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This episode of Nonviolence Radio features Dr. Amit Goswami, founder of the Center for Quantum Activism and former professor at the University of Oregon. Amit talks to Stephanie and Michael about the relationship between quantum physics and nonviolence.
One of the basic ideas he puts forth as essential to quantum physics is the notion that the universe — at its core and most fundamental — is immaterial consciousness. This challenges the basic tenets of materialism (the theory underlying much contemporary science), which posits that ultimately, the universe is made up of physical stuff and is governed by universal natural laws. If we accept (or at least consider) the principles of quantum physics, genuine choice and agency become possibilities. We are not reduced to being human machines, compelled by external forces (the laws of nature) to react — often violently — to those around us. Instead we can act creatively, spontaneously and nonviolently.
…in quantum physics, forces, which is the way that we change people, subjugate people to our way of thinking, by applying a force, that’s Newtonian. But in quantum physics, forces can only give you possibilities to choose from, and you don’t have to choose that one [the violent one]. You can choose also persuasion.
So, in quantum physics, force is replaced by choice. The other is choosing the violent way. So, you can change your choice by being humble, by being persuasive, by being straightforward, by being authentic, by exemplifying what you are saying, not using violence.
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Stephanie: Greetings, everybody. And welcome to another episode of Nonviolence Radio. I’m your host, Stephanie Van Hook, and I’m here with my co-host and news anchor of the Nonviolence Report, Michael Nagler. Michael?
Michael: Hello everyone. Delighted to be back with you.
Stephanie: Great. Well, today we will have an interview with Doctor Amit Goswami. He’s the founder of the Center for Quantum Activism, former professor from the University of Oregon who is doing interesting research in the science of nonviolence, specifically around shifting the way that we understand consciousness and the brain and making sense of the whole world through flipping around the theory of consciousness.
Michael, do you want to say a couple of words about why the science of nonviolence is so important and why the work of Goswami you find is so interesting?
Michael: Sure. I would love to. First of all, I think the quantum revolution, which started at the beginning of the last century, has put us in the position of an unfinished revolution, otherwise known as a kind of suspended paradigm shift where the world is shifting from a situation of materialist reductionism, as it’s called, where everything is regarded as based on material particles, to a world where everything is based on energy cannot be understood apart from consciousness.
And that’s important for us because nonviolence does not operate materially. Nonviolence operates spiritually, if you will, in the domain of consciousness. So, I became very interested in the work of Dr. Goswami when I heard him speak at a conference in San Francisco.
He’s one of those quantum theorists who is aware of the revolutionary significance of this discovery. And that’s why we interviewed him here for you on Nonviolence Radio.
Stephanie: That’s great. Michael, thank you so much for that introduction. And, you know, you’re teaching a course right now on the science of nonviolence. So, we have a partial interview to share with people in the show because we definitely want to have our news segment, our Nonviolence Report, a little bit close to the end, so you won’t hear the full interview. You’ll hear a lot of it, and you’ll be able to find the rest of it at NonviolenceRadio.org or at the Metta Center’s website, MettaCenter.org. So, let’s turn now to our interview with Doctor Goswami.
Amit: Well, I was a physics professor at the University of Oregon for quite a while. And of course, towards the middle of my career, I became interested in consciousness because quantum physics forces us to look at consciousness, the observer effect.
From the beginning, it was very clear that the observer has to play a role. In the measurement theory, how we measure quantum objects, it becomes very clear. An observer is instrumental to change a quantum object from a possibility, an object of possibility, to an actual object.
So that’s what began to interest me. If you do it in the usual way, consciousness as a brain phenomenon, it went nowhere. So, that was the paradox. How can consciousness be a brain phenomenon? That was the belief system scientists still have – scientific materialism it’s called. Whereas measurement theory shows that the agent that converts waves of possibility into particles of actuality, they have to be non-material.
So, how could non-material enter science? That was the challenge. Of course, the answer was right before everybody. I just happened to discover it in a wonderful night, sudden intuition, that consciousness is the ground of being. Matter is just a possibility in consciousness. So, consciousness chooses out of the matter waves the actual events that we experience. In the process, consciousness identifies with our brain, the observer’s brain. So that’s more or less the story.
A few more aspects have to be added, psychophysical parallelism, and all that. So, I did all that. And of course, you know, ever since – that was 1990 when I started talking about this, writing about this, and eventually wrote the book Self-Aware Universe, but I have been researching consciousness ever since. And now I can very happily say that we have a full paradigm based on quantum science, science within consciousness, to replace the scientific materialist hypothesis.
