The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.

The quote by Erwin Schrödinger—“The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist”—expresses a deeply philosophical view rooted in both quantum physics and Eastern thought. Schrödinger, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist best known for the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, is challenging the traditional duality between the observer and the observed, suggesting that reality is unified rather than divided into two separate realms.

This statement stems from Schrödinger’s belief that consciousness and matter are not fundamentally distinct. In asserting that “subject and object are only one,” he rejects the idea that our perception is separate from reality itself. Instead, he proposes that there is a single, unified experience of existence, and the apparent division between mind and world is an illusion. This perspective aligns closely with principles found in Vedanta, a school of Hindu philosophy that greatly influenced Schrödinger's worldview.

The phrase “the world is given to me only once” implies that what we experience and what is are not two different things. Schrödinger is emphasizing the immediacy and wholeness of reality—how the self and the external world arise together as one continuous field of existence. His point that the “barrier…does not exist” critiques the outdated Cartesian idea of separation between the observer and the phenomena, an idea that quantum mechanics, in fact, undermines by demonstrating the interconnectedness of observation and measurement.

Ultimately, Schrödinger's quote is a profound reflection on the nature of reality and our place within it. It reveals the influence of both scientific discovery and philosophical inquiry on his thinking. Far from being a purely scientific assertion, it is a holistic view that merges physics, metaphysics, and consciousness, urging us to reconsider the boundaries we believe exist between the self and the world.