The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra

“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”


- Albert Einstein

“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.”

- Niels Bohr

These two giants of Modern Science discovered the conundrum that inspires spiritual seekers to discover a greater Reality than can be discerned through our intellectual equipment.

The author of ‘The Tao of Physics’, Fritjof Capra, himself a physicist, had an epiphany on a beach where he was able to experience his entire environment as a dance of vibrating molecules and atoms. This led him to explore the parallels between the different philosophies of Eastern Mysticism and Physics - “the endeavor of seeing the essential nature of all things”.

The author avers that the underlying unity of all things, though it is chiefly considered an Eastern belief, has also manifested itself in Western Philosophy, only to be discarded in favor of a dualistic approach that attempts to distinguish between Matter and Spirit, Individual and Universe.

This book reveals the harmony between the intuitive wisdom of the East, and the empirical findings of Science. The wisdom expounded in Eastern Philosophies is one that is beyond both sensory perception and intellectual cognition. However, Science in its relentless pursuit of Knowledge has reached an approximation of the great truths in its own way. Its boundaries are being pushed ever farther to accommodate ‘new’ findings.

Fritjof Capra compromises neither his spiritual inclinations nor his scientific training. The latest findings of particle physics affirm that all measurements of space and time are relative; that ‘solid matter’ is in fact, a continuous dance of energy – a process of endless creation and destruction; that matter is inherently inseparable from force, both being “different aspects of the same phenomena”; and, that there is an interconnection between all matter, that the properties of one part are determined by those of all the others.

This is in harmony with the Spiritual understanding of Brahman/Dharmakaya/Tao – different names for the same underlying Universal principle that is indivisible, all pervasive, and beyond Time, Space, Matter, Energy, and Consciousness.

“…space is nothing but a mode of particularization and it has no real existence of its own…Space exists only in relation to our particularizing consciousness.”

“…space and time co-ordinates are only the elements of a language that is used by an observer to describe his environment.”

Can you guess which of the two statements above was made by a mystic, and which by a physicist?