Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger thought about the meaning of life. His ideas were heavily influenced by monist (oneness) philosophy
Many people have thought about the meaning of life.
"Jesus knew that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look?
"You have to be a son of God to know that kind of stuff." - J. D. Salinger, in Zooey (1957)
The person who is not attached to external pleasures, the person who is tuned into the divine, feels everlasting joy. -
Bhagavad Gita, 5.21
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. - Erwin Schrodinger
The fundamental truth is that the world of our sense-experience is all illusion -
maya.
Quotes from Erwin Schrödinger -
Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge... It has nothing to do with the individual.
No self is alone.
We are never in a position to say what really is or what really happens, but we can only say what will be observed in any concrete individual case.
The ego is an illusion.
Indeed in a certain sense two egos are identical - when one disregards 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.
For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought forth in pain.
A hundred years ago, perhaps, another man sat on this spot; he felt pain and brief joy as you do. Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself?
Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.
I insist upon the view that 'all is waves' (invisible energy).
The multiplicity is only apparent. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads (Hindu texts).
And not of the Upanishads only. The mystical experience of the union with God regularly leads to this view, unless strong prejudices stand in the way.
There is only one mind...
Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular.
The personal self equals the omnipresent eternal self.
True lovers, as they look into each other's eyes, become aware that their thought and their joy are numerically one, not merely similar or identical...
The plurality that we perceive is only an appearance; it is not real.
Vedantic philosophy... 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 that object...
You - and all other conscious beings as such are all in all.
It is not possible that this unity of knowledge, feeling and choice which you call your own should have sprung into being from nothingness at a given moment not so long ago.
Rather this knowledge, feeling, and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all men, nay in all sensitive beings.
This life of yours... is, in a certain sense, the whole... I am this whole world.'
Erwin Schrodinger.
Eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.
Vedanta teaches that consciousness is singular, all happenings are played out in one universal consciousness and there is no multiplicity of selves.
This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece 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.
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.
I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient.
It knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity.
Science cannot tell us a word about why
music delights us, of why and how an old song can move us to tears.
The observing mind is not a physical system, it cannot interact with any physical system. Sensations and
thoughts do not belong to the "world of
energy."
~~~
Monism
Monism is a belief that there is only one mind.
Heaven is inside of you, according to Jesus.
A person who is not attached to external pleasures but enjoys happiness in the soul, the person who perceives
Brahman (the divine) in everything feels everlasting
joy. -
Bhagavad Gita, 5.21
The ancient
Hindu philosophers stated as a fundamental truth that the world of our sense-experience is all illusion (
maya), that change, plurality, and causation are not real, that there is but one reality, God.
This phenomenon has been observed in laboratory experiments.
The entangled objects somehow communicate instantaneously at a distance.
Jesus knew that we're carrying the
Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look? You have to be a
son of God to know that kind of stuff. -
J. D. Salinger, in
Zooey (1957)