This new paradigm integrates science and spirituality to all of the great institutions that we have. You know, there is no need for worldview polarization between religion and science. Agreed that religion is dogmatic, but so is science in the current way. Scientific materialism is also dogmatic.
So, in this way, we can talk about nonviolence in a very scientific way. If we are all originating from the same source, if we are ultimately the same consciousness that works through us, then it is complete ignorance to be violent to each other.
Actually, very recently anthropologists are finding that this nonviolence started something like, probably hundreds of thousand years ago, but it culminated in a process called self-domestication about 70,000 years ago. And then from that, we developed altruism. That’s instinct for about 40% of us. But the other 60% still are quite violent.
So, the issue of nonviolence is basically a challenge of transformation. How do we transform using creativity, using the archetype of goodness, bring that into the equation of power, and learn to be nonviolent with each other?
And then that is just the beginning of a series of progress that we can make that will increase our happiness, our health, our intelligence, and all that. I mean, it is all unfolding. In my own work with Valentina Onisor, who is a medical doctor who has added much new energy to the work.
And so, yes, we should talk about nonviolence. We can talk about it for hours, but the basis of it is very simple. It’s that spiritual tradition saying all along: We are coming from one source, and therefore we should not be violent. That’s very clear.
The aspect of consciousness that tells us this, we call goodness. And goodness, of course, we see it as a dichotomy, good or evil. And that means that there should be, and would be, some battle between the dichotomous elements because of the ignorance. But as soon as you penetrate the ignorance, goodness will eventually prevail and violence will disappear from human society, just as the nonviolence began 70,000 years ago. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait 70,000 years more for achieving that state of nonviolence of the entire humanity. Maybe it will happen in a couple of hundred years from now.
Michael: Tying in with what you just said, Doctor Goswami, I don’t think we have even seven years to work this out.
I’m a little bit hesitant because my next question is kind of a technical one. And on the heels of your marvelous overview, it’s going to seem a little bit trivial, but maybe it will get the ball rolling. And I think you probably don’t need much to launch into some profundity. So let me tell you what I had.
The Hindu concept of [chanum], a moment, as you might, I like to think of it as, Planck length in time, that is the smallest imaginable unit of time, is developed, by the Buddhists into [chanakavada], the doctrine of momentariness. And it always has seemed to me, in my amateurish way, that this was an anticipation of quantum theory. But that being Indians, the focus was on mental reality rather than physical reality. I just would like to get your thoughts on that, your comment on that.
Amit: Yeah. I mean, the whole Buddhist philosophy, metaphysics, is very much in tune with quantum physics. The language sometimes it’s a little bit confusing because quantum physics – in quantum physics we do talk about consciousness as the ground, whereas in Buddhist, there’s a tendency of saying, “No-God.” Consciousness is the ground of being is very much like, “Call it God, what’s the harm?” kind of thing.
And I sometimes I like the word God, so I sometimes myself, you know, use God for consciousness. Some kind of power has to be there, right, to create reality.
But Buddhism, sometimes is misunderstood, I think, when they call it, “No-God.” That’s not what it’s saying. Buddha said – if you read Buddha himself, then you don’t find much metaphysical speculation. Buddha was against metaphysics.
So, he just said that he was – he achieved Nirvana. Nirvana means desirelessness. No attachment to physical pleasure. Even you can call everything that is, physical; desire drives us towards them. And Buddha said that one can be desireless because then only one can be truly happy and one can serve all that Buddha did himself.
He did not go to the forest and enjoy his enlightenment, he served people. He tried to make people see things in the right way, remove their ignorance, and so forth. Nonviolence is one of the basic creeds of how one can be good in the world, in their relationships.
So, that being the case, the doctrines sometimes get a little bit too elaborate, and confusing. No-Self, that’s another confusing aspect. But of course, it can all be understood very easily, Buddhism. Because when we say Self, what is the self? When we discover the Self, we find it is not the personal self, it’s the universal self. So, one can easily say that it is No-Self. So, in that way, we can look at our consciousness as having a lot of stuff.
We can also look at consciousness as having nothing but unity. So, I think that is basically the message, that oneness, consciousness of oneness, is that from which the world originates as subject-object. And then the Buddhist principle of pratītyasamutpāda, which is dependent co-arising of subject and object. The world, and at once the conditioned subject that we call the ego arises. This is absolutely vintage Buddhism.
And then I think the rest of it is very advanced epistemology. The epistemology of Buddhism, how to attain Nirvana, is very, very advanced. You know, I don’t even aspire to give up my desires entirely. Because I know very well that desire of teaching, desire of changing worldview, these things drive me. If I give up those desires, I don’t know how that would be.
