Non-Locality And The Omnipresent: Converging Paradigms Of East And West

Abstract

In this paper, I intend to explore apparent parallels between concepts of modem physics and East-Asian philosophical and religious ideas. I am focusing on the perception of matter and energy from a scientific viewpoint and the physical vs. spiritual in religious thinking and how they seem to depict the same underlying essence of all things. Specifically I will look at East-Asian monist-idealist schools of thought and concepts of modem science such as Bohm's holographic universe, zero-point energy and probability waves. I will not attempt to prove a strong connection between religious and scientific discoveries, but the scope of this paper will be to point out similarities, address problems regarding the acceptance of new worldviews, and to clarify some misconceptions of previous attempts to "prove" a strong connection between quantum physics and East-Asian philosophical thought.