Quantum energy and love binds the universe

A natural result of feeling the infinite love of the universe is to recognize that conscious awareness is the very same force at the core of all existence. Such oneness and dissolution of the sense of self, and complete identity with all of life and the source of all that is, is the pathway toward truth. Indeed, the deepest lesson of my journey was realizing that unconditional love was the very fabric of the spiritual realm from which the totality of reality emerges.

The binding force of love reported by the vast majority of spiritual journeyers over millennia brings to mind the concept of ‘the ether,’ a substance that scientists in the late 19th century postulated might possibly serve as the medium pervading the entire universe through which light waves travel. Light fundamentally connects our entire universe with itself, pervading every bit of the physical universe throughout time.

In 1887, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley performed an experiment to investigate the ether, and they proved that the ether as it was postulated (as a classical medium, like air and water) did not exist. Yet in an amazing turn of events, the most recent work in physics demonstrates that the ether is now the way most modern physicists would describe the vacuum energy, the amazingly powerful source of energy that quantum physics has revealed to exist in the very fabric of spacetime itself. Vacuum energy is a potentially endless source of energy that could revolutionize our society, if we could just determine a way to harness it for our use here on earth. Ether has not resurged as an idea in physics, but it is a relativistic ether that is fully compatible with the ideas of relativity. But the concept of ether, which many would identify as the substance that acts as the binding force of our universe, is almost identical to the infinite binding force of love.

Our concepts of a loving, merciful, and compassionate force operating in the universe (whether from the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam or from other traditions, such as Zoroastrianism, Shintoism, Hinduism, or Buddhism) have originated from human encounters in the spiritual realm. Most of those traditions emerged from individuals who had witnessed extraordinary features of the invisible realm that revealed a much deeper connection with the universe. In essence, this is the most basic definition of spirituality, that we have a connection with the universe that enables us to sense vital aspects of it and to have some influence in achieving our goals and desires.

Eben Alexander and Karen Newall, Living in a Mindful Universe: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Heart of Consciousness, 2017.