Physicists From Austria

"Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge... It has nothing to do with the individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. Indeed in a certain sense two "I"'s are identical namely when one disregards all special contents — their Karma. The goal of man is to preserve his Karma and to develop it further... when man dies his Karma lives and creates for itself another carrier."

"'If finally we look back at that idea of [Ernst] Mach [1838-1916], we shall realize that it comes as near to the orthodox dogma of the Upanishads as it could possibly do without stating it expressis verbis . The external world and consciousness are one and the same thing.'"

"But it is quite easy to express the solution in words, thus: the plurality that we perceive is only an appearance; it is not real. Vedantic philosophy, in which this is a fundamental dogma, has sought to clarify it by a number of analogies, one of the most attractive being the many-faceted crystal which, while showing hundreds of little pictures of what is in reality a single existent object, does not really multiply the object... 'You may suddenly come to see, in a flash, the profound rightness of the basic conviction of Vedanta: … knowledge, feeling and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all men, nay in all sentient beings.'"

"This life of yours which you are living is not merely apiece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear; tat tvam asi , this is you. Or, again, in such words as "I am in the east and the west, I am above and below, I am this entire world."

"[T]hose people who say "Life is baffling, we can't explain it," aren't necessarily saying we need or a miracle. They might just be saying "We need some new physics... or laws of life," if you like, and Schrödinger was open to that, he said "We must be prepared to find a new kind of physical law prevailing in it.""

"Seventy-five years ago Erwin Schrödinger published... What Is Life?... based on a series of lectures he gave in Dublin in 1943 during the height of World War II... [S]chrödinger was the... co-architect of one of the most difficult scientific theories that we know, quantum mechanics, but he was unable to wrap his head around the nature of life. He was baffled. He made some progress, but the key point he wanted to address was whether life can be explained by physics. ...[I]t's really important... to distinguish between known physics, what you find in the textbooks, and new physics."

"It is a poorly-kept secret that the grandfathers of quantum mechanics, Bohr, Oppenheimer, Heisenberg, Einstein, de Broglie, Jeans, but in particular Schrödinger were fascinated and inspired by Vedic cosmology."

"Schrödinger, who was born in Vienna in 1887, was a fascinating man. I met him a few months before he died in 1961. All the inventors of the quantum theory, as it happened, were men of very broad culture, perhaps attributable in part to their European gymnasium educations, but even in this group Schrödinger stood out. He read very widely in a variety of languages, ancient and modern. He was a scientific polymath with a deep interest in Eastern religions. He was also a rather romantic figure who wrote poetry. I was told by that when Schrödinger appeared in 1939 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Dublin, where he had been offered sanctuary during the war, he did so with what Professor Frank referred to as two ‘‘wives.’’ (This was the least of it. Schrödinger had several mistresses, with whom he fathered at least two daughters.)"

"To my view the ‘statistical theory of time’ has an even stronger bearing on the philosophy of time than the theory of relativity. The latter, however revolutionary, leaves untouched the undirectional flow of time, which it presupposes, while the statistical theory constructs it from the order of events. This means a liberation from the tyranny of old Chronos. What we in our minds construct ourselves cannot, so I feel, have dictatorial power over our mind, neither the power of bringing it to the fore nor the power of annihilating it. But some of you, I am sure, will call this mysticism. So with all due acknowledgement to the fact that physical theory is at all times relative, in that it depends on certain basic assumptions, we may, or so I believe, assert that physical theory in its present stage strongly suggests the indestructibility of Mind by Time."

"The sensation of colour cannot be accounted for by the physicist's objective picture of light-waves."

"Nature has no reverence towards life. Nature treats life as though it were the most valueless thing in the world.... Nature does not act by purposes."

"Matter and energy seem granular in structure, and so does "life", but not so mind."

"The material world has only been constructed at the price of taking the self, that is, mind, out of it, removing it; mind is not part of it..."

"There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of minds or consciousnesses. Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth there is only one mind."

"If we were bees, ants, or Lacedaemonian warriors, to whom personal fear does not exist and cowardice is the most shameful thing in the world, warring would go on forever. But luckily we are only men — and cowards."

"The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist."

"In particular, and most importantly, this is the reason why the scientific worldview contains of itself no ethical values, no esthetical values, not a word about our own ultimate scope or destination, and no God, if you please. Whence came I and whither go I?"

"The scientific world-picture vouchsafes a very complete understanding of all that happens — it makes it just a little too understandable. It allows you to imagine the total display as that of a mechanical clockwork which, for all that science knows, could go on just the same as it does, without there being consciousness, will, endeavor, pain and delight and responsibility connected with it — though they actually are. And the reason for this disconcerting situation is just this: that for the purpose of constructing the picture of the external world, we have used the greatly simplifying device of cutting our own personality out, removing it; hence it is gone, it has evaporated, it is ostensibly not needed."

