This article was first published in “The Knowing Field” Journal, issue 19, January 2012 under the title
Transpersonal Connections Independent of Space and Time
When on page 23 and reading: “….space- and time-independent transpersonal connections…” I was thrilled. Instantly systemic and family constellations came to mind, giving me a buzz of anticipation that this is leading to a fundamental deepening of knowledge about the processes involved with constellations.
The book* I am reading proposes by it’s subtitle to describe “an integral theory of everything”. What a fabulous claim to make.
Irresistible the urge to find out how Ervin Laszlo delivers the goodies, tempered by a customary dose of skepticism considering the grandiosity of the promise.
Ervin Laszlo was known to me as the founder of the Club of Budapest; however until early this year I had not had opportunity to delve deeper into his thinking. My skepticism waned rapidly. Laszlo’s language requires full attention yet comes across as plausible, enticing the reader to follow his thought line. Bit by bit he builds the case for an informed way of looking at the phenomenon that is our universe. In his own words he “tackled” the fundamental questions concerning the world through science. A quest he started – from a non-scientific background- when in his late twenties.
When only five years old he had shown exceptional talent playing the piano and at the age of nine was accompanied publicly by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra to go on pursuing a successful career as pianist. It is more than 50 years ago now since he began to pursue his quest in earnest. He studied and taught science at various universities, obtaining a PhD at the Sorbonne.
Why am I writing here about a book that does not even once mention systemic/family constellations as we know them? I am not proposing this to be a book review; much rather is it my reflection of the relevance I perceive in the volume for constellation work, of my personal journey towards understanding and clarity in that regard.
Having studied Laszlo’s treatise, the phenomenon of representative perception for example, which we are constantly dealing with during constellation work, no longer needs to be considered difficult if not impossible to explain, I feel. The “Knowing Field” has become embedded in a framework of scientifically grounded plausibility. Ervin Laszlo has done all the “spadework” towards providing a solid foundation for the notion that everything is connected with everything. He takes the reader, on a journey through the history of science dealing with the elemental episodes and their protagonists, providing a conceptualisation of the term paradigm shift. Let me condense my understanding:
Science is the process that comes up with theories analogous to and arising from the development of means for the observation of the natural world. Newton for one was limited to the technology of his time in observing nature, yet still able to explain the falling of the apple by postulating a universal law that applies to all bodies in nature: The paradigm shifting notion of the G-Field, with gravity being the propelling force of that field.
A further major development was enabled by the observation of both electric and magnetic forces which culminated in the establishment of the EM-Field thus resulting in an other paradigm-shift. Each paradigm-shift is a step from the coarser to the more refined understanding of the natural world extending both in macroscopic and microscopic direction.
Einstein simplified the cornerstones of scientific investigation to energy and matter and triggered thus the monumental scientific re-orientation early last century. Particularly the subsequent finding-of-ever-smaller-particles-of-matter-aspect of quantum physics is what forced and continues to propel the development of the next paradigm-shift.
What happens at quantum level cannot be fully explained with any scientific theories developed to date. Or as Laszlo writes, there are “puzzles that crop up and accumulate in the course of scientific investigations; anomalies that the current paradigm cannot clarify”. *p.14
One such puzzle is the physical phenomenon of entanglement. Aiding the explanation of the term, Laszlo invokes the image of particles at quantum level forming an endless sea, the quantum vacuum:
“The remarkable fact emerging from this sea of quantum mystery is that particles, and the atoms constituted by particles, are not individual beasts.
They are sociable entities, and under certain conditions they are so thoroughly ‘entangled’ with each other that they are not just here or there, but in all measured places at the same time.
Their nonlocality respects neither time nor space: it exists whether the distance that separates the particles and the atoms is measured in millimeters or in light-years, and whether the time that separates them consists of seconds or of millions of years.” *p.29
Entanglement of course is a term with a specific meaning in our constellation world. Bert Hellinger gives numerous descriptions of how entanglement is to be understood in the context of constellations. *2
For us human ‘social entities’ the conditions for our entanglements with one another are the family and ancestral dynamics we are involved in, which I believe, makes this entanglement a special form of a universal phenomenon.
We understand by now that particles are space- and time-independently connected, forming atoms, which are forming molecules, which are forming cells, which are forming organisms and so on. All of the former are connected with each other independent of space and time.
