Schrödinger’s Spirituo-Scientific Enquiry

“I should say: the overall number of minds is just one,” wrote Schrödinger, the Nobel Prize physicist and ‘father of quantum mechanics.” Deeply influenced by the wisdom of the Ancient Indian scriptures, Oneness with the All permeated his scientific work. 

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) was an Austrian-Irish physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933 for the formulation of the Schrödinger equation, a key result that led to the development of the field of quantum mechanics. Often referred to as “the father of quantum mechanics,” Schrödinger was an accomplished scientist who made many significant contributions to physics. A lesser known—and not frequently spoken of—fact is that Schrödinger was a proponent of the idea of One Mind.  

Erwin Schrödinger, the Austrian physicist, was one of the most brilliant scientific minds of the 20th century. In 1933 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of wave mechanics, which lies at the heart of quantum physics. 

Schrödinger believed in the One Mind. As he put it, “Mind is by its very nature a singulare tantum. I should say: the overall number of minds is just one.” (…) As he put it, “I was just now with great enthusiasm becoming familiar with Schopenhauer and, through him, with the doctrine of unity taught by the Upanishads.” Schrödinger filled notebook after notebook with commentaries based on his reading of European and Eastern philosophers. (…)  

The impact of Schopenhauer’s philosophy has been immense. This “lone giant” in Western philosophy, as the novelist Arthur Koestler called him, influenced individuals as diverse as Nietzsche, Freud, Mann, and Wagner. Schopenhauer honored the wisdom of the East, especially India’s contributions of Vedanta and the Upanishads. He named his faithful dog “Atman,” the Hindu term for the spiritual principle of the universe that is inherent in all individuals. At his bedside, he kept Hindu scriptures and a gold-leafed statue of the Buddha dressed as a beggar. (…) He maintained that not only do all the events of existence fall into place in one’s trajectory through life, but they simultaneously mesh with the life courses of all other individuals, even though the drama of others’ lives may be unknown to her. When viewed in aggregate, multiple lives fit together like a jigsaw puzzle whose overall pattern is so complex it is beyond the comprehension of any particular individual. Said Schopenhauer, “Everything is interrelated and mutually attuned.” Schopenhauer saw order in disorder and apparent randomness, offering meaning to Schrödinger’s world turned upside down. 

Only One Mind 

Schrödinger thought deeply about the key teachings he read. He reformulated them in his own words, and they became the pillars that sustained him for the rest of his life. In books such as My View of the World, What Is Life?, and Mind and Matter, he painstakingly built a concept of a single mind, in which consciousness is transpersonal, universal, collective, and infinite in space and time, therefore immortal and eternal. In adopting a unitary view of human consciousness, Schrödinger recognized what he called the “arithmetical paradox”—that although there are billions of apparently separate minds, the view that humans have of the world is largely coherent. There is only one adequate explanation for this, he wrote, “namely the unification of minds or consciousness. Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth there is only one mind.” 

Schrödinger believed we are suffering from a consensus trance, a collective delusion, about the nature of consciousness. As he put it, “We have entirely taken to thinking of the personality of a human being … as located in the interior of the body. To learn that it cannot be found there is so amazing that it meets with doubt and hesitation, we are very loath to admit it. We have got used to localizing the conscious personality inside a person’s head—I should say an inch or two behind the midpoint of the eyes…. It is very difficult for us to take stock of the fact that the localization of the personality, of the conscious mind, inside the body is only symbolic, “just an aid for practical use.” 

Immortality for the mind was a key feature of Schrödinger’s vision. He wrote, “I venture to call it [the mind] indestructible since it has a peculiar timetable, namely mind is always now. There is no before and after for the mind. There is only now that includes memories and expectations….We may, or so I believe, assert that physical theory in its present stage strongly suggests the indestructibility of Mind by Time.” 

For many Westerners, the extent of Schrödinger’s holism can be shocking. He acknowledged this but did not hold back, maintaining, “[As] inconceivable as it seems to ordinary reason, you—and all other conscious beings as such—are all in all. Hence this life of yours that you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is 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: Tat tvam asi, this is you. Or, again, in such words as ‘I am in the east and the west, I am below and above, I am this whole world.’” 

For Schrödinger, this vision was no airy-fairy piece of philosophy; it was thoroughly practical. Echoing Schopenhauer, he declared that one’s unity with others “underlies all morally valuable activity,” including altruism and heroism. In the embrace of oneness with others, individuals will risk their lives for an end they believe to be good, lay down their life to save someone else’s, and give to relieve a stranger’s suffering even though it may increase their own. 

Oneness with the All permeated Schrödinger’s workday life as a scientist. Done properly, scientific work was akin to fathoming the mind of God. He wrote, “Science is a game…. The uncertainty is how many of the rules God himself has permanently ordained, and how many are caused “by your mental inertia…. This is perhaps the most exciting thing in the game. For here you strive against the imaginary boundary between yourself and the Godhead—a boundary that perhaps does not exist.” 

Schrödinger saw not conflict but harmony between his interpretation of quantum physics and Vedanta. As his biographer, Moore explained, “In 1925, the world view of physics was a model of the universe as a great machine composed of separable interacting material particles. During the next few years, Schrödinger and Heisenberg and their followers created a universe based on the superimposed inseparable waves of probability amplitudes. This view would be entirely consistent with the Vedantic concept of the All in One.” 

But not just with Vedanta. Schrödinger cited with approval Aldous Huxley’s magnificent treatise The Perennial Philosophy, an anthology of mystical writings from the esoteric side of the world’s major religions. This suggests that Schrödinger agreed in principle with the view that “all mystics speak the same language, for they come from the same country.” If Vedanta had not existed, he would have found affirmation of his vision in other traditions. The stars don’t rise; it is the earth that tilts and spins, causing the stars to come into view. So it is with great truths. Although they are always present, they await our movement to be seen. 

Source

~Excerpt from the book “One Mind: How Our Mind Is Part Of A Greater Consciousness And Why It Matters” by Larry Dossey, M.D. Hay House, Inc., 2013~