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(From a Series of Lectures Given in Conjunction with Ethics After the Holocaust" by Elie Wiesel)

"Ethics" is defined by the dictionary as "the study of what is good" or as a set of normative principles. The philosopher Wittgenstein showed, quite convincingly, that there cannot be a scientific ethics, because we can never infer "ought" from "is". I believe that Wittgenstein was wrong. It is a general theorem of mathematics that one can never optimize a function on more than one variable at a time. If there were an infinity of normative criteria, as most academic philosophers believe today, then Wittgenstein would be correct, and there could be no absolute criteria of good and evil. However, I will show that there is a single normative principal in the universe that can lead to a logically consistent system of ethics. Furthermore, the use of any other normative principle will lead to a logically and scientifically inconsistent system of ethics. This normative principal is implicit in Jewish ethics as expressed in the Torah and the Talmud, and was first made explicit by Baruch de Spinoza. It is possible, through the use of modern quantum mechanics, to integrate and scientifically explain the notions of scientific ethics, creativity, and traditional Jewish ethics, which are eternal and unaltered by the Holocaust, as a single coherent system which reflects ultimate reality.

At the core of any civilization is a system of values or ethics together with assumptions about reality. The European civilization, out of which America emerged as a new civilization, had at its core "the natural, hierarchical order of things, Christian ethics, and a notion of the hereditary superiority of some people over other people;" solely the Christian ethics, which stem entirely from Jewish ethics, seem valid. This system was highly compatible with the hierarchical order of the Catholic Church, extending beyond this world all the way to God, but less so with the new Protestant sects, which claimed, and occasionally tolerated, respect for individual conscience, so long as this conscience was compatible with the prevalent interpretations of the locally accepted Protestant Bible. The scientific revolution, which began at about the same time as the Reformation, and had common causes behind it, showed any rational person that almost all the Christian religious authorities were wrong about nearly everything in the natural world from Astronomy to Zoology; it was reasonable to assume that the same religious authority was probably also wrong about the psychosocial and ethical world as well. Therefore, rational people began to look to reason and science to guide them in Moral Philosophy (Ethical Behavior) as well as in Natural Philosophy.

The pioneers in this approach were humanists, such as Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes in England, and Michel de Montaigne and RenJ Descartes in France. The culmination of this new approach was achieved in Holland, perhaps the freest and most ethical society in the world at that time, in the ETHICS of Baruch de Spinoza. Spinoza was to Moral Philosophy what his contemporary, Isaac Newton, was to Natural Philosophy. Spinoza was the first scientific philosopher of ethics. Other ethical philosophers such as Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Averroes, Acquinas, and most notably Maimonides tried to be completely rational, but Spinoza was the first to integrate ethics with mathematically based modern science. As a consequence, Spinoza, the son of Jewish refugees from Spain, was excommunicated by the Jews of Holland and persecuted by Jews, Catholics, and Protestants. It seems he had something to offend everyone. He was condemned by religious authorities up to the present time, although the State of Israel, much to its credit, readmitted him into Judaism 300 years after his death; Maimonides was also briefly excommunicated.

Bertrand Russell, a totally secular, anti­religious, but humane, philosopher, referred to Spinoza as "the noblest and most lovable of all the great philosophers...ethically he is supreme (14)." Goethe so admired Spinoza that he read him every day as an ethical exercise. When a Rabbi asked Albert Einstein if he believed in God, Einstein answered that he believed in the God of Spinoza. Einstein carefully studied the ethics of Spinoza, which have implicit in them the concepts of relativity, as well as many of the fundamental concepts of modern quantum mechanics, such as the wholeness and unity of God and the Universe (6).

Science tries to be a model of objective reality, although it does not always succeed. Any true system of ethics must also be in 100% correspondence with objective reality. Which is to say that it must bear up well, according to its own criteria, to scientific scrutiny. There can be no contradiction between true science and true ethics. False ethics will ultimately always conflict with reality.

In the modern world there have been two major experiments designed to create new, ethically based civilizations. Both of these experiments were based on a distortion of Spinoza's ethics. The most recent experiment was the Soviet Union; but the first was the United States of America.

American Democracy resulted from a distortion of Spinoza's ethical and political philosophy produced by the line of thinkers ­­ Locke, Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and others ­­ leading to Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson may be the most brilliant, ethical, and creative leader any nation ever had. He, not Washington, is the ethical father of the United States, although Tom Paine might have been the midwife. Yet, although (1) Jefferson clearly wanted an ethical society, based on the Democratic Ethic that freedom is the greatest good and tyranny is the greatest evil, and (2) he and his two closest disciples were Presidents for 24 consecutive years, they produced instead an increasingly unethical society that has been destroying individual freedom, almost since its inception. Therefore, the Democratic Ethic is self­contradictory; it seeks to maximize freedom, but instead it diminishes freedom through a tyranny of the majority. It is a gross form of self­deception to believe that decisions reached by a large majority are automatically ethical and correct. We should never forget that Hitler was democratically elected by a plurality, as has been the case for many American presidents, including Jefferson, and that Hitler was able to develop overwhelmingly majority approval and support for himself and his policies, almost to the end of his regime.

