A larger crowd than normal attended the conversation with Les Savage, and Ken Williamson, from the Caloundra Explorers, has kindly provided this overview. The discussion was energetic, enthusiastic and reflected on the splendid speaking style of Les.

Dear Explorers,

Last Wednesday several fellow explorers from Caloundra joined me and many others to listen to Les Savage discuss his book Consciousness and creation. Very few people really understand quantum physics, but I will do my best to report what Les said.

Friedrich Nietzsche said, “There are no facts, only interpretations.’ Les has studied quantum mechanics and consciousness and this is his thesis: there is a universal intelligence which is the ground of all being.

Les claims that all life has consciousness—not just humans, but jellyfish, bacteria, viruses, plants . . .They all have the same sub-atomic origins, so that cosmic consciousness is in everything (panentheism) and is beyond DNA inheritance. The brain is a quantum computer and operates according to quantum principles, but it does not generate consciousness (as is commonly thought). It processes information locally but the mind is engaged non-locally.

Les talked about the savant syndrome and clairvoyance, which he explained in terms of cosmic consciousness—the infinite information bank or akashic field—a huge data bank that contains a record and memory of everything. This then explains • •  how someone is suddenly able to play the piano or recite the value of pi to many thousands of decimal places

•  nest-making without instruction in birds (www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbWM1QAVGzs), and
•  the instinctive behaviour of fish schooling, birds flying together and changing direction together (www.youtube.com/shorts/FlbWQhl87cY).

All this, Les claims, comes from the cosmic information bank. Almost every great inventive genius (Einstein, Jung, Edison, Tesla . . .) says that their breakthrough came from ‘without’. The solution comes to you and you don’t know how.

Les talked about the twin in one part of the world who senses that something has happened to her twin on the other side of the world (mental telepathy). He also talked about out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences etc. And he cited the research of Dr Oliver Sacks into savant twins who could recite sequential prime numbers up to 25 digits.

Within God’s quantum universe matter and energy can be interconverted according to Einstein’s famous equation. Light can be a wave or particles and there are fields of energy.

These are cosmic quantum fields—waves of information. There is a field for each particle of matter and these fields carry energy and information.

These fields are cosmic consciousness and are omnipresent. They hold everything together, so that the cosmos is more ‘a great thought’ than ‘a great machine’. Les says that he prefers the term ‘cosmic consciousness’ rather than ‘God’. In fact he says goodbye to ’the man in the sky’.

Cosmic consciousness unfolds into matter by collapsing waves into sub-atomic particles which can then form atoms, then molecules, then matter. So we are all connected in fields of cosmic consciousness, and you could say creation is the ‘body of God’, or Fr Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s Cosmic Christ. Les said the cosmos does not emanate from God—the traditional view. We need to think less of a creator (God), and to see the universe unfolding within the creator. Les showed a video of an unfolding flower, infused with cosmic consciousness, just as we are. As St Thomas Aquinas said: ‘God’s essence is within all of creation—most intimately.’ This is panentheism and is consistent with being made in the ‘image of God’.

Les finished on a very philosophical note. The Garden of Eden can be used as a metaphor for the cosmos. The ‘gardener’ in Genesis was Cosmic Consciousness, who sowed the seeds out of which the cosmic garden grew. The tree of knowledge is the garden’s heartbeat within us. Everything in creation is a burning bush in which the divine ‘I am’ invites your contemplation.

These comments arose from question time:

•  The word yahweh is a Hebrew word for breath—God within us.
•  All words about God are inadequate.
•  God is deeply infused within us.
•  Les said that sometimes when his dog looks at him he feels he is staring into the eyes off God.

So if this hasn’t blown your mind, come along to our next Discussions from the street—Your God is too small on 21 May. I hope to read Les Savage’s book before then.

Ken Williamson

If you would like to explore this topic further, you are urged to get a hold of the e-book Consciousness and Creation by Les Savage and available from Amazon Australia.

If you would like to contact Les Savage he can be emailed at Les Savage

oOo