I picked up Helgoland thinking it would be a book about physics. Equations, experiments, and the occasional anecdote about eccentric scientists. What I didn’t expect was a philosophical detour into the very nature of being. Rovelli gave me all the quantum mechanics I’d hoped for—but layered beneath it, like a whisper through a canyon, was something stranger. A vision of reality not built from things, but from relations.

It begins, as it must, with Heisenberg. The young physicist, suffering from hay fever, retreats to the pollen-free island of Helgoland. There, free from allergens and distractions, he makes a radical move: he gives up trying to describe what electrons are, and instead focuses on what they do when measured. Out goes the classical world of definite trajectories; in comes a new world built entirely on observables. From this shift, quantum mechanics is born.

I was intrigued. And then came the phrase that stopped me: “the dance of the three.” Rovelli says –

“Entanglement, then, is not a dance of two, but a dance of three.”

Not two, but three. Not merely the observer and the observed, but also the relation between them. Matter, mind, and interaction. Rovelli doesn’t develop this image at length—but the suggestion lingered.

What was this third?

And then Rovelli mentioned Nagarjuna.

I had heard of Nagarjuna before—vaguely, distantly. In a class on Operations Strategy where the Professor was reminding us that every organization has a soul.

A Buddhist philosopher, whom I must read. Something about emptiness. But now, spurred by Rovelli, I returned to him. I found the Mulamadhyamakakarika, and in its verses, I encountered something both precise and radical.

Nagarjuna denies all intrinsic existence. Nothing arises from itself, from another, from both, or from no cause. Everything exists only in relation. Only in dependence. He calls this sunyata—emptiness. But this is not a void. It is the absence of inherent essence. It is the freedom of the web.

Suddenly, the parallels with quantum mechanics were startling. Rovelli says particles have no absolute properties—only in relation. Nagarjuna says things have no svabhava—only in co-arising.

And yet, as I read more, I felt a pull in another direction.

Nagarjuna insists: don’t look for a ground. Don’t reify emptiness. Even sunyata must be seen as empty. But Rovelli—quietly, carefully—hints at something more. That relations themselves may require a condition. That coherence implies a field. That the very possibility of relation might rest on something unspoken.

I began to wonder: can relation arise from nothing at all? Can coherence exist without a rhythm? If an electron only exists in interaction, what makes interaction possible?

I’m from the land of Buddha. His place of enlightenment is a two hours drive from where I spent most of my growing up years. Yet, like so many Indians, I revere him but don’t take his word as the final word on attainment of enlightenment.

Hinduism (a misnomer) is not a book based religion. But it has tons of books. To cut the clutter, the Vedanta schools of philosophy brought the canonical texts to three. Together they are called Prasthantrayi. They are – The Upanishads, The Bhagavad Gita and The Brahma Sutras. The Brahma Sutras are the latest in these.

Reading Helgoland and then Mulamadhyamaka Karika brought me, inevitably, to the Brahma Sutra.

The Brahma Sutra critiques the Buddhist denial of a substratum. It argues that relation, however intricate, cannot suffice without something that endures. Without Brahman, there is no coherence. No continuity. No self that can know, act, or be liberated.

Rovelli would not speak of Brahman. But when he speaks of the third—when he invokes the dance—I wonder if he senses it. Not a being, not a god, but a rhythm. A field. A condition.

In Relational Quantum Mechanics, properties arise only in interaction. No interaction, no event. No relation, no reality. So what allows interaction? What holds the trembling web?

Nagarjuna would say: this question is the problem. Let go of it. Walk the middle way.

But I cannot let go so easily. I am drawn to that silence beneath the music. To the pause between the notes. To the third that dances, but is not seen.

And so I lean with Rovelli. There is a third.

Perhaps not a substance. Not a metaphysical plug. But a possibility. A coherence. A flame that burns without consuming.

To me there are three possibilities –

• In Physics: The third could be the measuring device, the observer, the environment collapsing the wave function. Quantum systems do not relate in isolation—they need a relator.
• In Buddhism: Perhaps the third is shunyata itself. Not a thing, not a self, but the field of emptiness that allows relation to arise. The “is-ness” of interdependence.
• In Vedanta: The third is Brahman. Not one of the dancers, but the stage on which the dance takes place—and the light by which the dance is seen.

I read a bit more on Rovelli’s RQM. And, Rovelli says: there is no absolute state of a system. Every state is relative to some other system. So the phenomenon does take place—but only relative to some other physical system. The observer doesn’t have to be a conscious being; it can be another particle, a field, a photon. Measurement is just interaction.

So in RQM, the collapse doesn’t require a conscious observer—just an interaction. But here’s the twist: if no interaction at all takes place (not with a lab device, not with another system, not with anything), then in what sense can we even talk about “phenomenon”?

If the event leaves no imprint—on no system, no field, no future—then RQM shrugs. There’s nothing to say. The event, in a relational sense, never happened for anyone.

A particle does not possess a definite position, energy, or spin in itself. It only has such properties in relation to another system it has interacted with. If no interaction has occurred, then these properties are undefined—not hidden, not unknowable, but meaningless.

It’s like asking: What is the smile of the Mona Lisa to someone who has never seen her? The question doesn’t make sense outside the act of perception.

So in RQM:

• The moon is there for the astronaut whose boots touched its dust.
• But for the particle drifting in void, untouched by light, wind, or eye—there is no moon.

This is not solipsism; it’s radical relationalism. Existence is not abolished—it is distributed. Events are real, but their reality is situated, not universal. There is no God’s-eye view in Rovelli’s world. No Archimedean point. The cosmos is a network of viewpoints, and everything exists only as seen from somewhere else.

But then, I thought, the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. And for a finger to point to the moon, the moon must already be there. So what makes the moon exist? And what makes the finger point at the moon? Who or what is the third?

Perhaps that is Brahman. Not as an object, but as the condition for all objects. The field of being. The groundless ground.

Tat tvam asi.

You are That.

Even when That cannot be seen.

But, Nagarjuna, denies any ultimate substratum. No self, no essence, no Brahman. Not even sunyata as “something.” To Nagarjuna, saying “emptiness is” is already a mistake. He empties even emptiness.

He would say: To posit Brahman is to fall into the trap of eternalism (sasvatavada). To say anything “truly is” independently is a return to self-existence (svabhava), which he dismantles utterly.

Still, the finger that points is not the moon. And the moon must already be, for something to be pointed at it. What makes the moon and the finger? I wonder. My tradition and leaning says that is Brahman, the One. Yet, could it all be meaningless. And even the search for meaning itself is meaningless? I am not an enlightened being, neither a quantum physicist, but I think there is a third.

So this is not a conclusion, but a resting place. I began with physics. I passed through emptiness. And I find myself—inexplicably, but unmistakably—facing the Upanishads.

Relation is real. But so is the rhythm that makes relation possible.

There is a third.

And that, I think, is enough.