Pilgrimages to Emptiness

I met the author at a recent conference in Italy, where he presented a fascinating lecture on the I Ching. In the 1990s, he was scientific consultant to the Eranos Foundation, having previously worked as a theoretical physicist – he is now director of the Pari Center in Italy, in succession to the late David Peat. In this book, subtitled 'rethinking reality through quantum physics', he explores the essential unity of mind and matter in a series of clear and informative expositions of various topics, covering the quantum revolution, chaos and order, the nature of life, being and becoming, space and time. Then the last two chapters move into the Dao, drawing parallels between the scientific and mystical world views, while going beyond the fashionable ideology of materialism. Although he is aware of dominant global trends moving us in a damaging direction, he also perceives processes seeking to recover oneness, including not only mind and matter, but also human beings and nature, consciousness and the world. In this respect, he reminds us that the primary fact of our life is conscious experience and that subject and object are best conceived as complementary co-emergent aspects of a single process. The author's explorations of the Dao are profound in exploring paradox, where he also brings in surrealist art with the image by Magritte – ceci n'est pas une pipe - reminding us that naming is an abstraction. A subtle, informative and lucid book.