Book Summary by Clayton Montez, M.A.

---

Atlantic University

     “We are not immortal. But our experience is.” So says the distinguished philosopher and scientist Ervin Laszlo who spent 40 years researching the significance of the Akashic record.

     Mystics and sages revere the Akashic record as the constant and enduring memory of the universe. The clairvoyant Edgar Cayce frequently tapped into these memories for past-life and health readings: “And by the records in time and space, as we have moved through the realms of His kingdom, we have left our mark upon same” (Reading 1567-2). Laszlo ties these wisdom traditions with the best of modern science to show empirically what the Akashic record means for us.

     Laszlo explains in his new book, Science and the Akashic Record, An Integral Theory of Everything that “all things in the world are recorded and all things inform one another.” The lived experiences of all people – what they think, feel and perceive – is read into the Akashic record or what scientists call the “A-field”. These historical markers never fade and are accessible over and over again regardless of whether the people whose experiences we relive are living or dead.

     Therefore, Laszlo claims that other worldly encounters, such as with past-life recall, out of body experiences, and contact with the deceased, are often misunderstood as establishing a connection with an ethereal entity. Instead, he suggests that the ideas, images and impressions entering our consciousness are grounded in the “collective memory bank of humankind”, the A-field. “It is not our individual body and our individual soul, but our individual experiences that achieves immortality”, says Laszlo.

     An age-old intuition, the Akashic record is getting a fresh look as an all-encompassing cosmic information field that connects organisms and minds in the biosphere, and particles, stars, and galaxies throughout the cosmos. Although we cannot perceive the A-field with our physical senses, Laszlo illustrates examples where it produces effects that can be detected. These discoveries led him through a life-long process of piecing together cutting edge theories in diverse fields such as cosmology, quantum physics, biology, and consciousness research.

     Starting with the field of cosmology, it is a critical link to understanding the A-field because it looks at the relationship of the universe with living matter. Theoretically, the critical threshold of matter density and its relative influence on gravity with the forces of expansion and contraction determines a universe’s capacity for supporting life. Our existence depends upon what the cosmologists call a “flat” universe.

In this scenario, matter is precisely at the critical value that the forces of expansion and contraction balance each other. Still, the many known galaxies are found to be ever expanding and we are not being pulled apart with it. Laszlo remarks that there is more gravitational pull in the cosmos than visible matter can account for. He proposes that unseen particles and forces, better explained by quantum theory, mysteriously maintain a semblance of order to compensate for the growing universe.

     Laszlo reasons that a universe such as ours – with galaxies and stars, and life on this and presumably other life-supporting planets – is not likely to have come about by chance. He cites calculations by Roger Penrose that our universe is 10^10(123) among alternate universe possibilities. Accordingly, the Big Bang conjecture that accounts for creation owes its existence to a pre-conceived blueprint; information initiated by a cosmic vacuum from a pre-existing universe called a metaverse – the mother of our universe and perhaps of a vast number of other universes.

     At the beginning of the 21^st Century, new observations and experiments proved the mechanistic, predictable world of Newtonian science inadequate. Even Albert Einstein’s theories strayed from the strangeness of the quantum world. In this world, quantum physicists discovered that the foundation of physical reality has no uniquely determinable location, and it exists in several ordinary states at the same time.

Hence, space is not empty and time is not consistent. However, beneath the mystery of random order and unpredictability lies what physicist David Bohm calls the “implicate order” that codifies the deeper level of reality within a holofield. What we see as real is the “explicate order”, which is the constant unfolding of the holofield.

     Until the 1980’s, this extraordinary snapshot of the real world was confined to the exploration of the microscopic world. Soon experiments started to replicate what Thomas Young found out about the nature of light as early as 1801. The ultra-small particle called a photon could be detected as a wave.

Furthermore, these waves could be emitted under laboratory conditions for a few seconds or at intervals of thousands of years from stellar objects elsewhere in the Universe. Eventually, scientists concluded that particles have a way of becoming intrinsically “entangled” with each other so that each particle within a targeted quantum system would have unique coded information.

     While quantum science experiments are too complex to go into any great detail, it is noteworthy that quantum physicists were able to manipulate the coded information of the entangled particles and found some interesting results.

     One important experiment by Albert Einstein and his colleagues Boris Podolski and Nathan Rosen in 1935 showed that two particles in proximity could influence each other’s rate of motion and direction. Later others discovered that the two paired particles would complement each other when separated at great distances.

When the first particle was measured, the second particle collapsed immediately into the complementary state. Laszlo writes, “An instantaneous effect propagates from particle A to particle B, conveying precise information on what is measured. B “knows” when A is measured, for what parameter and with what result, for it assumes its own state accordingly.”

     Alan Aspect in 1980 and Nicolus Gisin in 1997 empirically demonstrated that these particles could communicate with each other regardless of the distance that separates them or to difference in time.

     These experiments support the notion that quantum vacuum not only transports light, energy, pressure, and sound, it can convey information. Laszlo reasons that particles linked within the quantum vacuum can carry information on the state of the whole universe in much the same way that objects are linked in the sea: by making and receiving waves.

To illustrate, imagine that each sea-going vessel or organism produces waves when moving about in the water. Its waves impact upon the motion of other objects or creatures. The patterns created by overlapping waves from the combined activities “in-forms” each and every object in the water.

