Plato, Vedanta And Quantum Physics

What is reality ? Why does everything appear fragmented and separate if it is one and made of energy? Why do we each perceive it differently?

For millennia, across cultures and civilisations, sages and philosophers have sensed that the world we perceive through our senses is not the whole truth. Beneath the visible lies the invisible. Behind the transient is the eternal. Beyond form and change, there is an unchanging essence. From philosophical insights of Plato to the spiritual revelations of Vedantic sages, and now discoveries of quantum physics , a striking convergence emerges. What appears as reality is only a projection, not the ultimate truth.

Plato, philosopher of ideals, viewed the physical world as a shadow of a higher, perfect realm of Forms. Everything we encounter, trees, animals, human actions—is, in his view, an imperfect reflection of an ideal Form that exists beyond the material plane. There is a Form of Beauty in which all beautiful things participate, and a Form of Justice behind every just action. At the heart of this metaphysical vision is the Form of the Good, the ultimate source of all truth, existence, and intelligibility.

The Chandogya Upanishad declares, Sarvam khalvidam Brahmn — all this is indeed Brahmn. It is described as the indivisible, undifferentiated, infinite essence that underlies everything. It is not a being among other beings. It is Being itself. Pure, formless, and beyond all categories, Brahmn is the ground of all reality.

But if all is Brahmn, why do we experience the world as fragmented, diverse, and ever-changing? The upanishad explains that although Brahmn is one and without division, we overlay distinctions upon it through nama, name; rupa, form; vyavahara, transactional experience. We name, shape, and engage with this undivided reality as if it were many. The world appears broken into parts because our perception is conditioned by duality. Vedanta teaches that this illusion, called maya, is born of ignorance, resulting from our reliance on limited senses and ego-mind. The goal is not to escape the world but to see through it and recognise unity in diversity.

Modern science, through quantum physics, now reveals similar truths in its language. At the subatomic level, particles do not behave like solid objects but exist as waves of probability, fields of potential that remain undefined until observed. What we experience as a fixed, concrete world arises from something fluid, indefinite, and unseen. Just as Vedanta teaches that nama and rupa are superimposed upon Brahmn, quantum physics shows that the solid world manifests something more fundamental, an underlying field of pure potential.
In both quantum theory and Vedanta, the observer plays a crucial role. In physics, the act of observation collapses a wave into a particle. Until then, it exists in superposition, a state of multiple possibilities. Vedanta, too, insists that perception is subjective. What we see, hear, or touch depends on the observer. Liberation lies in shifting the observer from conditioned, ego-bound self to witnessing awareness, Atman, which is Brahmn itself.

Plato also called for this inward shift. In his allegory of the cave , he describes prisoners mistaking shadows on the wall for reality. Only by turning inward and moving beyond appearances can one see truth of Forms and, ultimately, the Form of the Good.

Authored by: Ganesh Kolambakar