The Democratic Ethic says that the greatest good is that which makes for the greatest liberty or welfare for the greatest number; it is right and proper for a sufficiently large majority to take away the liberty or welfare of a sufficiently small minority, if it will greatly increase the alleged liberty or welfare of the majority. Implicit in this point of view is that decisions reached by large majorities are always ethically superior to decisions reached by small minorities. This is clearly false. Jefferson tried to compensate for this deficiency in democratic government by advocating and eventually getting a strong bill of rights to protect ethical minorities from unethical majorities and government in general.

Yet, the history of the United States is the history of the ever growing power of government and the destruction of individual liberty for the alleged benefit of the majority. This began with the toleration of slavery in the United States for four score and seven years, followed by government imposed racial segregation for five score more years. Democracy led to the military draft, the income tax, the blatantly unconstitutional detention of Japanese­Americans in concentration camps during World War II, the, allegedly, anticommunist witch hunts of the McCarthy era, the nurturing of a huge, parasitical military­industrial complex, and finally to the out­right confiscation of private property and the gross government interference with private voluntary behavior, again for the alleged benefit of a willing, frightened majority. Therefore, the Democratic Ethic is a false ethic that in trying to maximize freedom, ends up destroying freedom. A true criterion for good must not lead to its own contradiction.

The most recent ethical system used to form a new civilization was the Materialistic Ethic of socialism, expressed in its most extreme form in the Soviet Union, which was in such conflict with true ethics and reality that it destroyed itself in only 70 years. The socialistic paradigm is that the greatest good is government control and redistribution of the wealth of the society so that there is equality of wealth independent of merit, and that the government guarantees the necessities of life to every accepted member of the society. This Materialistic Ethic is "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need."

The socialistic distortion of Spinoza's philosophy was produced by the line of philosophers -- Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Engels, etc. -- leading to Lenin and undemocratic, tyrannical socialism. All forms of tyranny are unethical. The racist National Socialism of Adolf Hitler, was another unethical spinoff from Hegel.

The Soviet Union, by its own criterion of good, material security, ended up impoverishing its own people by destroying their freedom and creativity, thereby contradicting its own alleged ethical purpose. This happens in all socialistic countries; it merely happens faster when they violate the criterion of the one true ethics, which was clearly articulated by Spinoza over three hundred and twenty years ago, when Spinoza simply made explicit what was implicit in the traditional Jewish studies that he undertook as a young man.

Spinoza said that the ultimate good was what he called "the intellectual love of God." According to Spinoza we love God by understanding and emulating Him. To paraphrase Spinoza, "we understand God through intuition, science and technology, since God is the infinite totality of all that exists." The most outstanding attribute of God is creativity. Therefore, we emulate God by maximizing creativity. This same notion of emulating God ("...walking in His ways") as ethical duty is in the Torah (Deut. 11:22).

The one true ethics is based on the notion of maximizing creativity. "Good" is whatever increases "creativity"; "evil" is whatever decreases "creativity". I call this the "Evolutionary Ethic". In my books I show that any ethical system based on any other notion of good will lead to its own contradiction, as has clearly been shown for the Materialistic Ethic; and is currently being shown for the Democratic Ethic, which has turned out to be. a tyranny of the majority, thereby contradicting its own fundamental ethical premises.

I derived the Evolutionary Ethic independently of Spinoza, with the advantage of 320 years of scientific progress, by first observing that the only common denominator in the evolutionary process is ever increasing intelligence. The biosphere becomes collectively increasingly intelligent. The protozoa are more intelligent than the bacteria; the metazoa are more intelligent than the protozoa; the vertebrates are in general more intelligent than the invertebrates; the reptiles are in general more intelligent than the fish; the mammals are in general more intelligent than the reptiles; and humans are in general more intelligent than all other mammals. Furthermore, this is the order in which the biosphere has evolved. However, intelligence is independent of ethics, up to a point, in the evolutionary process. We all know highly intelligent people who are highly unethical. The two most notorious examples in this century are Hitler and Stalin. Therefore, the maximization of intelligence is not an adequate ethical criterion. What we wish to maximize is creativity. Creativity grows out of intelligence together with ethics, but it is not identical to intelligence.

"Intelligence", as I will use the concept, is "the ability to predict and control the total environment ­­ physical, biological, and psycho­social." This ability is what is growing in the biosphere. Eventually this ability grows to the point where we have intelligence of our own intelligence. That is to say, "we can predict and control our own ability to predict and control." When intelligence passes this threshold, then the species begins to be ethical and as a consequence becomes creative, thereby adding a new dimension to itself. Creativity (C) is a direct interaction of Intelligence (I) and Ethics (E), which may be expressed intuitively in the equation C = IE. This is the fundamental, process equation of Creative Transformation.

Intelligence can be used to increase intelligence (good, ethical, creative) or to diminish intelligence (evil, unethical, destructive). Therefore, intuitively, "Ethics" is equal to our desire to increase intelligence minus our desire to diminish intelligence, the result divided by our total desire for everything. This gives us dimensionless numbers between minus one and plus one (­1,1) as a measure of ethics. There is no practical way of measuring desire. However, there are practical estimators of ethics, one of which is the following:

E = (T ­ F)/(T + F), where T is an equivalent sampling of all the true information we believe and F is an equivalent sampling of all the false information we believe. The question that next comes to mind is, "Why would anyone seek to destroy intelligence and believe false information, if he can otherwise create intelligence and believe true information?" Before answering this question, let some terms be defined.