"The observing mind is not a physical system, it cannot interact with any physical system. And it might be better to reserve the term "subject" for the observing mind. … For the subject, if anything, is the thing that senses and thinks. Sensations and thoughts do not belong to the "world of energy.""

"Science cannot tell us a word about why music delights us, of why and how an old song can move us to tears."

"We do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We are not in it; we are outside. We are only spectators. The reason why we believe that we are in it, that we belong to the picture, is that our bodies are in the picture. Our bodies belong to it. Not only my own body, but those of my friends, also of my dog and cat and horse, and of all the other people and animals. And this is my only means of communicating with them."

"I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously."

"You may ask — you are bound to ask me now: What, then, is in your opinion the value of natural science? I answer: Its scope, aim and value is the same as that of any other branch of human knowledge. Nay, none of them alone, only the union of all of them, has any scope or value at all, and that is simply enough described: it is to obey the command of the Delphic deity: gnothi seauton... get to know yourself!"

"I consider it extremely doubtful whether the happiness of the human race has been enhanced by the technical and industrial developments that followed in the wake of rapidly progressing natural science."

"It seems plain and self-evident, yet it needs to be said: the isolated knowledge obtained by a group of specialists in a narrow field has in itself no value whatsoever, but only in its synthesis with all the rest of knowledge and only inasmuch as it really contributes in this synthesis toward answering the demand, "Who are we?""

"I am born into an environment — I know not whence I came nor whither I go nor who I am. This is my situation as yours, every single one of you. The fact that everyone always was in this same situation, and always will be, tells me nothing. Our burning question as to the whence and whither — all we can ourselves observe about it is the present environment. That is why we are eager to find out about it as much as we can. That is science, learning, knowledge; it is the true source of every spiritual endeavour of man. We try to find out as much as we can about the spatial and temporal surroundings of the place in which we find ourselves put by birth…"

"Vedanta teaches that consciousness is singular, all happenings are played out in one universal consciousness and there is no multiplicity of selves."

"There is no kind of framework within which we can find consciousness in the plural; this is simply something we construct because of the temporal plurality of individuals, but it is a false construction... The only solution to this conflict insofar as any is available to us at all lies in the ancient wisdom of the Upanishad."

"If I try to hold on the currently predominant view and derive the unity of my self, … I find myself with an impenetrable thicket of questions. … Why is it precisely at this intermediate level in the hierarchy of successively superimposed unities (cell, organ, human body, state)—why, I ask, it is precisely at the level of my body that unitary self-consciousness comes into the picture, whereas the cell and the organ do not as yet possess it and the state possesses it no longer?"

"The self is not so much linked to its ancestors, it is not so much the product, and merely the product, of all that, but rather, in the strictest sense of the word, the same thing as all that: the strict, direct continuation of it, just as the self aged fifty is the continuation of the self aged forty."

"The unphilosophical and philosophical attitudes can be very sharply distinguished (with scarcely any intermediate forms) by the fact that the first accepts everything that happens as regards its general form, and finds occasion for surprise only in that special content by which something that happens here today differs from what happened there yesterday; whereas for the second, it is precisely the common features of all experience, such as characterise everything we encounter, which are the primary and most profound occasion for astonishment."

"Not one word is said here of acausality, wave mechanics, indeterminacy relations, complementarity, … etc. Why doesn’t he talk about what he knows instead of trespassing on the professional philosopher’s preserves? Ne sutor supra crepidam. On this I can cheerfully justify myself: because I do not think that these things have as much connection as is currently supposed with a philosophical view of the world."

"From the early great Upanishads, the recognition ATHMAN = BRAHMAN (the personal self equals the omnipresent, all-comprehending eternal self) was in Indian thought considered, far from being blasphemous, to represent the quintessence of deepest insight into the happenings of the world. The striving of all the scholars of Vedanta was, after having learnt to pronounce with their lips, really to assimilate in their minds this grandest of all thoughts."

"The only possible alternative is simply to keep to immediate experience that consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown; that there is only one thing and that what seems to be a plurality is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing, produced by a deception (the Indian MAJA); the same illusion is produced in a gallery of mirrors, and in the same way Gaurisankar and Mt Everest turned out to be the same peak seen from different valleys."

"We must therefore not be discouraged by the difficulty of interpreting life by the ordinary laws of physics. For that is just what is to be expected from the knowledge we have gained of the structure of living matter. We must also be prepared to find a new type of physical law prevailing in it. Or are we to term it a non-physical, not to say a super-physical, law?"