So, desirelessness is an aspect of our consciousness which comes quite late in our practice. And we practice for many incarnations. So, I think, one does not really need to be involved with Buddhist epistemology so much.
But the little metaphysics that is needed to understand Buddhism is completely agreeable with all the other traditions that look at consciousness. The difficulty that today people have, the reason that some scientists are even giving up on the science of consciousness – you know, the latest I read was that one scientist is seriously proposing that there is no such thing as consciousness.
Cassy: Thank you, Dr. Goswami. In one of your books, you said that God is quantum consciousness. Would you explain to us what that means?
Amit: You know, the word quantum has become very confusing because people are using it everywhere. Quantum haircut is the latest one I heard. I don’t know, there’s some sense, because the haircut is this great array of hair. If you cut that haircut, then it can be called quantum haircut because quantum is discreteness basically.
But of course, that’s not the meaning that I imply as quantum consciousness. What I imply is in the usual spiritual way of understanding consciousness as a oneness – oneness of every ego all is rooted in that oneness. That misses an aspect, which is it introduces all the attributes, but what it misses is the idea that attributes and all aspects of consciousness and all the sources of our experience, they are all beginning as possibility.
And the possibilities are quantum possibilities. So, consciousness and its quantum possibilities – in short, we say quantum consciousness.
If you assume quantum possibility, then consciousness can be introduced into physics very easily by saying, okay, there are these possibility waves. Who collapses them? Who causally affects them? Consciousness does. Consciousness changes them from possibility into actuality. And then we get human experience, including the subject-object split.
The consciousness identifies with the brain that becomes the subject self and object that is experienced is in a given position, that’s the electron and all the measuring apparatus that we put to measure the electron. So, it becomes very clear how the world is created. And then the subject consciousness is still reflective of that oneness. But that gets changed with this dependent co-arising, which is reflection in the mirror of memory. Because quantum physics says the measurement is not complete, perception is not complete, until you make a memory in the brain.
So, this perception and memory, they are the apparatuses that sort of capture consciousness into feeling that I’m separate from the rest of the world. That’s how the subject-object split is created.
So then, you have the basis of explaining all the experiences. It took a while, but of course, we now understand creativity, we understand feelings, we understand emotions, we understand intuitions.
And we can then make a very learned discourse of how human beings can transform from the state of violence that we are in, you know, negative emotions are built into our brain, how we can balance them with positivity and make and become nonviolent. The method has become very clear.
Michael: You know, as the Bhagavad Gita says, when reality is known, how can self injure self? But if you see yourself in another being, how can you bring yourself to injure your own self?
Amit: Yeah. I mean, that’s the biggest mystery. I mean…the problem is that what we are looking for is what is looking.
Michael: In “The Self-Aware Universe” you made a fascinating reference to Gandhiji, which, of course, we seize upon. And I think you were saying that his unusual creativity was, correct me if I’m wrong, but was, in a way, part of the indeterminacy of the quantum world. Would you elaborate on that a little bit?
Amit: Yes. You know, there was a story about Gandhi. Let me start with that story. You know, Gandhi’s two very successful movements, one was the non-cooperation with the British government. And that worked very well. After the success, and the British considered a lot of stuff as a result of that movement, his followers wanted to continue that movement or similar movements. Gandhi wouldn’t do anything.
So, Gandhi stayed close to quiet for like seven years, after a very successful movement. And his disciples really were angry at him. They were not doing anything. They were complaining. And then suddenly there was this Salt Act, and Gandhi said, “Okay, this is one we must protest.” And again, it was hugely successful.
So, then his followers really came to, they said, “How did you know?” And Gandhi said, “See, I was not getting an intuition. For seven years I waited and waited and waited for the intuition to come to me, when is the right time to strike again? And it just wouldn’t come. And then suddenly the intuition came when this Salt Act was enacted.”
So, this is the spirit. Nonviolence is difficult because the violence is built into us, that already manifests in terms of brain circuit. Whereas, the nonviolence is a possibility in us. And to make the possibility actual for a moment, momentarily, is easy. We all have done that. But we have an impulse, and we control it because it’s not practical, or there are many other reasons.
But then violence rises again and rises again, and we cannot handle it. Eventually, we become prone to violence. And although not physical violence, I think, there are many people today who don’t engage in physical violence directly, but we end up supporting violence in some way. We end up in emotional violence with our dear ones. We end up in mental violence in many ways.
