Erwin Schrödinger on Consciousness, Monism, the Spiritual Unity of All, and what he calls "The I That Is God"

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Here are some of my favorite quotes from Erwin Schrödinger's writings:


"We are never in a position to say what really is or what really happens, but we can only say what will be observed."


"The task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees."


"Multiplicity is only apparent, in truth, there is only one mind..."


"Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world. If I say that there cannot be more than one consciousness in the same mind, this seems a blunt tautology."


"Although I think that life may be the result of an accident, I do not think that of consciousness. Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else."


"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."


"The plurality that we perceive is only an appearance; it is not real. Vedantic philosophy, in which this is a fundamental dogma, 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 the object...

You may suddenly come to see, in a flash, the profound rightness of the basic conviction of Vedanta: … knowledge, feeling and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all men, nay in all sentient beings.'"

[Josephine Adhiambo]

Erwin Schrödinger, a renowned physicist, delved into philosophical discussions on consciousness. In his book "What Is Life?", he explored connections between physics and biology, hinting at a holistic view of reality. Schrödinger leaned towards a monistic perspective, proposing a spiritual unity underlying all existence. He used terms like "The I That Is God" to express a transcendent, interconnected consciousness. However, it's essential to note that his philosophical views might be separate from his contributions to quantum mechanics.