Do these connections happen just randomly as convinced Darwinists would have us believe? Laszlo is adamant in expressing the utter improbability of randomness as the driving principle in the evolution of nature. Many scientists have worked on the probability of our world being the way it is. He quotes one computation resulting in that probability to be just 1 in 10¹º¯¹²³ a mindbogglingly unlikely chance. *P. 145
The assumption is that there is ‘system in the madness’, as the expression goes.
So the question is, what makes particles behave the way they do – jumping out of the sea of energy to become matter and reversing back to the energetic state?
The answer to that question is provided by adding one component to the concept of there being “only” energy and matter. This addition is information; however not as we understand it, like an item of knowledge but, as first proposed by the physicist David Bohm, appropriately hyphenated: In-formation,
“the active, physically effective variety that ‘forms’ the recipient, whether it is a quantum, a galaxy or a human being” *p.61
On a cosmic scale, where we are not limited to one universe but have myriads of universes contained within the Metaverse, where universes like ours come and go, Laszlo proposes: each universe is in-formed during its emergence by the preceding one as in turn it will in-form it’s successor. *p. 85
On a human scale we observe the workings of in-formation during a typical moment of a constellation: The representative, not knowing anything about the person represented by her/him, in other words not possessing any information about that person, displays or feels some form of behavior or emotion. Something in this representative is formed, he is literally in-formed.
Remember, how awed we are when hearing the seeker/client utter in amazement: “just like my long dead grandfather”.
Collectively we as constellators have witnessed the effect of in-formation countless times but struggled to understand this occurrence ourselves, not to mention the difficulties in explaining it to the world at large.
How does information travel and subsequently becomes in-formation?
Progressing further on this scientifically grounded journey of discovery I found it helpful allowing myself to become immersed in the above mentioned infinite energy sea called quantum vacuum, kind of zooming into it.
With images in mind that are coming from electron microscopes or computer generated ones that take me ever deeper into the microscopic domain I find it is possible to enter a meditative state from which to sense the vacuum. A state not unlike the one I experience while facilitating constellations. The empty space, so essential in Bert’s teaching, comes to mind. *3
Interestingly though, Laszlo suggests that we actually are not dealing with a vacuum, which is an empty space but rather with a space that is completely filled. From the empty to the full. The quantum vacuum becomes the quantum plenum. * p. 66
The inconceivably refined level of quanta requires an adequate term. Plenum is appropriate, as it denotes the one important aspect: comprising the All.
It used to appear to me that the confines of the macrocosm and the microcosm are moving further and further apart, considering the findings of astronomy/cosmology and quantum physics, as if there are separate infinities stretching in either direction.
The concept of the all encompassing quantum plenum solves this ‘riddle’ : There is only one infinity, the infinity of the quantum plenum. At quantum level the microcosm and the macrocosm are one and the same.
Let’s look again at the phenomenon of particles being mysteriously present in one instant both here and there. This has been first suspected after it was discovered that light has the dual character of being both a wave and a corpuscular unit, the photon. The photon has become the particle of choice as the subject of innumerable scientific investigations ever since.
Laszlo sums up the findings and concludes that the emerging view of science seems to be:”the wave aspect of the particle is the fundamental aspect.” *p. 140, meaning a particle is ‘nonlocal’ , potentially everywhere simultaneously.
To me the accepted fact that one particle is simultaneously present in different locations promotes the conclusion suggested above, that particles really are waves.
We associate waves first of all with water. We have observed a pebble dropped into a calm pond creating waves expanding in all directions. Waves created by a second pebble drop interfere with the first’s thus forming a combination wave. This third one is in-formed with the energies of the parent waves. Another important fact is, waves can cancel each other out or magnify one another by way of interference.
In our water filled pond the expansion of waves is limited. The pond called the quantum plenum is filled with waves as well, however with waves that are unlimited both in duration and expansion as that pond is boundless.
What underlies this limitlessness is the waves quality of coherence.
The basic meaning of coherence is the regularity of the ups and downs of a wave, of it’s phase. At quantum level coherence is more complex. I came to understand coherence in this context as meaning ‘harmonic stability’.