"Information" is the symbolic representation of events and their relationships.

"Truth" is information that when it is believed increases the ability of the believer to predict and control reality, i.e. the total environment ­­ physical, biological, and psycho­social.

"Falsehood" is information that when it is believed decreases the ability of the believer to predict and control reality, i.e. the total environment ­­ physical, biological, and psycho­social.

These notions of truth and falsehood are part of a scientific epistemology that leads to the scientific paradigm, which includes scientific method. The essence of scientific method is the experimental testing of hypotheses and theories about reality to see if they are true or false. Reality is both objective and subjective. Science deals well with objective reality, but not so well with subjective reality. Subjective reality will lead us later to consider mysticism, religion in general, and Judaism in particular.

We return to considering the phenomenon of evil and why some persons choose to believe falsehood. I say "choose" because we do not have to believe anything; we can function quite well on the basis of probabilities. A belief is a certainty about the truth or the falsehood of some proposition. We choose to believe because belief makes us happy, although not necessarily more intelligent or more creative.

"Happiness" is a state of mind in which we believe that our desires are being fulfilled. Desires that have been fulfilled do not make us happy. Only desires that are being fulfilled make us happy. We all have simultaneously desires that are both being fulfilled and being unfulfilled. Unfulfilled desires make us unhappy. Therefore, we are all simultaneously happy and unhappy. If the strength and number of desires being fulfilled is greater than the strength and number of desires being unfulfilled then the net result is happiness. The converse produces unhappiness.

Intuitively, creativity is the process by which we discover scientific laws, invent machines, produce works of art, and help others do these things. The most creative thing we can ever do is to help maximize the creativity of another. This is what in fact maximizes our own creativity.

More formally, a creative act is any act which increases truth for at least one person, including one's self, without decreasing truth for any person, including one's self.

THEOREM 1: People are unethical if, and only if, they value happiness more than creativity.

Happiness and creativity are not mutually exclusive. But neither are they the same thing. Creativity is an objective act of increasing the intelligence and/or the ethics of one's self or of another person. Happiness is a subjective state of mind that can be induced just as easily by false as by true beliefs.

THEOREM 2: If we seek to maximize happiness, we minimize it and have neither happiness nor creativity.

THEOREM 3: If we seek to maximize creativity, we always succeed, and trivially also maximize happiness.

"Trivial" refers to an entity or an act that neither increases nor decreases creativity. Trivia is a set of measure zero; almost all acts are either ethical or unethical. Theorems and ideas on this page are from 6,7,8.

Therefore, people choose to believe falsehood solely because it makes them happy, and in so doing they are behaving unethically. For that reason E = (T ­ F)/(T + F) and our ethics are directly related to the proportion of our desire for creativity over our desire for happiness.

Subhuman animals, with a very few minor exceptions, can be motivated solely by their desire for happiness, because they do not yet have intelligence about their own intelligence and do not yet have an ethical component which can produce creativity. That is why solely humans are systematically creative within the biosphere. What makes us human is our unique ability to ethically choose creativity over happiness.

THEOREM 4: Humans have solely two primordial desires, happiness and creativity; all other desires are means for achieving the two primordial desires; by maximizing creativity with no concern for happiness we maximize both happiness and creativity (6,7,8).

Therefore, there exists a single ethical criterion by which all ethical decisions may be made, which is valid under all conditions for all ethical beings anywhere in the universe. It was valid before and after the Holocaust. It is eternally valid. This is what I call the "Evolutionary Ethic"; it is expressed as follows:

From this single, simple, but very deep, ethical imperative we may derive a complete system of ethics to structure any society, to make individual decisions, to start and run a business, to educate ourselves and our children, to guide us in sexual relationships, and to relate to unethical governments, which do not follow or even pretend to follow the Evolutionary Ethic. The entire ethics of the Torah may be so derived.

Such an ethical system is derived in stages, going always from more general to more specific situations. This is the same as the relationship between the Torah and the Talmud. From the Evolutionary Ethic, the preceding considerations, and scientific reality we derive the second stage of eight ethical principles:

1. Any act which increases anyone's creativity is ethical. (This is the meaning of "good".)

2. Any act which decreases anyone's creativity is unethical. (This is the meaning of "evil".)

3. Unethical means can never achieve ethical ends.

4. Means which are not ends are never ethical.

5. It is unethical to tolerate unethical or destructive behavior.

6. It is unethical to be certain about any cause and effect relationship concerning objective reality; only probabilistic beliefs about objective reality are ethical, but we can never deny the reality of our own perceptions; we err when we are certain about the causes in objective reality of our subjective perceptions.

7. It is ethical to doubt.

8. Inaction is unethical.

These eight ethical principles are derived and discussed in detail in my books. They can be used extensively to derive the same norms of behavior as in the Torah, Mishnah, and Jewish tradition in general leading ev-entually to the Talmud. For making any ethical decision, we must consider all eight ethical principles.

