5. Quantum psychophysical parallelism. Consciousness mediates for physical, vital, mental, and supramental domains of quantum possibilities functioning in parallel.

Try to comprehend this figure; this is a breakthrough in the logjam of our thinking that has existed ever since Descartes. Our “inner” psyche (the conglomerate of vital, mental, and supramental that we experience as inner) and “outer” material world are not separate; they are parallel, ongoing possibilities of one interconnectedness that we call consciousness. This way of conceptualizing can be called a quantum psychophysical parallelism. It is consciousness that maintains the parallelism of the inner psyche and the outer world, and it is consciousness that causally chooses the experiences of both the outer and the parallel inner thus mediating between them. In the process, consciousness projects representations of the “subtle” inner onto the “gross” outer to experience the subtle in gross manifestation. It is like drawing a sketch of a subtle mental picture on a gross canvas to see it better. The mental picture acts like a blueprint that you represent on canvas. (How does the outer-inner distinction arise? This is explained in chapter 10.)

This is the central secret of how the world operates. Manifest reality, the world of our inner and outer experiences, is run by one central intentionality: to allow quantum consciousness, God, to experience its subtlest aspects, the supramental archetypes (such as love) in gross manifestation. So far in its evolution, consciousness has been using blueprints—the vital and the mental—to make the manifest representations (software) of the supramental on the physical (hardware). The future of our evolution can now also be told: consciousness some day will additionally make direct representations of the archetypes onto the physical, and heaven will descend to the earth, so to speak.

If you are tuned to the religious and the spiritual, here you will hear the echo of the Biblical saying, “God makes us in His/Her own image.” At first, when you don't understand it, the statement jars you. Can Adolf Hitler be God's image? “Image” means representation. So far in our evolution, the representational process, image making, has been less than perfect. God has been using the blueprints of the vital and the mental. And the results have been rough and progress slow. But the prognosis for the future is glorious.

You can also understand something else. The reason that the material compartment has historically dominated our science is that the material makes (quasi) permanent representations of the experiences of the subtle levels of the psyche. Once the representations (software) are made in the material (hardware), we tend to forget the maker (consciousness) and the representation-making process (of using the blueprints—mind and the vital body).

Basically, what then is emerging is a second kind of scientific evidence for God. This consists of recognizing the many domains or “mansions” in which God's downward causation takes abode beyond the material mansion (as for example, feeling, thinking, and intuiting). Phenomena in these nonmaterial domains are all impossible problems for the materialist's upward causation model. And hence they require the solution that's impossible from a materialist's point of view: downward causation from God. Naturally, the introduction of these ideas is revolutionizing biology, psychology, and medicine. (See Parts Two, Three, and Four.)

CAMOUFLAGE

It is our patterns of habit, the ego/character that is the locus of our psychosocial conditioning, that camouflage God and the oneness of quantum consciousness. Why is this camouflage necessary? The answer is important. Our egos are necessary to give us a reference point. Without the ego, who would we be?

Similarly, the material macro world of massive objects acts as a camouflage that hides their quantum nature. Like all waves, quantum possibility waves also spread. When an electron is released at rest in a room, its wave of possibility spreads so fast that in a few moments it fills the room (in possibility): it is possible to detect the electron in various places in the room with varying probability. But in quantum mathematics, massive objects expand very sluggishly as a wave of possibility. Yet expand they do, make no mistake about it. To see through the camouflage, you must not get sidetracked by trying to see any runaway movement of the micro components of a macro body, which are bound to the center of their mass. They do their quantum waving while standing in place. Really, in the time it takes you to blink your eyes, the center of a macro object's mass is able to move by one million-trillionth of a centimeter or so. This movement is imperceptible to our eyes, but physicists, with their wonderful laser instruments, have measured such quantum movements.

Why such a camouflage? Again, it is to give us reference points for our physical bodies. If you and I manifest some of the same stuff at basically the same places every time we look, we can talk about it with one another; we can build a consensus reality. This is important. Even more important, macro physical objects can be used to represent subtler quantum objects, such as thoughts, that do tend to run away when we are not observing them. It is a good thing, too. Imagine how you would feel if, as you were reading this page, the printed letters were running away before your eyes due to their quantum movements. Of course, there is a downside to this fixity—we develop the misconception that the world of macro objects is separate from us!

To discover that we are not separate from the universe, that the entire world is our playground, we have to penetrate both of these camouflages. We have to move beyond the ego-conditioning. We have to stop being so enamored of the macro physical outer environment and look at the subtle inner environment, where objects move about with their quantum freedom much more intact.