You know, right now in America, there’s a lot of mental violence going on for good reasons. But the point is that the way we approach it as violence begets more violence. So, it never stops. The answer, of course, is that nonviolence has to grow from inside of us. It has to be an intuition that often happens not just once or twice during the day, but becomes a conviction, a faith that I cannot be violent to my fellow human.
How that has to grow is through this intuition. Once intuition comes, then we carry out the creative process. And with the creative process, we have an understanding of the archetype of deep understanding, which we call creative insight, that is reached by a discontinuous quantum leap. When that happens, then nonviolence is eradicated from your thinking, from your feelings. It just goes away.
It still remains in the sense that the negative emotional circuits are there, so that there is still some work to be done, making positive emotional circuits. So, we now have brain data. Brain data shows that the negative emotion is all in the limbic brain, the midbrain. In the cortex, there is hardly any positive emotion for some of us who are altruistic instinctually. For them, there is a little bit of positive emotion to have a little bit of ability of nonviolence, and we can grow on that.
But if we take the quantum leap, what happens is if we manifest and manifest and manifest the quantum leap experience, then we make brain circuits a positive emotion. And heart is awakened in the process. So, we truly can then balance negative with positive. And then the negative is still there, but you can squash it right in the brain. It cannot take any actions.
So, that’s how to do it. But it still takes some doing. You know, I’m a scientist, so I experiment on myself, and I experimented on it. It took me years. I mean, it’s no joke. I mean really, to get to that unconditional level of love, it took me literally 30 years.
So, it’s not an easy practice, certainly. But in the process, if we join the process, that itself is enough of an effort that keeps us away from violence, real violence. And violence in the sense of, you know, physically attacking somebody or supporting war, that kind of violence.
You still have violence at the personal, intimate level. That is the one that is the hardest to remove. Violence in the process of even thinking. Like your partner does something wrong and then even thinking that, “Okay, I have to retaliate.” That thinking even is squashed from the beginning. So that’s a bit hard to achieve.
So, on the whole, I would say that we have some ways to go in the transformational journey. And so, you know, Valentina and I have started a transformational system of education. This is our hope that we can really make nonviolent people by educating them into transformation.
Cassy: I am so glad that, Dr. Goswami, you talk about consciousness as mostly about oneness and how you connect it with Gandhi’s movement. Because in one of your books, you said that you believe that life is this expression of vital energy. And to me, I feel like Gandhi’s life is about this energy. What do you think about that? Like, what does this vital energy mean to you?
Amit: Well, vital energy is really energy that feeds life. I mean, literally, vital energy is connected with organ functions. If an organ is functioning properly – here is the new understanding about how organs function. This is very different from how biologists think of it.
You know, they think everything comes from matter and that organs just happen to have some physiological aspects, which sounds purposive, but they pretend that it’s not really purposive. But we can see that, yeah, digestion is for the purpose of survival. Survival is a purpose. It’s not a property of molecules. So, when you properly understand biology, we have to reformulate it.
And then what is survival due to? Well, where does survival come from if not from the genes? Gene is a molecule. It has absolutely no interest in survival. Nothing of survival is written in the gene. Yet, genes have the program to make proteins. And yes, proteins can make bile. Proteins can help digestion. So, how does it do it?
So, consciousness uses fields, organizing fields. Rupert Sheldrake calls these fields morphogenetic fields. So, these morphogenetic fields become the software that guides the organ, guides the organ hardware for making the right proteins to get the right function from an organ. So, if we understand this way, then the vital energy is the energy of these organizing fields of the software that is attached to the hardware.
So, organs provide hardware, matter produces hardware, and these subtle energies, thinking, feeling, these are associated with the software – movement of the software. Once you understand this, then we really get the idea of how a Gandhi is created.
So, we have, you know, the Indians discovered a long time ago that there are seven centers of feelings in our body. They call it chakras. Root chakra, and then chakra of sexual organs, sacral chakra. Then there is the navel chakra, that one is connected with self-esteem. Heart chakra is connected with defensiveness, but transforms into love. And then we have throat chakra that’s connected with the expression. Brow chakra is connected with thinking and elevated thinking, intuition. And then crown chakra is connected with wholeness.
So, once we get that, then also the transformation becomes clear. People become fearful. That’s the root chakra function. List all illumination organs when they are not functioning. Constipation, for example, you will notice people become fearful. Gandhi did not have fear in his heart, in his mind, in his brain. How did he do that? So, he transformed the root chakra from fear into courage.
The transformed the energies of the navel chakra, which is connected to the digestive organs, can be very security oriented, and gives us a little bit of me-centeredness, narcissism. Gandhi transformed that into self-respect, self-esteem. And of course, he transformed defensiveness into love. He transformed the negative emotions in the midbrain into positive emotions of goodness.