As a third stage derivation, we may directly and quickly derive the Ten Commandments from these eight ethical principles. Using the Ten Commandments and the eight ethical principles we can, with varying degrees of difficulty, derive all the ethical norms of the Torah and reach many and perhaps all the ethical conclusions of the Talmud. If the entire ethical message of the Torah and the way of life that it implies may be derived solely from the Evolutionary Ethic, then this ethic too is God's message to humanity, which reflects the ultimate reality of the Universe, as well as its fundamental ethical structure.

This is not true for any other system of religious ethics, although there is some overlap in the ethics of almost all major religions. One may say that Jewish ethics represent a super set of ethics which contains all the true ethics of all other religions, but excludes all the false ethics. However, all paradigms are false or incomplete. Therefore, Jewish ethics, although true, cannot be complete. We must forever expand all ethical systems. The Torah is the mystically revealed set of ethical norms for maximizing the long term creativity of any people who follow them. The Evolutionary Ethic is implicit in these norms.

Maimonides observed that Islam is closest to Judaism ritualistically and theologically, but that Christianity is closest to Judaism ethically, because Christians accept the entire Torah, as well as the rest of the Bible, as divine truth, although they may often misinterpret the meaning of the Torah and the rest of the Bible.

The greatest ethical error in Christianity, and there are many, is the notion that one should behave ethically in order to avoid hell and go to heaven. This same ethical error exists in Islam. The Jewish notion of ethical obedience to the Torah is that one should behave ethically solely because it is God's law. This is similar to the Hindu concept of Karma Yoga: that one should behave ethically as an end in itself without fear of punishment or expectation of reward.

Although in the Torah God promises the Jews certain rewards for accepting the Torah, these are usually long term rewards, rarely short term rewards. The basic reward for obedience to the Torah is that any people who practice the Evolutionary Ethic, implicit in the Torah, will in the long run maximize their creativity and the creativity of the people with whom they freely interact. This is borne out by history.

Twenty four hundred years ago the Jews were highly ethical, but not very creative. At the same time the Greeks were highly creative, but not very ethical when compared to the Jews. However, within less than one thousand years the Greeks had ceased to be creative, while the Jews continued to grow in creativity, although they were constantly persecuted and had no country of their own, after Christianity began.

Today the Jews, at about .25% of the human species, are about 50% of the winners of Nobel prizes in science and economics; they do almost as well in technology, literature, and the arts. In the United States, the Jews at less than 3% of the population, are over 35% of the people listed in Who's Who. The Jews get into Who's Who almost entirely through their creativity. Before the Soviet Union began to persecute the Jews, it was estimated by a leading scientist that 80% of the major creativity in the USSR was produced by the Jews. The same sort of phenomenon occurred in 15th century Spain and early 20th century Germany. The Jews are, relative to their numbers by far, the most creative people on earth. However, unethical Jews are no more creative than unethical gentiles. Judaism is a system for maintaining ethics within a people, but it is not 100% effective because we all have free will to reject the Torah. Almost by definition fewer Jews than gentiles reject the Torah. The reasons are ethical choice and natural selection, although the Jews are not a race or even a genetically homogeneous nation.

The Jews are a genetically heterogeneous people bound together by a spiritual ethical code that transcends race and nationhood, although, through ignorance, there clearly exist chauvinistic and racist Jews. Judaism is open to all humanity, although the Jews have almost completely stopped proselytizing for over 1,000 years. It is easy to prove, through blood typing and DNA analysis, that every Jew alive today is much more the descendent of converts to Judaism from many nations, than a descendent of the ancient Hebrews. Judaism is based much more on memes than on genes.

This state of affairs has come about because the two major religions derived from Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have persecuted the Jews. The persecutions within Islam were relatively minor, primarily in the form of extra taxes, until this century and the beginning of Zionism. The persecutions within Christendom were major and included periodic pogroms, expulsions, the Inquisition, and the Nazi holocaust. Therefore, there was an enormous practical advantage to the Jews, particularly within Christendom, to convert to the dominant local religion. The sole reason for not converting was because of the higher ethical standards of Judaism. Therefore, solely the highly ethical Jews remained Jews and solely the even more ethical Christians converted to Judaism under the threat of death for them and the Rabbis converting them. The unethical Jews in turn converted to the dominant local religions for practical personal advantage. At the same time in order to survive as Jews, the Jews had to be highly intelligent. Stupid Jews, even when highly ethical, were either exterminated or at least put at a reproductive disadvantage by the persecutions of the dominant religions. Therefore, solely persons who were both highly ethical and highly intelligent could survive as Jews. Because C = IE, the Jews, through ethical choice and natural selection, became highly creative over the last 2,000 years and lost their Hebrew and racial identity, from a genetic point of view, although it has survived as a cultural trait; Judaism would be far more ethically effective without this trait.

