From Quantum Physics to Personal Development
I was born on a Friday in the cold, Aquarian February of 1962 (just one day after my future wife), into the even colder atmosphere of communist Czechoslovakia. At the time, I could not have known that, across the ocean in America, the hippie protest movement was just being born. Had I known, much of what I experienced later in life might have made more sense.
Even as a boy, I was interested in the truth about the world around us.
Superficial answers like ‘That’s just the way it is’ or ‘You have to believe it because that’s how it works’ never really satisfied me. I can still recall the thrill when, in the ninth grade of elementary school, our mathematics teacher introduced us to the existence of complex numbers and the enigmatic square root of minus one. I also remember fondly my friend Olda, with whom I spent endless hours in high school debating whether the entire universe might be just an atom within some higher form of existence, or a fractal; whether God exists, and whether His existence could be proven or disproven. It was also around that time that I came across a book on Hatha Yoga and the Bhagavad Gita in my parents’ library, which opened up to me the world of Eastern philosophies and awakened my perception of transcendent reality.
Not even the Iron Curtain could hold back the spirit of the Flower Children movement.
The desire to understand the true cause of phenomena later made my life a little more complicated.
At university, at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University, where I studied nuclear physics, I often struggled with the problem of accepting complex intellectual constructs without truly understanding the question of ‘why.’ It was there that I also encountered the entrenched mindset of ‘shut up and calculate’—you don’t need to understand why a particular equation is the way it is, what matters is that it gives the right result.
You can even find a compelling discussion of this exact issue in the prestigious journal Nature, back in 2014. History: Shut up and calculate, from which I quote:
This wartime-forged pragmatism produced extraordinarily impressive research and shaped a generation of leading scientists. Their approach to fundamental research—and to the institutions in which it was carried out—took on an aura of inevitability. Yet this approach came with certain compromises that went largely unnoticed at the time. Important questions that resisted powerful phenomenological methods tended to be suppressed. Anything that smacked of ‘interpretation,’ or worse, of ‘philosophy,’ began to carry a stigma among many scientists who had been shaped by wartime projects. Conceptual inquiry into the foundations came to be seen by many as an unnecessary luxury. After the war, this wartime style was reinforced in the United States by the exponentially growing number of students at universities. The new reality in classrooms left little room for informal discussion about philosophy and the foundations of knowledge. A collective imperative came to dominate the scientific environment: ‘Shut up and calculate!’
Such an approach essentially eradicated from quantum physics—and from science in general—any reflections with an existential dimension. This mindset, reinforced by tendencies toward narrow specialization, by the mechanisms of science funding, and by its hierarchical structure of management, continues to solidify even today, though I would be glad to be proven wrong.
With my family, I set out into the world in search of the truth.
After completing my university studies and a year of compulsory military service—which, despite all the misery of the communist army, still gave me much that was valuable—I set out with my family into the world in search of truth. I took part in research at leading international scientific institutions such as the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, the Nuclear Physics Institute in Řež, the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, near Los Alamos in the United States. I also served as a professor of ultra-relativistic nuclear physics at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. Throughout this time—more than thirty years—I participated in experiments at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva. Learn more about my career here.
I devoted all my time to delving into the mysteries of these physical researches and to integrating myself into the system of scientific structures. I hoped this would help me grasp a deeper truth about the world and seek answers to questions concerning not only the meaning of this research, but of existence itself.
Yet, much like Socrates, I came to realize that the more I understood the physics I was working on, and the greater an expert I became in my field, the less I knew about what I truly wanted to understand.
The marvelous constructs that the human mind has been able to create—in mathematics, physics, and other fields of science—have never ceased to fascinate me. Yet in the research projects I took part in, I could not find satisfying answers. A feeling began to take root in me that many of the questions we were trying to address in our projects were rather self-serving and seemed important only to a narrow circle of experts. I missed any connection to everyday life. Still, I firmly believed that in order to grasp deeper truths, I had to penetrate even further into the mysteries of physics.
And so I continued on the path I had set. But then…
In August of 1994, I was already in my second month of a work stay at CERN in Geneva. I truly enjoyed the work and spent most of my time in the CERN laboratories, weekends included. I was living in a cheap dormitory near the French–Swiss border, and the money I saved on daily allowances helped to significantly improve our family budget. It was summer vacation: my daughter was off at a camp somewhere, and my wife was taking care of our home in Bohemia.
I can recall that evening quite clearly, even after all these years. A few friends and I went out for dinner at a well-known pizzeria on the edge of Geneva. The pizza was excellent, and someone ordered a ristretto. I had no idea what that was, but when the waiter brought out tiny cups of fragrant coffee, I, like probably every Czech at the time raised on the classic turek, felt a little uncertain. It was without doubt the strongest coffee I had ever tasted. But an even stronger brew awaited me later that night back at the dormitory. By almost two in the morning, I was still lying wide-eyed, staring at the inside of my eyelids, realizing the true power of a ristretto. I swore to myself I would never drink one again—and after some time, I finally managed to fall asleep.