So, in this way, I don’t think that he would claim that he was enlightened in the spiritual sense. He did not go all the way, but he certainly was a very, very good man who was able to serve his people all through his life. And this is something very special. We have very few people in human history to the extent of being able to do what Gandhi did.
There are others, a few others who came close. You know, Nelson Mandela, for example, is one. Mahavira, a founder of Jainism, is another one. Mother Teresa is close to that same spirit. People become, when goodness is totally embodied in the brain, and balance is the negative, people really become exceptionally capable of being nonviolent. It’s just, you know, I’m still working on it. Being completely nonviolent is such a wonderful character trait that anybody can be, everybody can be proud of it. And, you know, Gandhi’s nonviolence was of the purest kind.
Michael: Wonderful. You know, these are basic clichés, if you will, that I’ve always entertained, that all arises from consciousness. But what you’re doing is spelling out some of the intermediate stages, which are absolutely essential…
Amit: Yeah. It’s important, because how do we get from here to there? You know, we can talk about violence that is built into it. Everybody understands violence because we all have tendency, you know. I don’t know how many, how many boys I have fought with when I was younger. That comes so naturally.
But when you get the idea, it’s still an idea – and it’s nothing that manifests very easily – then you discover that, okay, this altruistic tendency in India is very easy to discover. You know, I was a 5-year-old and encountered the famine. And I encountered these beggars, and immediately something welled up in my heart. I could not understand it. But, certainly, the altruistic tendency was built into me, and my family likewise. So, I understood that very quickly and had become a little bit touched by compassion.
And so, these things – most people that we’ve talked to, like in this company have. Altruism is a doorway, and anthropological discoveries are now supporting it. Altruism is a doorway to goodness. But that’s just a beginning. I mean, from there you have to discover the heart. We have to discover love. And then we have to go back to goodness and transcend evil.
So, that’s what takes some work. And we are glad that Gandhi provided such a good example. Martin Luther King did that in America, and Nelson Mandela, Bishop Tutu in South Africa. So, these are very good examples.
Currently, these examples are what is lacking. There is the reason we see so much of violence and sometimes grotesque, uncivilized violence, like in the case of Gaza, it’s a very sad story. The heart bleeds when we think of the difficulties people have, coping with this kind of violence between two peoples which are completely, you know, beyond all civilized version of warfare. So, even this is happening.
So, literally, scientific materialism has contributed to that, in my opinion. We were not so bad, but now we have eradicated values because if everything is made of matter, literally, values like nonviolence cannot exist. And this is wrong. I mean, this is just wrong. And really, if we go back to, go back on our civilization, it will be a very hard road to come back to civilization that was before scientific materialism.
This is why I have been fighting for a paradigm shift – to bring a paradigm shift to science for so long. Now it is happening, gradually. Now there is some neural scientific evidence in favor of quantum level of consciousness. So, things are changing.
Michael: Yeah. What do you think of mirror neurons, in that the discovery only goes back to 1988? It seems to me it might be kind of a mediation between –
Amit: Yes. Mirror neurons is the local version from – evolution has some helpful aspects. Evolution gives us the negative emotional brain circuits, but it also has given us mirror neurons because it’s a vital part of altruism, right? We could not have altruism so easily unless the mirror neurons will pick up when someone is distressed and the mirror neurons will enable us to experience this other person’s distress. And that’s how we respond so easily. If we have to guess, then the response would not be so easy, I think.
So, mirror neurons are a contribution of evolution. These genes do contribute in the sense that part of the brain is built into us because there are the appropriate genes that automatically – the brain is made automatically having these mirror neurons in every person. So, that’s something that’s the beginning of what I call sympathy.
From that grows compassion, which is empathy, which is the non-local quantum effect. That’s the transformation that takes you towards beyond altruism. If I have altruism, then I can help people in distress. But if I have this unconditional goodness, or non-local empathy for another person, then I can go beyond just responding if a person is in trouble.
I can go on and help the person, even if the trouble is only future trouble and the trouble is in potentiality. Like I can try to help a person with the level of ignorance where the violence comes periodically, unexpectedly, and the person does the violent act ignorantly from ignorance, not from deliberation.
Of course, there is also deliberate violence. That’s something else. And that is much more difficult from the situation. If you have a warmongering king, or a president of a country, that’s much harder to control, and the situation becomes much more difficult.
But this inherent violence in people, we really can teach people. We can educate people. We can transform people sufficiently so that they have not only altruism, but a bit of compassion as well.
