Stephen J. Hage is an expert in radiology and hospital radiology department administration. Perhaps most revealing of the questions that drive his inquisitive mind is the title of his first published journal article, "Visualizing the Invisible" in 1966.

A regular contributor to technical journals and a lecturer and instructor, Hage is a long-time member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has also published a science fiction novel entitled Syster is Ready.

To more clearly understand how the universe works, author Stephen Hage offers this template that outlines why, even though matter appears to truly exist, its existence cannot be scientifically proven. � He explores enigmas in physics which...

To more clearly understand how the universe works, author Stephen Hage offers this template that outlines why, even though matter appears to truly exist, its existence cannot be scientifically proven. � He explores enigmas in physics which still exist and cannot be satisfactorily explained. He explains why the Dimensional Structure of Consciousness is a new paradigm upon which a new myth can be constructed to help better understand how the universe works as Copernicus did when he shattered the myth that the sun orbits the earth rather than the other way around. The style is conversational and friendly and uses current vernacular to keep it that way. The approach is to invite the reader to consider the arguments made and avoid a posture which implies the author is right and Descartes was wrong. The book is intended to be valuable for intelligent lay readers interested in the subjects of consciousness, physics, quantum mechanics, philosophy, metaphysics, myth and meditation; and the deep and meaningful connections between those areas of inquiry. In a sense, the book is an interpretation and appreciation of three books by Samuel Avery: 'The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness,'� 'Transcendence of the Western Mind'� and 'Buddha and the Quantum.'�

BY SAMUEL AVERY, Author of Transcendence of the Western Mind. A paradigm shift changes not what you see but from whence you see it. The world looks the same, before and after; what changes is the looker. If you step outside and watch the stars and...

