Chapter 13 – Quantum Psychology
The first time I came across the term Quantum Psychology was in 1992, in Danah Zohar’s book The Quantum Self. Some years later, I read Stephen Wolinsky’s Quantum Consciousness where he expands further on quantum-physical and Eastern train of thoughts, on David Bohm’s, and others’ ideas that everything is connected. Quantum Psychology can also be seen as a continuation of directions within psychology which assume that there is an underlying whole; as seen in Roberto Assagioli’s Psychosynthesis with the higher Self, Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy with an emphasis on finding a higher meaning in life – and Jung’s “Collective Unconscious”, among others. Quantum Psychology thus proceeds from the emerging worldview which gives rise to a paradigm shift also within psychology.
In Quantum Psychology, we no longer see “the self” as something isolated and separate, but in relation to its surroundings, entwined with the underlying whole. The self is a part of consciousness. As David Bohm says: “The proposal that mankind is ’the many’ is valid up to a point, but beyond that point it fails”. The many eventually blend into one and in the end everything appears to be one big consciousness.
Quantum Psychology studies the underlying field or the unchanging background, often compared to a movie screen. The screen on which the whole of our life’s story plays out, while we are so preoccupied with our own activities that we rarely discover that underlying whole. We are so used to compartmentalizing our lives, to seeing the world divided into individual parts, things and events. But are there really any borders not invented by mankind? If we look down from space, we can see that there are no actual borders on the Earth itself – the borders exist only in our minds. “Cosmos is a seamless whole.”
In Quantum Psychology we practice being aware of this unchanging whole in our experience of the world – being aware of the space between objects, the silence between words, between notes. Seeing the energy aspect in everything – in thoughts, feelings, concepts, language, matter, sound and silence, and seeing the void as a living, vibrating energy. When we learn to include this space in our experiences, we gain a wider picture of reality, a stronger capacity to observe “particle reality”, matter and the thought processes that arise in consciousness. We get a distance that makes it easier to choose what we want to identify with and to avoid unconscious identification with one thing or the other.
Sit comfortably and relax, look around and practice noticing the space between things – the energy world. See, listen to and feel the space – the vibrating energy – around us. With practice, you can be just as comfortable with the energy world as with the manifest world.
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