Another important point is that the Eastern religious traditions are not generally based on the idea of a creator God, like Christianity or Islam. Or, to be a little more specific, they both want to find out what reality is. Why and how should these two things have something in common? The first simple answer is, that both science and religious traditions are looking for the same thing: the truth. The main message of the book, as I said, concerns the parallels between modern physics and Eastern mysticism. However, quite soon, the book was received enthusiastically in the UK and the USA, and then was hugely successful all over the world. Secondly, it did not make it easy to publish the book right away. First, it did not help the scientific career of Fritjof, at that time a researcher in high energy physics in an important university in the United States (an Austrian, with a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Vienna). This helps to explain two things about the original publication of this book. You should read the preface by the author to the first and second edition in order to get an idea of the climate surrounding the birth of the book - the main point being that at that time, namely in the seventies of last century, the idea of contaminating the holy grail of physics with the remote, odd and still unfamiliar traditions of Taoism, Buddhism, and Vedanta, was something completely revolutionary, bordering on blasphemy. This happens when a book has the power of opening a new horizon: you see the world with new eyes, you ask yourself questions you never dreamed of asking, whether or not you gave yourself answers, - that is not so important – you simply ascended with your questioning to a higher state of consciousness. I know of some people who claim that their life has been changed after reading this book, and this holds for scientists as well as for lay people.

This is impressive, but I believe that the most impressive thing about the book was (is) its impact on the reader. In these few lines I would like to convey to you this sense of freshness that I felt after taking picking up the book again after –well, say twenty years… And so it is for The Tao of Physics (an exploration of the parallels between modern physics and Eastern mysticism) of Fritjof Capra.

Which also means, that a classic book never gets old. A book which is a classic is like an old friend: it is always there at your disposal, and each time you open a page, even at random, you find a useful suggestion for living - even for living today.

The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra