How Consciousness Became the Universe: Quantum Physics, Cosmology, Neuroscience, Parallel Universes Paperback – February 11, 2017

This book is a compendium of articles written on the subject of the relation between human consciousness and the universe we inhabit. Let's be clear that this is no "easy read". A background of physics, biology, and cosmology are assumed. I however found it to be an eye-opening journey into a region of science that borders philosophy, metaphysics, and - yes-science!. I do recommend the book to those who are seriously interested in the issues relating our existence in the is universe.

This book indicates that science will soon review heavily its foundations epistemologically, beginning with scientific method. This is too much reductionist, obsessively linear (formalist), unidimensional (materialistic) etc. Quantum physics was perhaps the beginning, with the troubling discovery that the observer is part of the observed, although reality doesn’t depend on being observed to exist, surely. We don’t determine reality; it is greater and previous than us – it would be a dumb anthropocentrism to postulate that observed reality is the entire possible reality. Hardest challenge is to explain consciousness – little development was made till now; the thesis that “consciousness became the universe” is nice imagination (as big bang), but lacks any support (at least falsifiable). What we don’t understand we consider as nature “principle” – it was ever there… Very poor explanation. It would be more honest to recognize we don’t have a satisfactory answer; we need to change our scientific method…

This is not light bedtime reading. It is surprising that some much is written about this subject namely the mind and quantum properties and how they react. This volume has extensive references by all the authors who appear to be scholars of the first order. If this is something that interests you, it makes a good read.

This is a collection of scientific papers that dive deep into biology, cosmology, quantum and mechanical physics, philosophy and spirituality in an attempt to explain the mystery of all that is.If one will stay the course and absorb what one can, given the erudite content, you may be rewarded with a deep satisfaction of understanding of all that is. To ignore the possibility of what these articles point us to is to not allow oneself to be expanded and exposed to a unified theory of the cosmos that nothing short of amazing and beautiful.

This book is a large collection of apparently unedited academic papers which are loosely organized around the topic of the connection, if any, between human consciousness (although in a couple of the papers the non-human variety is considered) and the physical universe. The book has no table of contents, nor does it evidence any attempt at organization. There is no indication that any of these papers were published, or where, and most appear to be drafts as they are replete with grammatical and spelling errors. It really looks like Chopra gave his file of papers on the subject sent him by those who thought he would be interested, and which he gave to the publishers without any instructions on how to present them. Unless you have some background in quantum theory and the neurological aspects of consciousness this will be a difficult read. Most of the papers take a cautious approach to the subject and avoid any categorical conclusions, but many try to make the case that consciousness "creates" reality because, in the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics, our track of reality out of all the possibilities in the multiverse is selected by the action of a conscious observer. Many of the papers are painfully simplistic in their arguments, but others are quite sophisticated. In any event, it is not until the final few papers tucked at the end of the volume that we learn that there is a dissenting view, and that Chopra's entire enterprise may well be stillborn, as the nature, or even the necessity of a conscious observer, in the sense advanced by Chopra and his colleagues, is highly questionable. While there is much information and a few interesting ideas here, the book resembles a flea market rather than a coherent volume advancing a carefully constructed thesis. I gave it one star not so much for the content, but for the fact that neither the lead authors nor the publisher put in the effort of editing this collection required to create a coherent book.

Quite detailed papers about various topics related to quantum physics; some of them describe connections with the metaphysical and paranormal phenomena from a scientific standpoint and most include descriptions of relationships with consciousness. There's a lot of mind-blowing stuff in these papers about time and how quantum physics necessarily means there can be future events affecting the present and the past and the observer's role in time perspectives, etc. I certainly did not understand everything but I did read it all and many of the scientific explanations are intriguing. There are conflicting theories and many present redundant views; one very lengthy paper was admittedly quite circuitous and the author kept repeating himself, which could have been edited down to a much shorter version. This book is a collection by numerous authors, who all present numerous references.I would not classify this as light reading and many readers may not enjoy this sort of book. It was obviously written for other than the layperson so be prepared to not understand a lot of this if you are not a not a classical physicist but I don't think you have to understand all the physics completely in order to enjoy the implications of many of the theories. Maybe some of this actually narrows the span between the individual and the cosmos, between the metaphysical and the scientific, between the material and the spiritual. Maybe, if even some of this is true, we might, in fact, be connected to everything else, to something larger than ourselves, and maybe there is somewhere to be found the elusive theory of everything that Einstein and others have quested for for so long.

Buenas ideas que son plasmadas de una manera entendible hasta cierto punto.El libro es bueno en cuanto a que te plantea hipótesis y escenarios que podrían ser posibles, pero es un tanto desatinado en que las posibilidades de los escenarios son muy bajas, en el mejor de los casos, y en el peor: pseudocientíficas.De todos modos es un libro entretendio con ciertas bases válidas para echar a volar la imaginación por un rato.

Stupidly assembled articles concerning consciousness and others as shown in the titleThe editor(s), if any of this book, is very bad guy. No copyrighted year, publishers of every article of this book are shown. I wonder if the editor obtained the permissions for including these articles in this book. Very bad book!

This book is pretty heavy reading and it lost me often but still more than worth it for the bits I could comprehend or nearly comprehend .. 😉

This is the "Bible" on the subject!This is as much as anyone knows about Consciousness to date.A reference book!

This is just a haphazard collection of articles written by different people. Almost all articles are so much full of high-sounding technical jargons that few can understand its meaning. Since this is only a collection of articles, the theme of the book has not been developed gradually in an easy to understand manner. Every writer just starts bombarding the reader with his high-sounding exotic words which make no sense. Nobody even bothers to explain his basic concepts. Very very disappointed. Do not buy this book.