Through their creativity and their ethics the Jews have had throughout history the same kind of creative, catalytic effect as in this century, but to a much lesser degree: first in ancient Egypt, then in Babylonia, then in Persia, then in Greek Alexandria, then in Spain, then in Germany, then in the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as in other countries to a lesser degree. With the exception of the United States, every civilization, that was significantly catalyzed by the Jews eventually became the worst persecutor of the Jews. These nations and civilizations then began to lose their creativity in bureaucratic, apparently irreversible, decline. That is because the Jews become the ethical conscience of the nations which they catalyze. When such nations become unethical, they ruthlessly persecute the Jews. This may happen in the United States, even though it may today seem very unlikely. It is part of a historical pattern that has repeated itself many times in the past, most recently in Spain, Germany, and Russia. The Jews catalyze other nations through their creativity, but it is easier to increase intelligence than to increase ethics. High intelligence with low ethics leads to self­destruction -- C = IE. It is more important to maximize ethics than intelligence, if we must choose solely one of these attributes. It is suicidal to increase intelligence without increasing ethics.

A final observation is that the Jews have been most creative within Christian cultures. They have been much less creative within Islamic cultures, although until recent times the Islamic cultures were much more tolerant and less repressive of the Jews than the Christian cultures. The reason for this is, as Maimonides first observed, that Christianity is closer to Jewish ethics than Islam, and as a consequence Christianity is more creative than Islam. The Jews are catalysts, not ethical masters, of their host cultures.

The "intelligence" of a culture is directly proportional to the number of its members and its wealth. One thousand years ago Islam was collectively more intelligent than Christianity but less ethical. Although the intelligence of individual Jews may seem high, the Jews have traditionally had low collective intelligence because of their very low numbers compared to the populations of the empires among which they lived.

THEOREM 5 : The more ethical a culture, the less attractive it will be to persons who are unethical. That is why Christianity and Islam attracted more adherents than Judaism, although the Jews were very active proselytizers at the beginning of the Christian era. Note: Islam is the fastest growing major religion on earth.

Corollary 5.1: There are more unethical than ethical adults in almost all the cultures of the world.

Corollary 5.2: All the sects of Judaism such as Christianity, Islam, Reform, and Conservative Judaism, are imperfect bridges for gentiles more easily to learn and accept Jewish ethics, as well as for the Jews to become assimilated in the dominant cultures. It is the ethical duty of all Jews to communicate their ethical system to all humanity without having to dilute it. This is very difficult, but clearly not impossible, within the constraints of traditional, Orthodox Judaism. ( Until this century almost all the converts to Judaism were converted to Orthodox Judaism.) The main problem is not to confuse ritual with ethics. Ritual is not ethics. However, many of the ethical norms of Judaism are within metaphoric rituals, because the ethics upon which these rituals were based were too abstract to explain 3000 years ago; thus, the ethics of good health are contained in hygienic, dietary, slaughter, and sacrificial rituals, as well as within other metaphors. The Torah communicates primarily through metaphors, although it also contains explicit ethical norms, e.g. the Ten Commandments, although many of the 613 commandments of God are also explicitly ethical.

Although the prophet Jeremiah as well as the Torah (e.g. Deut. 13:2) clearly describe scientific method as the means for distinguishing true prophets from false prophets, Judaism is not based on science, but is a mystically revealed religion based on metaphor. If such profound ethical truths as are contained in Judaism evolved mystically with little or no benefit of science, then mysticism must be accepted and understood as part of the process for maximizing creativity and discovering truth.

THE MYSTICAL PARADIGM

Mysticism means many different things to many different people. As a young man I considered mysticism a form of pathological self­deception, in which people, in order to be happy, choose to deceive themselves increasingly more, until they learn to predict and control their own thoughts and perceptions (subjective reality) independently of objective reality. I would often ask the mystics who exhorted me to open myself to mysticism, "What can I predict and control in objective reality by accepting your mystical model of the universe that I cannot predict and control without it?" I never received a satisfactory answer to this question. Therefore, I continued to regard mysticism as a pathology which decreased creativity. I was, at the time, an antimystical, antireligious logical positivist.

As I grew older I noticed that the most creative scientists known to me tended to be highly mystical, e.g. Einstein, Bohr, de Broglie, Pauli, Heisenberg, Schr`dinger, Jeans, Edington, and more recently David Bohm and Fred Hoyle, among many others (17). The atheistic, nonmystical scientists tended to be much less creative. Therein I had the answer to my question. When true mysticism is combined with true science, creativity is maximized. However, there is also an antiscientific, happiness-producing false mysticism which leads to a form of self­deception, and which is commonly called "superstition". Idolatry is a metaphor for superstition. "Superstition" may also be defined as "other people's religious beliefs."

What enables us to separate truth from falsehood is scientific method as previously discussed. Therefore, in order to maximize creativity we must combine mysticism with science, and be thoroughly scientific in our mysticism and thoroughly mystical in our science. In order to do this we must distill the notion of mysticism down to its essentials. This is what all true mystics, or as Jeremiah would say "true prophets" have as a common belief system. This gives us the following four part mystical paradigm:

1. The universe has an ethical structure to it; it is neither random, nor chaotic, nor absurd.

2. Within the universe there exists at least one intelligence superior to humanity's which is, at least in part, responsible for the ethical structure of the universe, e.g. God and the angels, or more scientifically, an infinite hierarchy of Moral Societies for those less inclined to work with religious metaphors (6,7).

