Reading List
Authors Like Gary Zukav
In 1975 Gary Zukav’s roommate, the physicist Jack Sarfatti, took him along to the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Zukav was not a physicist. Four years later he published The Dancing Wu Li Masters — wu li is the Chinese word for physics — and in 1980 it won the American Book Award for Science. Ten years on came The Seat of the Soul, which went to number one on the New York Times list and, from 1998, brought him onto The Oprah Winfrey Show more than 30 times. Two books, two halves: one reads the new physics as a clue to how we see the world, the other treats the soul as something you work on in ordinary choices. Every author below meets at least one of those halves, and each entry says plainly which one.
Quick answer
The closest match to The Dancing Wu Li Masters is Fritjof Capra, whose The Tao of Physics came out four years earlier. For The Seat of the Soul, it is Eckhart Tolle. Of the ten, four lean towards the physics, four towards the soul, and two — Carl Jung and Deepak Chopra — try to hold both at once, the way Zukav does. Each entry below says where the match stops.
Where to start if you loved Gary Zukav
If you loved The Dancing Wu Li Masters, then…
Read Fritjof Capra. The Tao of Physics made the same move four years earlier, written by a working physicist.
If you loved The Seat of the Soul, then…
Read Eckhart Tolle. The Power of Now asks you to notice your thoughts the way Zukav asks you to notice your intentions.
If you want to know where Zukav’s physics came from, then…
Read David Kaiser. How the Hippies Saved Physics describes the Berkeley circle that helped him write his first book.
If karma and reincarnation are what stayed with you, then…
Read Brian Weiss, knowing that the evidence for past lives is disputed.
If you want the physics without the mysticism, then…
Read Richard Feynman, then Victor J. Stenger, who argues against the whole idea.
If you want to go back to Zukav himself, then…
His own books run from The Dancing Wu Li Masters (1979) to Universal Human (2021). See all of them, in order.
Ten authors like Gary Zukav
Roughly in order of how much of Zukav they match, not in order of quality.
Fritjof Capra
Austrian-American · b. 1939 · The Tao of Physics (1975)
Capra is a physicist by training, with a doctorate from the University of Vienna. The Tao of Physics sets the ideas of quantum theory and relativity side by side with Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist texts, and it has stayed in print since 1975. His later books, such as The Turning Point (1982), move on to ecology and systems thinking.
The physics half: Yes, and closer than anyone. Both men worked from the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1970s and both read the new physics alongside Eastern philosophy. The difference is who is talking: Capra was a working physicist, Zukav a writer explaining what physicists told him.
The soul half: Only in passing. Capra writes about how we see the world, not about the soul or the choices of an ordinary day; there is nothing like authentic power in his books.
Deepak Chopra
Indian-American · b. 1946 · Quantum Healing (1989)
Chopra trained as an endocrinologist before turning to Ayurveda and meditation. Quantum Healing, published the same year as The Seat of the Soul, argues that the body is run by a network of intelligence and links sudden recoveries to quantum physics. In 1998 the Annals of Improbable Research gave him the Ig Nobel Prize in Physics for his “unique interpretation of quantum physics”.
The physics half: Yes in ambition, contested in substance. Physicists object that the quantum in his books is a metaphor presented as physics, and the Ig Nobel was their joke at its expense. Read him knowing that.
The soul half: Yes. Like Zukav, he treats consciousness as the thing that shapes a life, and like Zukav he reached most of his readers through television, Oprah’s show included.
Eckhart Tolle
German-born, lives in Canada · b. 1948 · The Power of Now (1997)
The Power of Now argues that most suffering comes from identifying with the thinking mind, and that peace begins the moment you notice the thinker. It first came out with a small Vancouver publisher in 1997. In 2008 Oprah Winfrey taught a ten-week online class with him on his next book, A New Earth (2005).
The physics half: No. Tolle does not use science to make his case.
The soul half: Yes, closely. Zukav asks you to notice your intentions; Tolle asks you to notice your thoughts. Both say change starts with what you choose to pay attention to, and both reached their widest audience through Oprah.
Carl Jung
Swiss · 1875–1961 · Synchronicity (1952)
Jung’s essay on synchronicity — meaningful coincidences with no causal link — first appeared in 1952 in a joint volume with the physicist Wolfgang Pauli, a Nobel laureate, who contributed an essay on Kepler. The book grew out of years of letters between the two men.
The physics half: Yes, through Pauli. Decades before Zukav, Jung was asking a physicist whether mind and matter might be two sides of one reality.
The soul half: Yes, in his own language. Jung writes about the psyche and the self rather than the soul, but he treats the inner life as real work, which is where Zukav starts.
Marianne Williamson
American · b. 1952 · A Return to Love (1992)
A Return to Love is Williamson’s reading of A Course in Miracles, a spiritual text first published in 1976. Its argument is that every situation comes down to a choice between love and fear. Oprah Winfrey championed the book on her show the year it came out.