BY SAMUEL AVERY, Author of Transcendence of the Western Mind. A paradigm shift changes not what you see but from whence you see it. The world looks the same, before and after; what changes is the looker. If you step outside and watch the stars and planets arcing across the sky on a clear night, they rise over the eastern horizon as they did in the time before Copernicus. You see them exactly as Ptolemy saw them. The difference since Copernicus is in who you are and where you stand in the universe. This is the great burden of a paradigm shift: It explains the world in a new way, but it has also to explain why the old way worked so well for so long. It has to explain what we were seeing before. Copernicus had to tell us why we thought the sun orbited the Earth. The paradigm shift that Stephen Hage and I describe in this and other books on the meaning of modern physics is no exception. The dimensional structure of consciousness that we propose explains everything in the physical world without material substance, but carries the burden of explaining why the world looks like it is material. It explains why you touch the flowers on the table where you see and smell them, and why you see the squirrel on the lawn when you hear it, but also why objects in the world seem to be there when no one is looking. Because the world of tables and chairs without matter looks exactly as it does with it, we cannot use it to point out the new paradigm. We have to point to scientific observations at the fringes of physical reality that do not fit into the material worldview, exotic phenomena that exist far beyond the familiar world of everyday life. The Uncertainty Principle, the space, time, and mass dilations of relativity theory, black holes, the wave-particle duality, and the non-localities of quantum mechanics all tell us that something is very wrong with our understanding at the extremes of the dimensional world. The essence of our argument is that this is the same dimensional world that we experience in everyday life, and that there is something very wrong'or at least very old fashioned'in how we understand what we experience sitting in the living room or walking down the street. Understood anew, the enigmas of modern physics, like the retrograde motions of outer planets, revolutionize not what is seen, but the mind that sees them. At the heart of the revolution is a new understanding of dimensions. In the material worldview, space and time define an external universe populated with material objects that exist with or without conscious experience. We question this assumption because a) it is an assumption; b) all of the enigmas of modern physics involve limitations and distortions in space, time, and mass dimensions, and c) the same enigmas involve observation (conscious experience) of physical phenomena. We propose that dimensions, rather than structures of an independently existing universe, are structures internal to consciousness. They are in us, not we in them. More specifically, a dimension is a potential for sensory information. This is the key to understanding modern physics. A dimension is not something 'out there'� that we are in; it is something that structures, organizes, and gives meaning to what is seen, heard, touched, tasted, and smelled. Information is always an actual within a potential: it is a dot that could be a dot or a dash, a yes that could be a yes or a no, a red that could be a green, or a number that could be some other number. Sensory information is an actual point or locus of points within a potential experienced in the form of a dimension. Mass, rather than a measure of material content, is the second time dimension of acceleration. What we experience as the physical world is five realms of sensory experience intercoordinated into five space, time, and mass dimensions. It is the intercoordination that produces the appearance of material substance. Where and when you see flowers on the table is where and when you touch or smell them. Where and when you hear a squirrel on the lawn is where and when you see it. Knowing you will feel an object where you see it gives it the appearance of it being 'out there'� when you do not see it. (It is only potential perception that is dimensionally coordinated: where an object is heard has to do with where it is seen, not what it looks like.) This 'dimensional structure of consciousness'� is difficult to grasp initially, but far simpler than the material worldview. The concept of matter is so deeply engrained that we have forgotten that it is an assumption. Matter is assumed to exist outside of experience. It will always remain an assumption because experience is limited to what we actually see, hear, taste, touch, and smell, and no one has ever, or will ever, experience anything beyond experience. There is no way to prove it. The new paradigm does not require this assumption; therefore it is simpler. Because the everyday world looks the same with either paradigm, the new paradigm cannot be derived from everyday experience. It is superior to the material worldview only because it is consistent with everyday life and with the enigmas. It applies to the middle latitudes of space, time, and mass, where we have our being, as well as to dimensional extremes (extreme velocity, size, mass, and distance) where the enigmas occur. Light, for instance, is the visual realm of consciousness. As its particle nature begins to dominate its wave nature it becomes reducible to the minute tactile sensations of individual photons. The realm of visual information is reducible, therefore, to the realm of tactile information at extremely small dimensional values. If the new paradigm is right, the potentials for visual and tactile perception should blend together at this level, which is exactly what happens. Space and time become indistinguishable at precisely the point where visual and tactile information become indistinguishable. The same fabric of space'time that is rigid, absolute, and unchanging on the macroscopic level unravels to nothing below the quantum level. In seeing how the world falls apart at the quantum level we begin to see how it is put together on the macroscopic level. If the new paradigm shifts the way we think it will'if the world is put together the way we think it is'we are not who we thought we were and there is an entirely new meaning to life. It could not happen at a better time. But the dimensional structure of consciousness is only Hage's starting point for this book. He takes the ball and runs to places I never thought to go. This is the sign of a good paradigm'a new myth that cuts through cobwebs of outdated thought and opens new continents for human exploration. Samuel Avery Hart County, Kentucky � 

This book is a meditation on and an appreciation of Samuel Avery's Transcendence of the Western Mind... in a style that'if I'm successful'will be relatively easy to understand. Avery presents a new myth useful for understanding why matter, as we have come to appreciate it, doesn't truly exist. For most Westerners, the suggestion that matter doesn't exist is so absurd they aren't even willing to consider it. But, what makes his argument so powerful and convincing is, in presenting us with a new myth he doesn't simply present it de novo. Instead he insists on including the physics associated with all the ideas he presents without resorting to mathematics and mathematical formulas which make most people's eyes glaze over the moment they see them. In that respect, I have followed Avery's lead. For Westerners, the mindset that governs understanding of how the universe works is tied directly to the ideas and myths created by Rene Descartes. He believed that matter exists and helped shape our ideas regarding consciousness with his famous declaration cogito ergo sum'I think, therefore I am. We picked up that ball and ran with it which explains why we believe the cup we see sitting on the table is really out there because, after all, we can see it and touch it and, if we wish, do things with it like drink coffee. Our Cartesian imprinting is very strong, so strong that most scientists believe that matter truly exists. But, interestingly, especially for scientists and particularly for physicists, to their dismay they have discovered it is impossible to scientifically prove that matter exists. This raises a host of interesting and difficult questions like, if scientists cannot prove that matter exists, why is it that I have no trouble seeing and manipulating objects I assume are composed of matter? For most people this isn't a big deal because they assume matter exists and that it's just crazy to deny it exists. But physicists aren't most people. Their approach to exploring 'what is'� is highly disciplined because it relies on the scientific method. And, when they intensify their focus on matter in an attempt to determine exactly what it's composed of, they discover that it disappears....