In The Quantum Self, Danah Zohar argues that the insights of modem physics can illuminate our understanding of everyday life -- our relationships to ourselves, to others, and to the world at large. Guiding us through the strange and fascinating workings of the subatomic realm to create a new model of human consciousness, the author addresses enduring philosophical questions. Does the new physics provide a basis by which our consciousness might continue beyond death? How does the material world (for instance, (...) ugly inner cities) impinge upon our sense of self? Is there a subatomic wellspring from which our creativity, our empathy with others, and our feelings of unity with the inanimate world originate?Most important, Zohar shows how the vitality of the new physics combats the alienation and fragmentation of twentieth-century life, and replaces it with a model of reality in which the universe itself may possess a type of consciousness, of which human consciousness is one expression. (shrink)

Draws on analogies beteween quantum reality and the dynamics of self to argue that humans can change their social perceptions, values and behavior.

There have been suggestions that the unity of consciousness may be related to the kind of holism depicted only in quantum physics. This argument will be clarified and strengthened. It requires the brain to contain a quantum system with the right properties — a Bose-Einstein condensate. It probably does contain one such system, as both theory and experiment have indicated. In fact, we cannot pay full attention to a quantum whole and its parts simultaneously, though we may oscillate between the (...) two. In a quantum theory of consciousness, emergent meanings arise as an inevitable consequence of Heisenberg''s Uncertainty Principle. (shrink)

Combining physics, philosophy and psychology, this book offers a revolutionary theory of the origins and nature of consciousness in terms of the new physics, pointing the way towards a new vision of the human self and its relationships, hence a new "quantum psychology" and a new "quantum morality". Written in an accessible style that makes quantum physics comprehensible, this book aims to interest anyone interested in the dynamics of the human personality and its dialogue with the physical world.;The author has (...) also written "Through the Time Barrier: A Study of Precognition and Modern Physics". (shrink)