And then violence at the base level – like violence against women that we see so much today, you know, rape and sexual violence in the office, in the campus and all this – this could easily be eliminated by education.
Cassy: It reminds me that Gandhi once said that history is a record of interruption of nature. But because nonviolence, according to Gandhi, is truth-force, is a soul force. He said it is a very subtle energy, a very subtle force and that is why history cannot take notice of it. So, I wonder is it possible, in even quantum physics and in science, to explore that?
Is it because our unsuccessful attempt to locate inside us, the soul, which so many scientists now reject, is because the soul is this vital energy? Is this quantum immaterial energy? What do you think about that?
Amit: Well, naturally, you know, when we do study the brain with the quantum science ideas, then the idea of soul becomes very clear. Consciousness collapses and becomes associated, or correlated, with the brain. Embodied is a better word, embodied in the brain as a self. But that self is still universal, quite cosmic, capable of love, capable of seeing all people as one. We call it the quantum-self. In spiritual tradition that is called, not soul, but something like great soul. Spirit is a better word. And so, let’s use the word spirit for quantum-self.
The self is the present center, at the present, just when the wave has collapsed into particle, that moment. We don’t experience that moment. Neuroscience has shown that we experience – that every experience comes to us after about half a second of processing by the brain.
And that processing is that dependent co-arising that I mentioned in connection with Buddhism, that Buddha discovered thousands of years ago. So that gives us the ego. Then the question arises, what about this half a second? What is this half a second? 500 milliseconds? Can we shorten it? And we discover that if we meditate, that becomes shorter.
So, Freud actually knew about this because he introduced a concept called preconscious, where we can edit what we are going to experience in consciousness. This idea of preconscious is the idea that if we meditate, we get into preconscious, and if we meditate more, we get more into preconscious. Then we can make – use creativity and make quantum leaps and then get situated in a station of relative homeostasis in this 500 milliseconds time.
In other words, if you are there, then you won’t take 500 milliseconds to experience an event. You would experience maybe 300 milliseconds. Maybe even 200 milliseconds. This is why if you meet a spiritual person that seems to be so spontaneous, because they are not waiting for 500 milliseconds to experience events. They’re experiencing it before then. So, you become more alive.
This is the soul station. This is the station that people call the soul. Because what happens in that state is that quantum experiences, quantum self experiences, creative experiences happen much more frequently. Because we are closer to the quantum-self. Nonviolence is much easier to intuit every now and then because you are closer to quantum-self.
It’s easy to fall into – say I’m fighting with you and then I fall into quantum-self. Then I’m not fighting anymore because I am not capable of fighting. I’m seeing that you are one with me. That happens so differently that it’s amazing. It’s really an amazing experience. I noticed myself, you know, having a disagreement with a person – a serious disagreement that you have to intellectualize about and sort it out.
Initially, there was a little bit of violence involved in it because you are opposing, you know, not feeling comfortable about the opposition. Opposition seems like violence eventually. And then suddenly the heart wakes up, and you feel that oneness again. And so, then you can carry out the intellectual difference with the person with a persuasion, not violently try to establish your mental superiority over the other person, to dominate the other person with your agility, mental agility.
Instead, what you’re trying to do is very humbly to point out that there is another way of looking at it, and then persuade the other person, and your humbleness will get to the other person, and they reciprocate. And it becomes a beautiful discussion of things instead of being a hot back and forth, showing superiority of who can think faster and better than the other.
Michael: Yeah, “I can do it in 250 milliseconds, I’m much better than you.” Now, I once ran into a colleague of mine on campus, and I greeted him very warmly, and he looked at me a little bit strangely. I didn’t quite know why. And then I realized later, I was supposed to hate him. He had blocked my most important project on campus.
And yet, when I just met him as a human being, there was no hostility. There was no separateness at all, you know, so we all. So, we all know it doesn’t take more than one episode to know that it is possible to overcome disunity. What we have to do, and here’s where your education project comes in, it’s where we have to make that the norm expand it and expand it and make it the norm.
Amit: Yeah. What is beautiful about quantum physics is that it makes it very clear. I mean, if you understand quantum physics, then you understand the process almost immediately. Because in quantum physics, forces, which is the way that we change people, subjugate people to our way of thinking, applying a force, that’s Newtonian. But in quantum physics, forces can only give you possibilities to choose from, and you don’t have to choose that one. You can choose also persuasion.
