Thinkers don’t come much wilder than Albert Einstein. His out-of-the-box physics transformed how we think about the universe: with his famous equation E=mc2 he showed that energy and matter are one and the same; through his theory of relativity he joined space and time into one malleable fabric that can morph according to your point of view.

But we’re talking about a very different side to Einstein. My guest is physician, neuroscientist and spiritual explorer Kieran Fox, author of a fascinating book called I am a Part of Infinity. Kieran argues that Einstein didn’t confine his revolutionary thoughts to the physical world. The physicist was also deeply spiritual: he followed what he called a “cosmic religion”, that he hoped would unify science and religion; mind and matter; us and the cosmos.

Biographers and historians have tended to skate over this aspect of Einstein’s life… maybe they felt it wasn’t a suitably rational topic for such a hero of physics. But Kieran has pieced together Einstein’s religious thinking and traced influences from Pythagoras and Spinoza to Gandhi and the Tao Te Ching. He argues that Einstein’s spirituality wasn’t a minor sideshow, and it didn’t just co-exist with his physics, it was central, his ultimate motivation for wanting to understand the nature of reality in the first place.

What was this sacred path - and is it still relevant today? I asked Kieran to tell me all about it.

Kieran's home page

http://kieranfox.net/about.html

Kieran's book: I am a part of infinity

https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/kieran-fox/i-am-a-part-of-infinity/9781541603578/

Some of Einstein's writings on science and religion

https://www.silene.ong/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/AEinstein-Religion-and-Science_1930.pdf

Quantum Questions, ed. by Ken Wilber

https://archive.org/details/quantumquestions0000unse_n5j0

Some of Kieran's neuroscience papers - on meditation, cognition, creativity and whales

http://kieranfox.net/research.html

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