“I would like to write a Book which would drive men mad, which would be
like an open door leading them where they would never have consented to
go, in short, a door that opens onto reality.”
Antonin Artaud
"Reality is what you can get away with."
Robert Anton Wilson
The Tao of Physics:
An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism is a book by physicist Fritjof Capra, published in 1975 by Shambhala Publications of Berkeley, California.
According to the preface
of the first edition, reprinted in subsequent editions, Capra struggled to
reconcile theoretical physics and Eastern Mysticism and was at first "helped on my way by 'power plants'" or psychedelics, with the first experience "so overwhelming that I burst into
tears, at the same time, not unlike Castaneda, pouring out my impressions to a
piece of paper."
(This was written before Castaneda's work was "exposed" as fiction. Not that that matters...at all, at all...to us...) CW
Capra later discussed his
ideas with Werner Heisenberg in 1972, as he mentioned in the following interview excerpt:
I had several discussions with Heisenberg. I lived in England then [circa 1972], and I visited him several times in Munich and showed him the whole manuscript chapter by chapter. He was very interested
and very open, and he told me something that I think is not known publicly
because he never published it. He said that he was well aware of these
parallels. While he was working on quantum theory he went to India to lecture and was a guest of Tagore. He talked a lot with Tagore about
Indian philosophy. Heisenberg told me that these talks had helped him a lot
with his work in physics, because they showed him that all these new ideas in
quantum physics were in fact not all that crazy. He realized there was, in
fact, a whole culture that subscribed to very similar ideas. Heisenberg said
that this was a great help for him. Niels Bohr had a similar experience when he
went to China. – Fritjof Capra, interviewed by Renee Weber in the book The
Holographic Paradigm
As a result of those
influences, Bohr adopted the yin yang symbol as part of his family coat of arms when he was knighted in 1947.
Wikipedia
And from Scoop Nisker in CRAZY WISDOM…
“Out of the imagination of some early-twentieth-century artists came a madcap, multidimensional demigod known as Dada, which bears an uncanny resemblance to the Tao. The Dadaist movement was founded in Zurich during WW I by the French poet and self-proclaimed “literary terrorist” Tristan Tzara. Although Dadaist poetry and manifestos often sound like a takeoff of the Tao, we have no evidence that Tzara or other Dadaists were acquainted with Taoist writings. Perhaps a mysterious transmission took place.
“Dada is a quantity of life in transparent, effortless and gyratory transformation.”
Tristan Tzara, 1918
“Tao never does anything;
Yet through it all things are done.”
Lao Tzu, 5th Century B.C.
“Logic is a complication. Logic is always false.
DADA suggests 2 solutions: NO MORE LOOKS!
NO MORE WORDS! Stop looking! Stop talking!”
Tristan Tzara
“Those who know don’t talk.
Those who talk don’t know.”
Lao Tzu
“The acts of life have
neither beginning nor end.
Everything happens in a
very idiotic fashion.
That’s why everything is
the same.
Simplicity is called dada.”
Tristan Tzara
Maybe a sequel to The Tao of Physics should be offered entitled The Dada of Physics...
The "TOE" in The TOE of 'Pataphysics does not refer to God's Big Theory Of Everything, of course. It refers to Jarry's Big Theater Of Everything...or...his Towers Of Ethernity...
