Uncommon Wisdom

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How I came across this book: Found this book at the airport while I was looking for the famous book ‘Tao of Physics’ by the same author.

Favorite Line from the book:

I have sought a ruler who would employ me for a long time. That I have not found one shows the character of the time. Chuang Tzu (Taoist Sage)

Scientists don’t deal with truth; they deal with limited and approximate descriptions of reality.

Nothing fails like success.

Big Sur in California

Fritjof Capra discusses modern physics, psychology, health, economics, and feminism with some of the highest-level thinkers and minds of the twentieth century. He finds a common connection between all these various subjects with spirituality. Science was traditionally based on a mechanistic world view of Newtonian physics. In the seventeenth century, Descartes, the famous French philosopher, used the metaphor of a tree to present human knowledge, its roots being metaphysics, the trunk made of physics, and branches as all the science. Capra calls it the ‘Cartesian trap’ as it was a rigid model similar to Newtonian physics as everything in society was dependent upon the hard laws of physics. As scientist realized nothing is fixed in nature, there was a paradigm shift in modern physics with the theory of relativity', bootstrap physics, and quantum theory. Einstein with his theory of relativity showed that space and time are not separate and form a four-dimensional continuum. Geoffrey Chew’s bootstrap theory argues that nature cannot be reduced to fundamental entities, like building blocks of matter, but has to be understood through self-consistency. The bootstrap conjecture implies that the existence of consciousness, along with all other aspects of nature, is necessary for self-consistency of the whole. Buddhism talks about the interpenetration of space and time just like ‘theory of relativity.’ Eastern mysticism considers spirit and matter to be one and interrelated just like the dynamic web of nature argued in the ‘Bootstrap physics.’ Relativity and interconnectedness are the basis of Hinduism and Indian spirituality just the way it is taught in modern physics.

Some of the fundamentals and perspective about consciousness was truly mind blowing. Consciousness has three domains: ‘psychodynamic experiences,’ ‘perinatal experiences’ and ‘transpersonal.’ Each of these domains project and become a part of our consciousness because of different experiences in our lives. The author argues that consciousness is a property of the mind self-awareness, and awareness is the property of the mind at all level of complexity. Which came first – the chicken or the egg? Similarly, there have been different views about matter and consciousness. The western view argues that matter is primary and consciousness is a property of complex matter, which emerges at a certain level of biological evolution. The mystical view argues that consciousness is the primary reality, as the essence of the universe, the ground of all being, and everything else.

Esalen Institute: Pioneering deep change in self and society

What is health and what is an illness? The western view will try to find a cause for a medical problem and treat it. Mystical view will argue illness happens when there is an imbalance in the body. A patient who is ill may be using it as an escape mechanism. For example, a cancer patient gets recurrence after complete treatment because their mind had found an escape mechanism from the society for whatever reason and now they don’t want to go back to reality. A mentally ill patient does not usually develop cancer because their mind has already found an escape phenomena i.e ‘mental illness’ so his body doesn’t need a second escape phenomena. As a cancer surgeon, I have only seen one case of schizophrenia with cancer so far, but one can argue that screening process is not up to date for mentally ill patients.

Interestingly, the author had never been east of Austria even though he had studied so much about eastern mysticism. He was given a warm welcome when he visited India for the first time in the early eighties. He had the privilege of meeting Indira Gandhi, the prime minister of India at that time. His discussion about feminism with all the world leaders including India Gandhi, forty years ago, is more relevant in current times than ever before.

This was one of the toughest books I have read so far. The amount of knowledge packed in this book was true to it’s title - ‘Uncommon Wisdom.’ If you want to learn more about 'cosmic conciousness' or how a male dominant culture had led to an imbalance in global society then this book will throw some light. May be, once I have read a hundred books then I can apply the ‘bootstrap theory’ and interconnect all my knowledge.