3. It is possible for humanity to communicate with this higher form of ethical intelligence; e.g., Moses and the quantum metaphor of a bush that burned without being consumed, or the metaphor of the ethical communications between Lot and the angels sent to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Prayer is the traditional way of communicating with God, but any creative or ethical act, i.e. a mitzvah, is a communication with God. There are many specific ways of communicating with the higher intelligence of ethical order (6).

4. Behaving ethically enhances this communication, by creating an open communications channel with God of ever greater bandwidth and ever less noise or randomness..

This is the paradigm of true mysticism which when combined with the scientific paradigm enables humanity to be maximally creative. There is a scientific pattern in nature and in the latest findings of quantum mechanics which shows us how to be a maximally creative scientific mystic. A Hindu who has contributed greatly to scientific mysticism is Amit Goswami, a Professor of Physics at the University of Oregon (9). However, many of the contributors to this field are Jews. Foremost among them is David Bohm.

The essence of scientific mysticism is that one must be fully scientific in one's mysticism and fully mystical in one's science in order to maximize creativity. To see that this is the case and to achieve this apparently paradoxical state of mind, it is essential to thoroughly understand quantum mechanics as it eventually became understood by David Bohm. Although quantum mechanics is among the most mathematically rigorous of subjects and among the most conceptually abstruse, David Bohm's model is quite simple and easy to understand without using any mathematics, although a knowledge of mathematics will deepen our understanding (3). Bohm's model follows, together with my own speculative extrapolations of this model.

QUANTUM MECHANICS

Quantum mechanics is based on the discovery by Max Planck in 1900 that energy is not infinitely divisible but that it can be transferred solely in discrete units called "quanta". In other words there is a minimum unit of energy, the quantum. Einstein used this notion to explain the photoelectric effect in 1907, for which he received the Nobel prize. (Einstein's greatest contributions, special and general relativity, were not so honored.) Although Einstein was a major contributor to quantum mechanics, he refused to accept the conventional interpretation of quantum mechanics. Namely, (1) that the universe was at its core random and unpredictable (contrary to the first part of the mystical paradigm); and (2) that the structure of the universe was holistic such that it was impossible to observe anything in the universe without changing what we are observing by the very act of the observation (contrary to the second part of the mystical paradigm). Einstein responded to the first interpretation by saying "God does not play dice with the universe;" he responded to the second by saying; "God is subtle but not malicious." Remember that Einstein was a mystic who believed in the God of Spinoza, a single God of deterministic universal order and ethical coherence.

As Einstein grew older, he was increasingly in conflict with the physics establishment on the interpretation of quantum mechanics. The establishment interpretation was called "the Copenhagen interpretation," because it was formulated by the Dane Niels Bohr, who was another secular Jew. The physics establishment was particularly disturbed by the fact that Einstein kept bringing God into the argument. Bohr, in exasperation, finally told Einstein to stop telling God how the universe should be created. Both sides of the quantum argument were dominated by Jews and scientific mystics, e.g. Bohr and Einstein .

Einstein kept coming up with incredibly ingenious thought experiments, which he called "Gedanken Experiments," to disprove the Copenhagen interpretation. Max Born, another Nobel Prize winning Jewish physicist who defended the Copenhagen interpretation, said that every time he received one of these thought experiments from Einstein he knew he had many weeks of work ahead of him to be able to convince Einstein that the Copenhagen interpretation was not invalidated by his Gedanken Experiment.

Finally in 1935 Einstein and two of his students at Princeton came up with the ultimate thought experiment which Einstein thought proved that the Copenhagen Interpretation was an incomplete description of reality and that there were hidden variables in nature, which were ignored by the Copenhagen interpretation. If we could discover and measure these hidden variables then the universe would be properly deterministic and we could observe without changing what we are observing. This thought experiment is known as the Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen paradox, or EPR, after Einstein and his two young Jewish students.

What EPR showed is that when two electrons are quantumally correlated, e.g. by originating at a common source, if we send one to the moon and the other to Mars, then, according to the Copenhagen theory, the act of observing the electron on the moon will instantaneously, not at the speed of light, disturb the electron on Mars. This contradicts the Special Theory of Relativity, which says that a signal cannot be sent anywhere in the universe faster than the speed of light. Therefore, according to Einstein, the Copenhagen Interpretation is an incomplete description of reality and there are hidden variables in nature.

Quantum mechanics passes the test of science because it is a practical predictor and controller of reality. Quantum mechanics enabled us to develop lasers, holography, super conductors, super fluids, microelectronic devices, predict the chemical behavior of elements and molecules, and do many other practical things according to the Copenhagen formulations of Heisenberg, Schr`dinger, Dirac, and Feynman. Therefore, it must be true. However, EPR was also true. Therefore, there was a paradox. Bohr resolved the paradox by categorically stating that in this case quantum mechanics, not relativity, made the correct prediction. Naturally, Einstein could not accept this, and he and Bohr stopped talking to each other about these matters, and their previously warm friendship cooled, but both were right and both were wrong.