     Unlike the sea’s memory that dissipates when acted upon by external forces, such as the wind, gravity and shorelines, the attenuating waves in a vacuum move without resistance. Thereby, Laszlo suggests that the wave memory of particles may be eternal. He proposes a daring hypothesis: “The quantum vacuum generates the holographic field that is the memory of the universe.”

     In the spring of 2004 milestone experiments by two teams of physicists, one at the National Institute of Standards in Colorado and the other at the University of Innsbruck in Austria demonstrated that the quantum state of entire atoms can be teleported by transporting the quantum bits that define the atoms.

     Briefly, Laszlo explains that the two charged atoms and a third encoded atom show a real world possibility of teleportation. Like the experiment described above, when the first atom is measured, the second atom transforms: it assumes the exact state that is encoded in the third atom. Because the process destroys the superposed quantum state of the first atom and re-creates the same state in the third atom, it appears to emulate science fiction’s idea of beaming objects from one place to another.

     While beaming entire objects or people is beyond the present scope, state-of-the-art teleportation experiments show that human thoughts and images can transfer in the same way that the atoms did in the above experiment. When two people are emotionally close to each other, a third person concentrates on a given thought or image.

A deep transpersonal connection is then created between the first and third person by having them pray or meditate together. At the very instant of this newly formed connection, the thought or image that the third person was concentrating on vanishes from his or her mind, and it reappears in the mind of the second person of the original pairing.

This example of human-level teleportation shows potential for future transfers of large amounts of information without hardwiring, and at great distances as if operating through a quantum computer.

     The above tests are said to exemplify a new paradigm in science because it shows the interaction of non-local, random sub-atomic particles in a vacuous space that has no known form of communication: it does not expend energy, and it transcends the hitherto known bounds of space and time. Laszlo deduces that this instant “informational” interaction is most likely within the realm of the A-field, a physically real information field.

     The theory of quantum fields also reaches out to explain the system-wide correlation among molecules, genes, cells, and organs in living organisms. No matter how diverse the various organic systems that make up the organism, they are all in instant and continuous communication.

The entire organism appears to be interlinked with quasi-instant, non-linear, heterogeneous, and multi-dimensional correlations that supercede dependency on biochemistry alone.

     The level of coherence in the organism gives it the appearance of a macroscopic quantum system. In 1995, Eric A. Cornell, Wolfgang Ketterle, and Earl E. Weiman discovered that certain conditions in living tissue would produce interpenetrating waves among separate particles and atoms.

     They found that molecules and molecular assemblies would vibrate or resonate at the same or compatible frequencies even when they are separated and distant from each other. The correlation between the matching frequencies creates what quantum biologists call a “macroscopic wave function” as it applies to the entire organism.

     Systematic biology, when combined with quantum physics, adds a novel twist to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Darwin held that species survival depends upon adaptability to the environment through random mutations and natural selection. Yet a modern understanding of the DNA code within an organism’s cell shows that random arrangement within the DNA structure is unlikely to sustain the life of a species. Laszlo points out that an “irreducibly complex” organism cannot just change parts and expect the whole to survive.

     When an organism is viewed as a quantum system, researchers have found that electromagnetic fields and quantum fields trigger adaptive mutations within the DNA structure. Mutations become a necessary outcome through an interconnected system of genes and the environment.

Laszlo adds, “Quantum fields determine the coherency of the organism and its capacity to be coherently linked with the world around it. Being a quantum system, it is linked to other organisms as well as to it’s vital environment much as quanta are linked through space and time: through the A-field, the information field of the vacuum.”

     The information field that links quanta and galaxies in the physical universe and cells and organisms in the biosphere also links the brains and minds in the realm of consciousness.

     Amongst the diverse strategies used to study consciousness, e.g., non-locality, biofeedback, meditation, etc., the studies show that the human mind is not an isolated entity. Consciousness is essentially shared by all of humanity.

     Laszlo illustrates in Science and the Akashic Field the research that shows that we all have access to a “celestial receiver”, but we lost touch with the vague and meaningful images, intuitions and feelings that connect us to the subtle extrasensory world around us.

Conversely, many tribal peoples seem to have the uncanny ability to know things that occur beyond their physical senses, such as a sudden hunch of an ill family member miles away. And ancient cultures from around the world such as the Aztecs, Zulus, Malays, and Chinese have lived far apart in space and time, but their monuments and history tell a story of shared patterns of a transcultural connection.

     Furthermore, modern day experiments including studies of remote viewing, thought transference, EEG synchronicity, dousing and Near Death Experiences, demonstrate a preponderance of evidence that consciousness is not confined to individual interpretations of personal experiences, but is indeed an overarching connection with everything in the world that transcends both space and time.

     Stanislov Grof’s investigation into “dual unity”, for example, shows that one person could merge experientially with someone else immediately present or distant, and alive as well as dead.

Identification with the other individual is totally complex, involving body image, physical sensation, emotional reaction and attitudes, typical gestures and mannerisms, postures, movement, and even similarities in voice inflection. He also found that consciousness could be expanded to include larger groups “with some shared racial, cultural, national, political, or professional characteristic.”

     The universality of consciousness, and its imprint upon the quantum field in Laszlo’s reasoning, brings to bear that we humans create an Akashic record of our lifetime experiences, a record that is not limited to ourselves and to our individual existence. The cumulative information in the Akashic record or A-field is vast; it embraces other humans as well as other forms of life, and all things in the universe.

     Laszlo’s vision of reality purports that this rediscovery of connectedness through the Akashic record validates our sense of belonging, of oneness:

We have met the cosmos, and it is us!

To order this book from Amazon.com, click here!