"How would we express in terms of the statistical theory the marvelous faculty of a living organism, by which it delays the decay into thermodynamical equilibrium (death)?... the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness... really consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment."

"In Darwin's theory, you just have to substitute 'mutations' for his 'slight accidental variations' (just as quantum theory substitutes 'quantum jump' for 'continuous transfer of energy'). In all other respects little change was necessary in Darwin's theory..."

"We have just introduced the term gene for the hypothetical material carrier of a definite hereditary feature..."

"When one analyzes the pre-conscious step to concepts, one always finds ideas which consist of "symbolic images." The first step to thinking is a painted vision of these inner pictures whose origin cannot be reduced only and firstly to the sensual perception but which are produced by an 'instinct to imagining' and which are re-produced by different individuals independently, i.e. collectively... But the archaic image is also the necessary predisposition and the source of a scientific attitude. To a total recognition belong also those images out of which have grown the rational concepts."

"The layman always means, when he says "reality" that he is speaking of something self-evidently known; whereas to me it seems the most important and exceedingly difficult task of our time is to work on the construction of a new idea of reality."

"The purely psychological interpretation only apprehends half of the matter. The other half is the revealing of the archetypal basis of the terms actually applied in modern physics. What the final method of observation must see in the production of "background physics" through the unconscious of modern man is a directing of objective toward a future description of nature that uniformly comprises physis and psyche, a form of description that at the moment we are experiencing only in a prescientific phase. To achieve such a uniform description of nature, it appears to be essential to have recourse to the archetypal background of the scientific terms and concepts."

"Later, however, I came to recognize the objective nature of these dreams or fantasies … Thus it was that I gradually came to acknowledge that such fantasies or dreams are neither meaningless nor purely arbitrary but rather convey a sort of "second meaning" of the terms applied."

"When that amusing "Pauli effect" of the overturned vase occurred, on the occasion of the founding of the Jung Institute, I had the immediate and vivid impression that I should "pour out water inside" (— to use the symbolic language that I have acquired from you). Then when the connection between psychology and physics took up a relatively large part of your talk, it became even more clear to me what I was to do. The outcome of all this is the enclosed essay."

"Already in my original paper I stressed the circumstance that I was unable to give a logical reason for the exclusion principle or to deduce it from more general assumptions. I had always the feeling, and I still have it today, that this is a deficiency."

"Es gibt keinen Gott und Dirac ist sein Prophet."

"I have done a terrible thing, I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected."

"At the dawn of religion, all the knowledge of a particular community fitted into a spiritual framework, based largely on religious values and ideas. The spiritual framework itself had to be within the grasp of the simplest member of the community, even if its parables and images conveyed no more than the vaguest hint as to their underlying values and ideas. But if he himself is to live by these values, the average man has to be convinced that the spiritual framework embraces the entire wisdom of his society. For "believing" does not to him mean "taking for granted," but rather "trusting in the guidance" of accepted values. That is why society is in such danger whenever fresh knowledge threatens to explode the old spiritual forms. The complete separation of knowledge and faith can at best be an emergency measure, afford some temporary relief. In western culture, for instance, we may well reach the point in the not too distant future where the parables and images of the old religions will have lost their persuasive force even for the average person; when that happens, I am afraid that all the old ethics will collapse like a house of cards and that unimaginable horrors will be perpetrated. In brief, I cannot really endorse Planck's philosophy, even if it is logically valid and even though I respect the human attitudes to which it gives rise. Einstein's conception is closer to mine. His God is somehow involved in the immutable laws of nature. Einstein has a feeling for the central order of things. He can detect it in the simplicity of natural laws. We may take it that he felt this simplicity very strongly and directly during his discovery of the theory of relativity. Admittedly, this is a far cry from the contents of religion. I don't believe Einstein is tied to any religious tradition, and I rather think the idea of a personal God is entirely foreign to him. But as far as he is concerned there is no split between science and religion: the central order is part of the subjective as well as the objective realm, and this strikes me as being a far better starting point."

"Against all the retrogressive endeavors (Bohm, Schrödinger etc. and in some sense also Einstein) I am sure that the statistical character of the ψ-function and hence of nature’s laws – on which you insisted from the very beginning against Schrödinger’s resistance – will define the style of the laws at least for some centuries. It may be that later, e.g. in connection with the living processes, one will find something entirely new, but to dream of a way back, back to the classical style of Newton-Maxwell (and these are just dreams these gentlemen are giving themselves up to) seems to me hopeless, digressive, bad taste. And, we could add, it is not even a beautiful dream."

"One shouldn’t work on semiconductors, that is a filthy mess; who knows whether any semiconductors exist."

"I cannot believe God is a weak left-hander."