In 1965 an Irish physicist by the name of John Stewart Bell, deeply influenced by David Bohm, showed that if the EPR paradox was true, then there might indeed be hidden variables, but they must be nonlocal. "Locality" refers to a universe where things are tied together in such a way that they cannot interact faster than the speed of light. To say that things are nonlocal is to say that they are outside of our time and space, and can interact, at some level, instantaneously, no matter how large the distances between them. Finally in 1982 a team of French physicists led by Alain Aspect showed that EPR and Bell were both right. Therefore, Bohr was right, but Einstein was also right about hidden variables, but they are nonlocal. David Bohm was thus able to show that there is infinite information in the Universe outside of our time and space.

Early in his career, David Bohm had shown that the EPR paradox applied to other quantum objects, such as photons and neutrons, and not solely to electrons. Therefore, the EPR paradox is now referred to as the EPRB paradox. After being exiled from the United States because of his extremely ethical, courageous stances against the McCarthy era witch hunts, Bohm worked in Brazil, Israel and England where he made many discoveries in physics, such as the famous Bohm­Aharanov effect discovered while working in Israel.

In 1951, under the close, personal influence of Einstein, David Bohm began developing a new hidden variables model of quantum mechanics, while he was still an instructor at Princeton. He continued this development for the rest of his life; it led to him becoming a very profound mystic as well as a highly creative physicist. This model was validated by the Aspect experiments; it is known as the holographic or implicate order model of the universe (3,4,5). I accept it as true, although a large majority of contemporary physicists are leery of it. The Copenhagen model, further removed from mysticism, is much more comfortable. However, within the framework of the Copenhagen interpretation, two very great Jewish scientists, mathematical genius John von Neumann and Nobelist Eugene Wigner proposed as early as the 1930's that quantum phenomena were due to the direct interaction of the human mind with material reality. They recognized that human consciousness and quantum reality were inextricably interconnected.

The holographic model says that there is an infinite, nonlocal holographic universe that contains our local finite universe, as well as an infinity of other universes. This infinite universe is a universe of pure, true information. Quantum phenomena in our universe are an expression of the implicate order of the holographic universe expressing itself in the explicate order of our local universe. The holographic universe contains all of its information at each point, as does a regular hologram. Therefore, our local universe contains all the information of the holographic universe at each local point. The hidden variables are quanta of information which pass through the quantum field from the implicate order of the holographic universe to the explicate order of our local universe. Matter in our local universe is transformed by this information in direct proportion to its degree of evolution. These concepts lead to a generalized model of evolution.

QUANTUM EVOLUTION

Evolution occurs through a growing hierarchy of ever more complex and intelligent species for incor-porating ever more information from the implicate order into their genetic and/or neural structures, thereby transforming themselves into still more intelligent species within the explicate order of our local universe. An electron represents a very low level of material evolution, and it essentially responds randomly, but coherently, as it receives information from the implicate order. A cell is more intelligent and less random in its responses to quantum information than any form of nonliving matter; as a consequence it evolves faster than matter. A metazoan is still less random in its response to quantum information and it evolves even faster than the cell. This process continues in harmony with the evolution of the nervous system and the collective intelligence of the biosphere, until humanity begins to respond ethically to the information from the implicate order, thereby catalyzimg its own evolution by becoming ever more creative. The same process which produces benign mutations which increase the genetically determined intelligence of ever more new species, produces, in ethical beings, creative ideas which increase the collective, extragenetically determined intelligence of the species. Reality is based on true information, not on energy or matter. The emotional, personal God of the Torah is a metaphor for the creative, impersonal universe of infinite truth beyond our time and space; therefore, as the Torah says, "God is a spirit (Gen. 1:2)."

In accordance with the mystical paradigm, the more ethically we behave the more quantum information flows into our consciousness from the implicate order and the more creative we become. However, there is a quantum quarantine in the universe (6) such that unethical persons are closed to this higher quantum information; they cannot create no matter how intelligent they are, so long as they remain unethical.

Because C = IE, an ethical person, no matter how low his or her intelligence, will be creative, because of positive ethics. However, an unethical person, no matter how great his or her intelligence, can never be creative, because his or her ethics are negative; such persons will in fact be destructive in direct proportion to their intelligence. When ethics is negative creativity is negative. Negative creativity is destructiveness.

There exist techniques for stimulating the flow of quantum information into our consciousness (6). The most powerful of these techniques is simply to behave as ethically as possible in every situation we encounter, without expectation of external reward and without fear of punishment. This is in harmony with the Talmud, that says we should expect no reward from doing a mitzvah, other than the opportunity to do more mitzvahs. Although there may be external rewards to doing a mitzvah, we should be satisfied with the knowledge that the more mitzvahs we do, the more mitzvahs we can do. Hindu scriptures say the same.

In harmony with Judaism, Spinoza, and quantum mechanics, God, the spirit, may be seen as the infinite, quantum process, outside of our time and space, by which the universe grows forever in creativity as each evolving creature chooses to become closer to God, by growing in intelligence, ethics, and creativity. The simple choice to innovate true behavior, which any living creature, even a cell, can choose to do, catalyzes the transfer of true quantum information from the implicate order to the explicate order of the genes, thereby producing a benign mutation. Evolution by purely random mutations can be shown to be mathematically impossible. Only the implicate order makes evolution possible, through punctuated equilibrium (6). God as an infinite, abstract, spiritual process cannot be represented by visual imagery; as per the Torah we must reject all forms of idolatry and the superstitions for which idolatry is a metaphor.

