Erwin Schrödinger: There is only one mind

Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger is known for the phrase “The total number of minds in the universe is one. In fact, consciousness is a singularity phasing within all beings.” which best summarizes his philosophical outlook on the nature of reality. The phrase implies that the apparent multiplicity of minds is just an illusion and that there is only one mind, or one consciousness, that expresses itself in a myriad of ways. In such a world view, a separation between subject and object does not exist, there is no existence of a subject on the one side and perception of an object on the other. In a world without the subject-object split, we are all an expression of the one.

Schrödinger also stated that “consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else”. This reflects the idea of panpsychism, the view that all existence is permeated by consciousness and that consciousness is the underlying reality – rather than just something that is produced by brains of a certain complexity.

The fundamental idea that there is no separation of self, that ego is an illusion, has many implications when applied to relationships or real-life challenges of the modern age. For example, the idea that climate change is ‘out there’; or that poverty and war and violence are ‘out there’, and that ‘I as an individual’ have nothing to do with it, quickly melts away. Rather, these aspects of human society represent the very shadow of what, collectively speaking, ‘I the individual’ believe to be a separate, totally OK, clinically pure entity. In truth, these symptoms are all manifestations of the one (human) consciousness. In a negotiation, ‘the other’ is also an expression of the one consciousness, just like myself. It becomes clear that this vision has deep spiritual implications and affects the way one sees everyday life, providing an acute sense of the interconnectedness and wholeness, even holiness, of all life, in whatever form it may appear. In line with Schrödinger’s basic tenet, we are simply all a part of one greater ecology, of the one web of life.

As a quantum physicist, Erwin Schrödinger came up with the famous ‘Schrödinger’s Cat’ thought experiment that raises profound questions about reality – exemplified by the state of an imagined cat in a box that according to the experiment, is dead and alive at the same time until observed – and the role of the observer in the outcome. Studying this experiment – that revolves around the principle of quantum superposition – is a door opener to the deep philosophical implications raised both by Erwin Schrödinger’s work and quantum physics in general.

Quantum weirdness: Schrödinger’s Cat Explained

The observer effect in quantum physics confronts us with the thought-provoking notion that the mere observation of a phenomenon changes that phenomenon; in other words, that through the very act of watching, the observer affects the observed reality – an idea that questions the assumption of an objective world out there that operates in a totally independent way. Instead, experiments suggest that the act of observation “forces” subatomic particles – like photons or electrons – to act like particles and not like waves. The question arises: What does observation have to do with anything? In physics?!

Taking this one step further, Schrödingers Gedankenexperiment, as it is called in German, can be regarded as a pioneering attempt to study the observer effect when going from the subatomic, or quantum realm (where the observer effect has been by proven by experiment many times) to the macroscopic world that we are familiar with from everyday experience. Intriguingly, more recent real-life experiments have demonstrated that even some macroscopic objects can show this bizarre quantum behavior under certain conditions, underlining the fact that the visionary icon of physics Schrödinger early on asked the right – and profound – questions about the nature of reality.

Pssst, animal lovers: Note that no cat ever got harmed in these experiments – not in this world nor in any other.

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