Book Description
The most fundamental scientific fact is not the existence of the physical universe, but our awareness of that universe. Not even the most advanced physics, physiology or psychology, however, can explain even the most elementary qualities of our sensory awareness of that universe - qualities such as redness for example. Qualia used to be defined as sensory qualities such as colour and tone. But what if awareness is not an empty receptable for sensory impressions, but has its own intrinsic sensual qualities of the sort we experience as the inwardly sensed shape and substantiality of our bodies, the sensed lightness or darkness colour or tone of our moods, or a sensed feeling of warmth or coolness, closeness or distance to another human being? What if such sensual qualities of awareness are intrinsically meaningful being the felt essence of meaning or sense?
In The Qualia Revolution Peter Wilberg puts forward the radical hypothesis that it is not energetic quanta but qualia in this sense sensed and sensual qualities of awareness that are the basic stuff of which the universe is composed. It argues that qualia are not simply qualities of our own human awareness but fundamental units of awareness. Atoms, molecules and cells are recognised as the physical form taken by field-patterns of atomic, molecular and cellular awareness composed of such units. The soul is understood as an ever-changing gestalt of such units, each of which possess characteristics of both unit and field, particle and wave - allowing the soul-qualities of our own awareness to mix and merge with those of all other beings.
Drawing on the dynamic field-phenomenology of Michael Kosok, the SETH books of Jane Roberts, and Eugene Gendlins philosophy of directly felt meaning or sense, The Qualia Revolution rearticulates Rudolf Steiners vision of a truly "spiritual science" of nature and man, and Karl Marx vision of a "natural science of man" that is at the same time a "human science of nature". It lays the theoretical foundations for a Cosmic Qualia Science with immediate practical implications in such key areas of human life as ethics and economics, education and medicine.
Cosmic Qualia Science represents a most radical shift in our understanding of what constitutes science and scientific knowledge - not merely a quantum leap but a Qualia Revolution. Starting from the understanding that it is not energetic fields but fields and field-qualities of awareness that constitute the fundamental nature of reality, it challenges the foundations of both conventional energy-science and New Age pseudo-science, with its talk of subtle energies and energy medicine. In their place it presents a qualitative physics of consciousness and the cosmos in which GOD not only might but must have a place as that primordial field of awareness that is the source of all qualia and all quantised energy.