When we receive information from the implicate order, so that we may perform a creative act, we are communicating with God. When we have only a little scientific information, the quantum information is communicated metaphorically. As we grow in ethics, intelligence, and scientific information, this communication is ever less metaphorical. A major prophet is someone who creatively derandomizes the ethical information from the implicate order and communicates it to humanity, as did Moses with the Torah and as did Isaiah, Elijah, Jeremiah, and the other major prophets. Minor prophets do minor creativity.

The highest form of creativity is the communication of divine ethics. That is why the Torah is a repository of true information from the implicate order, which in both metaphorical and nonmetaphorical ways tells a people how to become ever more ethical, and as a consequence ever more creative. That is why the Jews, who are not a race or even a nation, have continued to grow in creativity while many powerful nations, who tried to dominate and exterminate the Jews, have collapsed and ceased to be creative or even to exist.

Changes in Jewish ethics may be produced by the state of Israel which provides Jews with a national instead of an ethical identity. Israel, not the Holocaust, is the major factor influencing Jewish ethics in the future. Nation states, even when governed by a majority of Jews, tend to put short term political gains ahead of long term ethical gains. Not all Jews are ethical, since we do not inherit all of our ethics solely from our mother. As with other nation states, a Jewish state will become ever more dominated by unethical politicians, while its most creative citizens constantly lose power. My Israeli friends all insist that the most corrupt political parties in Israel are the religious political parties. Israel is already highly bureaucratic.

Nations which have been catalyzed by the Jews, when they reject the ethics of the Torah, persecute the Jews and fall into irreversible bureaucratic entropy. In relatively recent times this happened to Spain, Germany, and the Soviet Union. It may happen in the United States. However, an ethical person's loyalty is first to the Evolutionary Ethic, which is to say to God, not to an ethically corrupt nation state or empire. Judaism transcends nationhood. That is why the Jews, have continued to grow in creativity, without a nation state of their own, while many mighty empires that persecuted them have crumbled to uncreative nothingness. Evil will always destroy itself, but it can in the interim destroy much that is good. That is why the Torah is uncompromising and ruthless about dealing with evil. It is always unethical to tolerate evil (5th E.P).

The future of Judaism is to become completely integrated with science and thereby clearly communicate its ethical message to all humanity. This message is best communicated through ethical and creative example by Jews, while encouraging converts and becoming more friendly to them. A Jew should be redefined as a person dedicated to living an ethical life without expectation of external reward or fear of punishment; all unethical "Jews" are apostates. Thus the world will either become ethical or destroy itself.

1. Bell, J. S. Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics. Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1987.

2. Bernstein, Jeremy. Quantum Profiles. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.

3. Bohm, D. & Hiley, B.J. The Undivided Universe. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1993. (Best Ref.)

4. Bohm, David. Wholeness And The Implicate Order. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.

5. Bohm, David & Peat, F. David. Science, Order, and Creativity. New York: Bantam, 1987. (Easiest)

6. Garcia, John David. Creative Transformation: A Practical Guide for Maximizing Creativity. Box 10851, Eugene, Oregon 97440: Noetic Press, 1991.

7. Garcia, John David. The Moral Society: A Rational Alternative to Death. Philadelphia: Whitmore Publishing Co., 1973; New York: Julian Press, 1971.

8. Garcia, John David. Psychofraud and Ethical Therapy. Philadelphia: Whitmore Publishing Co., 1974.

9. Goswami, Amit. The Self-Aware Universe New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1993.

10. Herbert, Nick. Quantum Reality: Beyond The New Physics. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1987.

11. Herbert, Nick. Elemental Mind. New York: Dutton, 1993.

12. Maimonides, Moses. The Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Dover, 1956.

13. Peat, F. David. Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind. New York: Bantam, 1987.

14. Russell, Bertrand. A History of Western Philosophy. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959.

15. Spinoza, Baruch de (translation from Latin into English by R.H.M. Elwes). Works of Spinoza. (political and ethical writings) 2 Vols. New York: Dover, 1951.

16. Spinoza, Baruch de (translation from Latin into English by Henri LuriJ). Ethics. P.O. Box 10851, Eugene, OR 97440: Noetic Press, 1993.

17. Wilber, Ken. Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the Great Physicists. Boulder: Shambala, 1984.

18. Wilber, Ken & Ferguson, Marilyn. The Holographic Paradigm. Boulder: Shambala, 1982.

19. Wolf, Fred Alan. Taking The Quantum Leap: The New Physics. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981.

20. Wolinsky, Stephen. Quantum Consciousness. Norfolk, CT: Bramble Books, 1993.

21. Zohar, Danah. The Quantum Self. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1991.

22. Zohar, Danah & Marshall, Ian. The Quantum Society. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1994.

23. Zukav, Gary. The Dancing Wu Li Masters. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1979.

*These references, except for 1 & 3, may be understood without a knowledge of advanced mathematics.