So, in quantum physics, force is replaced by choice. The other is choosing the violent way. So, you can change her choice by being humble, by being persuasive, by being straightforward, by being authentic, by exemplifying what you are saying, not using violence, you know. Sometimes – it’s just so funny, in one of my first meetings of nonviolence, somebody invited me to talk about Gandhi.
And then I went and there were portraits of Martin Luther King, which were greatly respected. And so, I remember that the discussion got heavy between two factions of the people. One was the militant side of the movement. They wanted to know nonviolence doesn’t work, and the other was the nonviolence side. And the nonviolent side is shouting as much as the violence side is shouting.
Stephanie: You’re here at Nonviolence Radio. That was an interview with Doctor Amit Goswami. He’s the founder of the center for Quantum Activism. You can find it at AmitGoswami.org. And interviewing him was Michael Nagler and our friend Cassy Liu who is deeply interested in the science of nonviolence, both of them. So you can find the rest of that interview at the Metta Center’s website, MettaCenter.org probably under MettaCenter.org/What’s New or also at Nonviolence Radio. We’ll have a link with this episode to the full interview with Doctor Goswami.
Now, one of the most important parts of Nonviolence Radio is hearing about how nonviolence is happening all over our world today, or hearing about what’s going on in our world and what might be a nonviolent interpretation of that.
So let’s turn next to our Nonviolence Report with our very own Michael Nagler, who has been collecting news and analyzes from around the movement. Michael?
Michael: Thank you so much, Stephanie. Before I launch into the nonviolent aspect of the news, which is really very rich this week, I want to share a quantum experience that I had on our way into the studio this morning. I was driving behind an RV, which is not unusual. The name of that RV was Open Range – and I want to talk about that a little bit.
But what disturbed me was the cover of the spare tire on the back of that RV. Once you’re trained in symbolism you can see it everywhere. And as a literary scholar, I was well-trained in symbolism. So, let me tell you what was on this cover. The top third of it was the American flag. The bottom third of it was the unmistakable silhouette of Sasquatch – you could call this Sasquatch on the open range.
And now you’ll never experience a moment of perfect peace and tranquility once you start seeing symbolism around. But seriously, symbolism is often a way for people to express what is in the preconscious, if you will, of their mind which they cannot express verbally. And if I had to interpret this spare tire cover, I would say that it is a perfect symbol of utter savagery combined with nationalism. That’s why I was so disturbed. And I hope I’m not disturbing you too much by describing all of this.
But Sasquatch or Bigfoot, as you know, may or may not exist. I’m inclined to think he doesn’t, and I hope I never find out to the contrary. But the fact that it’s not “physically real” is even more compelling because it means that that symbolism is spilling out of our unconscious. And so, it is the symbol of a violently projected human being, that is the most violent humanoid we can possibly imagine.
So, connecting that with the American flag led to my disturbing experience which I thought I would share with you.
Stephanie: Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. I think there might be some real Sasquatch lovers out there who realize that the Sasquatch is a completely peaceful being and that’s why we don’t see much of him. Let’s keep going.
Michael: Yeah, we don’t want to get into that and sidetracked.
Stephanie: So, let’s talk about the news.
Michael: Right. Now, Campaign Nonviolence is a source that I often rely on for the news. And our friend Rivera Sun is very good at picking things up. You can look for, among other things, Ten Tips for Action and a long list of actions around the world, which are focusing on – or they have focused on but are not limited to protest action.
So, I’ll pick a couple of them along the way to compliment what I’ve noticed myself, but I think what all of it does show is that nonviolence and the recognition of nonviolence, equally important, are growing. And that is a great development. There’s no question that violence is growing. We see kinds of violence today which are very disturbing, but I think it’s important for us to know that the counter to that growing violence is a growing nonviolence.
And when we learn to recognize that and develop it, very much the way Dr. Goswami was just describing for us, we could get to the kind of paradigm shift to a world of peace that I describe in the Science of Nonviolence course that Joanna Macy and so many others have described.
Now, the first thing I want to talk about is a coming event which is called, “A Celebration.” And I want to talk about that concept a little bit. Celebrations are extremely important for us in the nonviolent movement. They are a way of reaching encouragement, a way of sharpening our recognition, as I was just describing, of good developments that are happening all around us. But they have to be dealt with cautiously because celebrations can actually be either a distraction or even worse, a countervailing force to nonviolence.
This is why Martin Luther King, when he began to achieve some success in Birmingham and they went on to more difficult struggles like Albany, when they “won” he said, “We must avoid at all costs the psychology of victors.” That leads to deepening of confrontational dipolarities.
And, you know, as a former classicist I’m thinking of a play by Aristophanes, the Athenian tragedian, or comedian rather, who wrote a play called, “Peace.” And in this play, Peace is a goddess who’s been buried in a cave, which doesn’t sound too unlike our own situation.
