Quantum Physics & Hinduism
I remember reading The ‘Tao of Physics’, Fritjof Capra in the early 1990s and it just washed on me like water on a ducks back. I didn’t understand a word of what he was saying then. Capra is a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Vienna. His work is like a light bulb moment for me today and summarized below.
What has Particle physics got to do with Hindu philosophy? Capra was struck with the descriptions of matter & reality in quantum physics. He says the only way to describe it is ‘mystical’. Newton’s laws of relativity work well in our daily life. Why salt falls or a ball flies in the air. But once you start to examine matter deeper, it is just energy which takes the appearance of feel and form.
Interestingly Hinduism uses a similar analogy that all matter is just the same energy and just takes different naama, roopa and vyavahara or Name, shape and attributes. This was discovered 5000 years back. Capra says that these religions discovered realities before Newton. Interestingly he writes exactly what the Rishis (the learned men) wrote that “nothingness is not emptiness”. Hinduism refers to it as Brahman, a field of energy from which all things emerge. Buddhism calls it ‘Shunyata’ or the living void and Taoism has similar references.
The Bhagavad Gita makes a reference ‘All actions take place in time by interweaving the forces of nature but man lost in selfish delusion thinks he is the only actor’.
The Upanishads (narrated about 4000+ years back) say ‘When the mind is disturbed, a multiplicity of things are produced. When the mind is quiet, the same multiplicity disappears’
Capra concludes his Quantum physics work… ‘In other words, the world literally changes when we perceive things differently’
If you take one thing from this blog from Capra, remember that “modern science increasingly validates more Eastern spiritual or mystical conceptions of the Universe”
@seenaveennarayanan Naveen Narayanan
#inquirytohappiness