Once a quantum wave is created, being coherent, it continues forever in harmony with all other waves, carrying the in-formation imprinted on to it to all other waves it ever encounters, able to co-create endlessly new waves in the ‘limitless pond’ that is the quantum plenum. The plenum is thus a field, hosting the mysterious interplay of mass, energy and in-formation.
In the course of his pursuit Laszlo named this field first the QVI (quantum/vacuum interaction) field, then the Psi-field, and settled on the term Akashic or A-field.
He points out, that the consequences of the field are not restricted to the physical world but apply to the emerging discipline of systematic consciousness research as well.
“through this universal field all things are constantly and enduringly connected. “ *p.168
The ‘akashic records‘ *4 is a term known to me for half a lifetime. I always felt an affinity with a concept that proposes: everything that ever happened and was ever thought of, is recorded in an invisible realm, like an immaterial archive. Right from the beginning of my involvement with constellation work I sensed, a drawing on the ‘akashic records’ is involved while a constellation unfolds. Laszlo’s book ‘Science and the Akashic Field’ has substantially confirmed this view.
Remarkable but not surprising to note the developments of both the constellation work that came to us through Bert Hellinger and Ervin Laszlo’s quest for an Integral Theory of Everything happened simultaneously.
In constellation work the presence of a force field was sensed by all and later so aptly named by Albrecht Mahr. The Knowing Field and the A-Field are, no doubt in my mind, one and the same the former only being referred to in a specific context, namely in the constellating context.
With all of the above in mind let’s look once more at the phenomenon of representative perception: The energetic essence of the long dead grandfather from above is floating permanently wavelike in the akashic or knowing field. The instant his name or his person is mentioned during the constellation a wave/particle is generated which is coherent with grandfather’s permanent wave. The transpersonal connection to grandfather is established beyond space and time.
His representative in the here and now is human and thus endowed with the ability to resonate. He is touched by grandfather’s in-forming energy that is coherently present and in-forms the typical traits of this grandfather in him. The constellation does not end here however.
In it’s course grandfather-represented changed perhaps from a rather harsh and unlovable to a warm and benign expression, emitting the corresponding energies. Are these energies only generated for the duration of the constellation, to dissolve right afterwards?
With Laszlo’s treatise in mind we can safely assume, I believe, these new energies are in-forming a new grandfather-wave which too will eternally and coherently be present.
Whether the meeting of the old and the new grandfather waves results, by way of interference, in the cancellation of some or in the magnifying of other grandfather-aspects, is a possibility worth considering. It would not mean history is re-written, it would simply add to the complexity of all there is.
This essay is not an attempt to present conclusions as the absolute truth. Laszlo himself addresses the question, whether the mysteries surrounding the behaviour of particles/waves are resolved, with a definite:” Not by any means” p.141
I suspect it required the inwardly centered mind of the professional concert pianist, used to being immersed in a kind of meditative state for hours each day, combined with the intellectual prowess and stamina to sift through libraries of scientific publications to come up with an integral theory of everything.
A theory which for me fosters a deeply felt understanding of the phenomena we do encounter in constellation work, however not at all restricted to that.
Goethe had his Faust famously yearning to recognize
“was die Welt im Innersten zusammen haelt” *5
This universal longing has moved closer to being satisfied. I am hopeful, immersion in the A-field is leading us towards answering the question so poignantly posed by Goethe: what is innermost holding the world intact?
*Laszlo, Ervin Science and the Akashic Field, An Integral Theory of Everything.
Rochester, Vermont, 2007
*2 Hellinger, Bert Introduction to Family Constellations –
Lecture and Demonstration in Taipei on October 11, 2001
from www.bert-hellinger.com print-out of 16-07-2002
*3 Hellinger, Bert The Phenomenological Approach in Psychotherapy Using Family
Constellations as an Example
from www.bert-hellinger.com print-out of 16-07-2002
*4 http://www.answers.com/akashic+records?initiator=IE7:SearchBox
*5 von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Faust. Eine Tragödie. [Erster Theil.]
http://www.e-text.org/text/Goethe%20-%20Faust.pdf
In gratitude to my wife Alemka, for the surprise gift of Erwin Laszlo’s book
and for her feedback during the finalising of the above essay.
Max Dauskardt September 2011
Copyright: The Knowing Field, Journal for Systemic Constellations
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