I had an incredibly vivid dream.
I was floating above a summer landscape, over fields and forests. It felt wonderful, and as I looked down at the scenery beneath me, it didn’t seem strange at all that I was flying. After a while, my attention was drawn to some commotion on the ground. A group of people stood on a road lined with fruit trees, with various objects scattered across the pavement. Curious, I descended a little lower. I began to distinguish individual figures and noticed a man lying on the road. He seemed to be writhing—perhaps in pain, I thought. I descended even closer. He was lying on his back, his legs bent at the knees, dressed in cycling shorts. I noticed the hair on his tanned legs. He was wearing a T-shirt that looked oddly familiar. I looked at his face—and froze in horror. I recognized myself. Blood was streaming from my nose, eyes, and ears.
At that moment, I woke up back in my bed somewhere in Geneva. I felt relieved—but only slightly. The aftertaste of that dream lingered in me for several hours. I had no thought of sleep for the rest of the night. The next day, I shared my unusual dream with my wife Blanka. Then I was swept up again by the enthusiasm for my work, and within a few days the whole matter had slipped from my mind.
Exactly one year later, when I was 33, I was working at the Nuclear Physics Institute in Řež on CERN projects.
At that time, I was an avid cyclist and commuted to work every day by bike. The ride took about an hour and led through beautiful countryside along the hilly terrain on the right bank of the Vltava. There were very few cars on the road back then. On the final straight stretch, just before my destination, there stood an old stone memorial with a Russian inscription, right by the roadside. I noticed that some vandal had knocked it over. On my way home from work, I stopped there and set the memorial upright again. From that day on, every time I rode past, I silently greeted the fallen soldiers.
One August morning, as usual, I set out on my way to work.
It was a beautiful day, and the ride was going smoothly. I was slowly nearing my destination as I left the last village before Řež and entered a straight stretch of road that ran for about a kilometer between fields before plunging down in sharp switchbacks to the river and the gates of the nuclear institute. On that straight stretch I picked up speed; there was no need to conserve my strength anymore, as all that lay ahead was the downhill run to the river, a shower in the locker room, and a morning coffee in the office.
A few dozen meters ahead of me I spotted an older man on a moped, riding in the same direction. He wasn’t going very fast, and so my ego pushed me toward the heroic act of catching up with him and overtaking him. I pushed myself to the maximum and began the chase. When I finally caught up, I still had enough energy to pass him. But then something went wrong.
Perhaps the man on the moped was startled when he suddenly noticed a silent cyclist right on his tail and slowed down, or perhaps I had simply misjudged the timing of my overtaking maneuver. I will never know. What I do know is that in the very next moment my front wheel clipped the back of the motorcycle, and the bike catapulted me into the air. The flight itself was probably short, but the landing was hard enough. The impact on the pavement, taken full on by my unprotected head, knocked me unconscious for several minutes.
From later testimony I learned that a truck had been driving behind us and passed my body lying on the road by barely half a meter. Consciousness returned to me and I sat up. Blood was streaming from my nose, eyes, and ears. But then massive bleeding into my brain plunged me once more into merciful unconsciousness—this time for much longer. By some ‘coincidence,’ only a few minutes after the accident, an ambulance happened to be passing by, with a doctor from Řež on her way to a patient in a nearby village. That doctor—an angel—gave me first aid and called a helicopter, which flew me to the hospital. She saved my life, and for that I am endlessly grateful to her, as well as to all the staff at the hospital.
At that time, Blanka was beginning to be troubled by doubts.
All day I hadn’t answered her calls, and that afternoon I was supposed to pick up our daughter returning from camp. She even called my workplace, but no one knew anything about me. That was very unusual. At last, she decided to call the police station, where she was told that a serious traffic accident had occurred not far from Řež. Her worst fears were confirmed. First she phoned the grandmothers to arrange care for our daughter, and then she set out for the hospital. At the reception desk of the intensive care unit, she gave the woman behind the counter my name.
She leafed through some documents for a moment, then pulled out a plastic bag with my belongings and told my wife that I was already dead. I cannot imagine what she felt in that moment, but it is clear that it was an unbearably hard life lesson. Fortunately, Blanka refused to believe it. She was convinced it was a mistake and insisted that the woman contact the attending physician. He clarified the information: I was still alive, but the outlook was hopeless.
I believe it was my wife’s will that pulled me back…
This experience made me see the world with different eyes.
I realized that the truth I had been searching for all my life through physics might not lie only in equations and experiments, but also in our own consciousness and its relationship to reality. Quantum physics taught me that the observer influences what is observed, and in the same way I began to understand that our mind and inner disposition shape the world we live in. For me, personal development is therefore not a departure from science, but its natural extension. If we wish to understand the universe, we must first understand ourselves.