ERWIN SCHRODINGER AND RELIGION

Erwin Schrödinger

Erwin Schrödinger was an Austrian scientist who won a Nobel Prize.



Schrödinger had an unorthodox view of 'God'.

Schrödinger imagined a cat, unseen, in a box .

According to quantum mechanics the cat may be both dead and alive until the box is opened and the cat is observed.

According to Schrödinger, the mind of the person who opens the box decides if the cat is alive or dead.

In other words, mind creates matter.

In other words, the mind can tune into Heaven or Hell.

...

Erwin Schrödinger had a lifelong interest in the Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism, and in Budhism and in Christianity.

He said: "We living beings all belong to one another, we are all actually members or aspects of a single Being, which we may in western terminology call God, while in the Upanishads it is called Brahman."

He saw the possibility that individual consciousness is a part of one big consciousness pervading the universe. [22]

Erwin Schroedinger On God

Erwin Schrödinger said: "We do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us.

"We are not in it; we are outside."

How is it possible .

In other words, it is the mind and not the body that is important.

Erwin Schrödinger wrote about Nirvan and Karma and the 'Self'.

Hindus and Buddhists disagree about 'God'.

Vedanta Hindus teach that our soul, when purified, returns to 'God'.

Buddhists teach that Nirvana is something beyond our understanding.

"The Buddhist Nirvana is not the primordial ground, the eternal essence, which is at the basis of everything and form which the whole world has arisen - the Brahman of the Upanishads...

"The Buddhist Nirvana is something altogether different which must be characterized as a nothing in relation to the world, but which is experienced as highest bliss by those who have attained to it..."

Vedanta and Buddhism .

Erwin Schrödinger said: "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."

Erwin Schrodinger .

~~

How do you tune into Nirvana / Paradise / Heaven?

You switch off the selfish ego.

~~

THE SOUL

On the night he died, Alex told Irene Pepperberg, a professor, "You be good. I love you."

Alex was a parrot.

"Alex could pronounce over 100 words; could count to six; and understood abstract concepts...

"When he wanted to stop his laboratory tests and rest at a window overlooking the garden he would say 'Wanna go tree.'

"When other parrots mispronounced words he would correct them: 'Talk clearly.' 

Animal minds | The Economist

Sounds like parrots have got souls?

Phineas Gage.

Phineas Gage, born in 1823, had an accident which destroyed much of his brain's left frontal lobe.

He changed from being well-behaved to antisocial.

This leads to questions about 'the self' and 'the soul'.

René Descartes, born in 1596, believed that man has a soul which is separate from the body.

Thomas Hobbes, born eight years before Descartes, did not believe in such a 'soul'.

(Psychiatry professor George Makari, in Soul Machine: The Invention of the Modern Mind, refers to Phineas Gage. Lost soul | The Economist)

The 'personality' may be temporary. But what about the 'soul'?

Eleanor died. Over the next few days various elephants visited her.

Elephants mourn their dead.

Animal minds | The Economist

One cat has become a Guardian Angel for other sick animals

This cat almost died and now spends her days caring for other animals who are sick.

...

According to Amit Goswami:

"When the material body dies, the learned tendencies of the subtle body survive as nonlocal memory, and will reincarnate in another physical body in the future.

"In between death and rebirth, we survive as a “soul”, a reservoir of accumulated character aspects or propensities that Easterners describe using the Sanskrit words karma and sanskara."[1]

At 'Under the Tree' we read:

"The Buddha points out we are not the body, not material objects, and not the things to which we become attached.

"The Buddha taught there are things which are 'not self' and 'not soul.'

"A spiritual Self exists that is not equivalent to any material fabrication."