The sun rises in the East and sets in the West. Our ancestors understood this as the evidence that the sun moves around the earth. Today we see it differently, as the evidence that the earth moves around its own axis. This explanation allows for further expansion of our understanding—that the earth moves around the sun rather than the sun around the earth. Similarly, the macro physical world has certain fixities. You can understand this through Newtonian physics and conclude that there is a world out there. Or you can discern that, because the possibility waves of macro objects are sluggish to expand, it is creating the impression that there is a world out there. In other words, there is no such world until you look! This, too, will open enormous doorways for your understanding.

If you learn to think the quantum way, it expands your mind; maybe the movement of thought is also quantum movement. You may ask, is there a way to ascertain the quantum nature of thought without going beyond conditioning? Yes. When you follow the direction of your thought, as when you free-associate during creative thinking, have you noticed how you lose the content of your thoughts? Similarly, if you focus on content, as when you meditate on a mantra, notice that you lose track of where your thought is going. In quantum physics, we call this an uncertainty principle, a sophisticated signature of quantum movement. If thoughts were Newtonian movement, this kind of restriction would never arise (Bohm, 1951).

I read a book, Precision Nirvana, in which the author, Deane H. Shapiro, illustrated what I am trying to say with two cartoons. In the first one, a good-looking girl, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, is asking a bearded scientist type, “Professor, how do you know so much?” To this the professor replies, looking smug, “Because I open my eyes.” In the second cartoon, a student is asking a Zen master serenely sitting in closed-eye meditation, “Master, how do you know so much?” To this the Zen master says, “Because I close my eyes.”

Indeed, the materialist scientists cannot get over the wonders of the outer being forever bound by its camouflage. So blinded they are by the camouflage that they even try to apply their science of the outer world to denigrate the inner as epiphenomena. Didn't Abraham Maslow say that if you have a hammer in your hand, you see every problem as a nail?

And indeed, it is the effort to penetrate this camouflage that has given us the very mature spiritual traditions and their methods for reaching subtle states of consciousness beyond the ego. The camouflage of the separateness of macro objects dissolves from such subtle states of consciousness. But can one see the unity of the outer and the inner, body and mind, without the benefit of higher consciousness?

The paradigm shift of our science now taking place is revealed in depth psychology and transpersonal psychology and the branch of medicine that is called alternative medicine. The paradigm shift is also revealed in the work of organismic biologists who see causal autonomy in the entire biological organism, not merely in its microscopic components. Some evolutionary biologists even see the necessity of invoking “intelligent design” of life to break the shackle of Darwinian beliefs. The practitioners of these branches of science have penetrated the camouflage to some extent. With the help of quantum physics, the penetration of the camouflage is much more extensive, as you will see.

Quantum physics, the visionary window to the subtle, is itself very subtle; it has to be. The Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman used to say, “Nobody understands quantum mechanics.” But he was only talking of materialists. If you are willing to look beyond the remaining vestiges of materialist beliefs, or at least if you are ready to suspend your disbelief about the primacy of consciousness and God, you've already made more progress in understanding quantum physics than many physicists and scientists.

What the Dance Is

To summarize, the old science gave us upward causation and possibilities; the new science rediscovers the agency of choice from these possibilities: God and downward causation. Together they give us the manifest reality where freedom (of the possibility wave) seeks its home in temporary bondage (of the manifest particle).

Descartes, Galileo, and Newton get the credit for most of the old scientific ideas that began the era of what philosophers call modernism. One of Descartes' ideas was inner (which he called mind) and outer (matter) dualism, and we are just now overturning it, although the debate over whether the monism is one based on matter or on consciousness (or God) will probably continue for a while. Descartes also gave us the philosophy of reductionism, and it has had enormous success in the material realm. But as Descartes himself recognized (unfortunately in the context of dualism), reductionism does not describe the workings of the inner realm. There one has to remember the movement of the whole. The outer fragmentation makes us individuals; the inner holism gives us feeling, meaning, goals, and purpose. Together the individual and the whole make up the partners for the dance of reality.

The legacy of Descartes, Galileo, and Newton is causal determinism, giving the scientist the hope of total knowledge and total control over reality. But it fails even for the material realm, in the submicroscopic domain where quantum indeterminacy reigns. Even so, the lure of control and the power that comes with it is so enchanting that most scientists continue to believe in causal determinism. Downward causation, which is free and potentially unpredictable, is anathema to these scientists. God they don't mind as long as it is a benign God.

The breakdown of causal determinism is just a trickle in the realm of submicroscopic physics. This is because in the material domain, at least statistical determinism holds, God builds the material world in such a way as to give us a reference point. But the trickle of freedom becomes an avalanche when it comes to the affairs of the inner. It's important to note that creativity requires movement toward the new as well as the fixity of the old. The outer—soma—gives us the fixity and the inner—psyche—gives us new movement. Together they make the dance of reality creative.