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This dissertation explores how the quantum vacuum, a field of fluctuating virtual energies, and Universal Consciousness, a realm of pure awareness, together form an interconnected reality that underlies existence and makes knowledge possible. This unified reality is characterized by a fundamental “no-thing-ness” or “emptiness,” accessible through an apophatic experience of “unknowing” that is essential for an integral understanding of reality that bridges the gaps between science, religion, philosophy, and mysticism.
This study draws on the process-relational ontology of Alfred North Whitehead and exemplifies the evolution of thought of systems theorist Ervin Laszlo from scientific reductionism to “New Paradigm Science,” in which both the quantum vacuum and consciousness constitute foundational elements of the universe.
By tracing the evolution of Laszlo’s writings and the paradigm-shifting philosophy of Whitehead, this dissertation aims to demonstrate that traditional materialistic science and systems theories are inadequate for fully understanding the nature of reality. The need for an integral approach to reality and knowledge lies rooted in the quantum nature of reality as well as in a whole brain approach to reality that reaches beyond materialistic empiricism to include mysticism and Eastern philosophies of mind.
This work includes an online research survey entitled “Human Subtle Energy Awareness,” which employed four basic questions and two open-answer questions to measure participants’ experience of feeling the subtle energy of other people’s emotions. The results clearly demonstrate that 90% or more respondents felt the subtle energy of other people’s emotions, leading to a theory of emotional energies as transpersonal fields of the subtle energy of consciousness. This lays a foundation for understanding consciousness as permeating the Universe via fields of subtle energy.
Ultimately, this dissertation argues that the interconnected nature of the quantum vacuum and Universal Consciousness provides a holistic framework for understanding reality, as together they form a unified onto-epistemological ground which evokes a silence of the mind and an opening of the heart to a deeper knowledge of the cosmos via embodied sacramental felt states of the unity of human–Nature.