And all the farmers and other simple folk get together to drag Peace out of the cave. When she’s partly out, but not out yet, they decide to celebrate. And they start dancing and jumping around. And the hero of the play, Trygaeus, has to say, “Wait, let’s get back to work. It’s not time to celebrate, yet.” So, those are all very interesting precautions that we can pick up from ancient and modern history, while we do indeed celebrate victories. When they occur.
Now, this term celebration has been applied to August 6 coming up, which is Hiroshima Day. And that day will be celebrated – that’s the term that they use – at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in Berkeley where a lot of the nuclear developments took place. And there’s going to be quite an array of very important folks in the nonviolence world. Norman Solomon will be there, Patricia Ellsberg, and David Hartsough, among many others.
Shortly after that, there will be the Global Week of Action for Peace and Climate Justice. This is the first annual week of action for peace and climate justice. And they’re going to address the link between war, militarism, and climate justice. They’re going to be promoting grassroots action and policy making for peace and climate justice.
Their theme, I like very much, is called, “Divest from war. Invest in climate justice.” And you can learn more at Waging Nonviolence.
Yesterday something took place in the Bay Area that’s worth a mention. And that is that the Middle East Children’s Alliance, MECA, was proud to announce the third annual ride for Palestine which took place last Sunday, July 21. The ride for Palestine is an annual fundraiser – so you see, it’s this very good combination of symbolism and concrete reality – an annual fundraiser in support of MECA’s programs.
And this year, they were riding to raise funds for their emergency relief programs in Gaza. So, riding with them was an act of solidarity with Palestinian communities as they struggle to protect their children, educate them, and celebrate their spirits.
There’s a good development that took place in the area of law, which of course we who are sometimes drawn into civil disobedience against laws have to learn how to do very carefully. And that is a US court just ruled that protest organizers are not responsible for the violence of attendees at their protests.
At first when I saw that I thought, “Attendees? Why is that so important?” It’s so important because a lot of damage to our movements are wrought by what they call agent provocateurs, who will throw a bottle or a rock in order to disrupt the nonviolence of a demonstration and facilitate violent repression by the police or what-have-you.
So, this has a very chilling effect on movements and also on the, similarly, the million-dollar damages that they have to raise sometimes to overcome that. And this ruling was made in a case that dated back to 2016 during protests over the police killing of Alton Sterling. But it could have an impact on similar lawsuits facing organizations today for, like Stop Cops city campaign going on in Atlanta, Georgia and others.
One of the comments made by nonviolent activists involved in this movement which I like very much, which is to say we see distressing effects of political violence everywhere. Lately, of course, the attempted assassination as it seems of former President Trump. And that led to a discussion of what about political nonviolence? And a whole list of changes could be envisioned.
For example, if each community people were trained to defend democracy with nonviolent action, learning how to thwart coup attempts to steal elections and unjust policies that undermine fair participation in the political process. These are real threats which we must learn how to address. And if we address them nonviolently, we are much more likely to succeed. Thank you, Dr. Goswami.
I want to just mention one thing that comes not from the US, but from around the world. And that is there is a very large teacher’s strike going on in Hungary. It’s so instructive because once again there’s a large basic issue riding on a specific one. The specific one is schoolteachers are not being well-paid, not being able to carry out their jobs. The large one – we’re talking about Hungary now – is the dictatorship of Viktor Orban and his Fidesz government which is facilitating the oppression of the police.
So, this reminds us of the Norwegian school teacher strike which actually almost just about brought down the Nazi Quisling regime in Norway during the war and could be very productive of insights into how we’re going to deal with authoritarian movements in our present day.
Stephanie: Yes, that’s a great article from Waging Nonviolence. Michael, thank you so much for your brief but informative Nonviolence Report. This is the end of the show. We want to thank everybody for joining us today for Nonviolence Radio. We especially want to thank our guest, Amit Goswami. Thanks so much to Cassy and Michael who interviewed him. Special thanks to Robin and Matt, Annie, Sophia, Rob. Bryan Farrell over at Waging Nonviolence, thank very much for always supporting Nonviolence Radio, putting it up over at WagingNonviolence.org. We want to thank KPCA, KWMR, and all of the networks over Pacifica who help share this show.
If you want to find out more about nonviolence, visit us at MettaCenter.org. And if you want to find the archive of the show, go to NonviolenceRadio.org. Okay, everybody, that’s a wrap. Until the next time, please take care of one another. We’ll be back in two weeks.