1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:25,720 The survival of the human race may depend on achieving peaceful coexistence with nature as much as each other, 2 00:00:25,720 --> 00:00:30,720 but individual survival is often felt to depend on the conquest of nature. 3 00:00:30,720 --> 00:00:35,720 And that means a technology achieved through precise control of the material world, 4 00:00:35,720 --> 00:00:39,720 a control based in turn on a precise science. 5 00:00:39,720 --> 00:00:46,720 The popular image of mysticism does not include precision as one of its attributes. 6 00:00:46,720 --> 00:00:52,720 Mysticism is often used in science and especially among physicists 7 00:00:52,720 --> 00:00:56,720 in a way which is very misleading and very wrong. 8 00:00:56,720 --> 00:01:00,720 Mysticism is not misty, you know, it's not foggy thinking. 9 00:01:00,720 --> 00:01:05,720 It's actually, it goes beyond thinking of course, but it's not fuzzy at all. 10 00:01:05,720 --> 00:01:09,720 It is actually described in opposite terms. 11 00:01:09,720 --> 00:01:15,720 You see, when you use, when you look at the classical texts of Buddhism or Taoism or Hinduism, 12 00:01:15,720 --> 00:01:20,720 a mystical experience is often described as a state of awakening. 13 00:01:20,720 --> 00:01:24,720 The clear light, a sword cutting through ignorance. 14 00:01:24,720 --> 00:01:27,720 These are the classical, you know, traditional terms that are used. 15 00:01:27,720 --> 00:01:30,720 Nothing like fuzzy or vague thinking. 16 00:01:30,720 --> 00:01:34,720 Clarity actually is always emphasized in a mystical experience. 17 00:01:34,720 --> 00:01:38,720 It's a very clear experience, but it's not a rational experience. 18 00:01:38,720 --> 00:01:41,720 It goes beyond rational thinking. 19 00:01:41,720 --> 00:01:49,720 There the eye goes not, speech goes not, nor the mind. 20 00:01:49,720 --> 00:01:55,720 We know not, we understand not how one would teach it. 21 00:01:55,720 --> 00:02:00,720 Physicists often say, let's not get into mystical speculations. 22 00:02:00,720 --> 00:02:03,720 And so it's used as something bad and to be avoided. 23 00:02:03,720 --> 00:02:07,720 Now if I come along and write a whole book and say, 24 00:02:07,720 --> 00:02:13,720 the basic findings of modern physics and strong agreement with the basic findings of mysticism, 25 00:02:13,720 --> 00:02:18,720 that must be very threatening to somebody who believes that this is a vague and fuzzy 26 00:02:18,720 --> 00:02:21,720 and highly unscientific activity which should be avoided. 27 00:02:21,720 --> 00:02:24,720 And so many physicists have been threatened. 28 00:02:24,720 --> 00:02:35,720 And I would say it is the most usual reaction, the most common reaction at first to be threatened. 29 00:02:35,720 --> 00:02:39,720 Man follows the laws of the earth. 30 00:02:39,720 --> 00:02:43,720 Earth follows the laws of heaven. 31 00:02:43,720 --> 00:02:48,720 Heaven follows the laws of Tao. 32 00:02:48,720 --> 00:02:53,720 Tao follows the laws of its intrinsic nature. 33 00:02:53,720 --> 00:03:14,720 In 1973 Capra went to see Werner Heisenberg. 34 00:03:14,720 --> 00:03:19,720 He showed Heisenberg the manuscript of the Tao of Physics and asked him for his reaction. 35 00:03:19,720 --> 00:03:21,720 Well, that was nothing new to him. 36 00:03:21,720 --> 00:03:24,720 He said that he had realized that himself. 37 00:03:24,720 --> 00:03:27,720 He had also hinted at it in his books. 38 00:03:27,720 --> 00:03:31,720 But he told me something interesting which I have never read anywhere. 39 00:03:31,720 --> 00:03:38,720 And that was that he was the guest of Rabindranath Tagore, the famous Indian poet and philosopher, 40 00:03:38,720 --> 00:03:40,720 when Heisenberg was in India. 41 00:03:40,720 --> 00:03:47,720 And he had long discussions with Tagore about Indian philosophy, about Western science. 42 00:03:47,720 --> 00:03:59,720 And Heisenberg told me that these discussions had helped him very much because they had shown him that this new kind of world view that was emerging from quantum physics was in fact not so crazy. 43 00:03:59,720 --> 00:04:16,720 That in fact there was an entire culture, the Indian culture that was built on the premises of indeterminacy, relativity, interconnectedness, the dynamic nature of the world, the very concepts that emerged from physics. 44 00:04:16,720 --> 00:04:21,720 So Heisenberg was well aware of the parallels and very open. 45 00:04:21,720 --> 00:04:29,720 And just to sum it up, he said to me when I closed my manuscript, he said verbatim, basically I'm in full agreement with you. 46 00:04:29,720 --> 00:04:37,720 Now, to me as an unknown author with a manuscript that was very difficult to sell to a publisher, this was of course extremely satisfying. 47 00:04:37,720 --> 00:04:41,720 And I left his office very happy and it gave me a real impetus.