Most people think the world consists of various distinctions ranging from fire and water to protons and electrons. But Heinrich Päs challenges this idea, arguing that quantum physics revives the ancient idea of universal oneness that Christianity unjustly excluded from our culture.

Modern physics revives an idea that is commonly associated with Asian philosophies or religions, but understood as utterly alien to Western or scientific thought. Monism adopts that everything in the universe is part of an indivisible, seamless whole or in other words: That All is One.

In the Upanishads, for example, one of the Sanskrit texts defining the spiritual core of Hinduism, the concept of “Brahma” is defined as holding together “all beings, all gods, all worlds, all breaths, all selves,” just like “all the spokes are held together in the hub and rim of a chariot-wheel.” In a similar way the Chinese philosophy of Taoism defines the Tao as “The One” that is creating and supporting the universe, “the beginning of heaven and earth” and “the ancestor of the myriad creatures”, according to the sixth-century-BCE Chinese sage Lao-tzu. Similar ideas exist in Mahayana and Zen Buddhism, and various mystic traditions.