The physics half: No.
The soul half: Yes. Zukav’s practice of choosing your intention and Williamson’s choice between love and fear are close cousins; she is more devotional, he is more systematic.
Brian Weiss
American · b. 1944 · Many Lives, Many Masters (1988)
Weiss was chairman of psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami when a patient he calls Catherine began, under hypnosis, to describe what he took to be past lives. Many Lives, Many Masters tells that story. Past-life regression has no support in mainstream science, and psychiatrists warn that hypnosis can produce convincing false memories, so read the book as testimony rather than evidence.
The physics half: No.
The soul half: Yes, on one specific point. The Seat of the Soul treats karma and reincarnation as real, and Weiss is the most widely read writer who does the same.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Vietnamese · 1926–2022 · The Miracle of Mindfulness (1975)
The Miracle of Mindfulness began as a long letter to a fellow worker at the School of Youth for Social Service in Vietnam, explaining how to stay present while washing the dishes or drinking tea. It became one of the books that brought mindfulness practice to Western readers.
The physics half: No.
The soul half: Yes. Of the values Zukav gives the soul — harmony, cooperation, sharing and reverence for Life — reverence is the one Thich Nhat Hanh built a whole practice around.
David Kaiser
American · historian of physics at MIT · How the Hippies Saved Physics (2011)
Kaiser tells the story of the Fundamental Fysiks Group, young physicists in 1970s Berkeley who met to argue about quantum entanglement and consciousness. Jack Sarfatti, the physicist who brought Zukav to the Berkeley lab, was one of them, and Kaiser describes how The Dancing Wu Li Masters was written with their help.
The physics half: Yes, from the outside. Kaiser neither defends nor attacks Zukav’s reading of physics; he shows where it came from, and argues that some of those late-night questions about entanglement fed into what became quantum information science.
The soul half: No.
Richard Feynman
American · 1918–1988 · QED (1985)
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter is four lectures Feynman gave for a general audience, explaining quantum electrodynamics — the theory that earned him a share of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics — with arrows on a page instead of equations.
The physics half: Yes, but straight. If The Dancing Wu Li Masters made you curious about the physics itself, Feynman gives you the physics without the philosophy.
The soul half: No, by choice. Feynman draws no spiritual conclusions from quantum theory, which makes him the cleanest test of what the physics does and does not say.
Victor J. Stenger
American · 1935–2014 · The Unconscious Quantum (1995)
Stenger was a particle physicist at the University of Hawaii. In The Unconscious Quantum he walks the lay reader through the paradoxes of quantum mechanics and takes apart what he calls quantum metaphysics, the popular genre that reads mysticism into physics, singling out Deepak Chopra and Fritjof Capra.
The physics half: Yes, as the opposition. Stenger argues that nothing in quantum mechanics requires consciousness, which removes the bridge both of Zukav’s books stand on.
The soul half: No. Read him after the others, as the strongest case against the whole project.
Frequently asked questions about authors like Gary Zukav
Who writes like Gary Zukav?
For The Dancing Wu Li Masters, the closest match is Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics (1975), which also reads modern physics alongside Eastern philosophy. For The Seat of the Soul, it is Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now (1997). Deepak Chopra and Carl Jung are the two writers who, like Zukav, try to join physics and the inner life in one picture.
What books are similar to The Seat of the Soul?
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson and The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh all treat the inner life as something you work on through everyday attention and choice. Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss shares the book’s belief in karma and reincarnation, though past-life regression has no support in mainstream science.
What books are like The Dancing Wu Li Masters?
The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra is the nearest relative. For the physics on its own terms, read Richard Feynman’s QED (1985). For the story of the Berkeley physicists who helped Zukav write the book, read David Kaiser’s How the Hippies Saved Physics (2011).
Is The Dancing Wu Li Masters scientifically accurate?
Zukav was not a physicist; he wrote the book with extensive help from physicists, including Jack Sarfatti. It won the 1980 American Book Award for Science and is still read as an introduction to quantum ideas. Its spiritual conclusions are another matter: physicists such as Victor Stenger have argued that nothing in quantum mechanics requires consciousness or supports the mystical readings that became popular in the 1970s.
What does Gary Zukav mean by authentic power?
In The Seat of the Soul, Zukav contrasts external power, the ability to manipulate and control, with authentic power, the alignment of the personality with the soul. He argues that humanity is moving from the first to the second, and that the values of the soul are harmony, cooperation, sharing and reverence for Life.
What is Gary Zukav’s latest book?
His most recent book is Universal Human: Creating Authentic Power and the New Consciousness, published by Atria Books in 2021. It carries the ideas of The Seat of the Soul from the individual to society as a whole.
Footnotes
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Brothers and sisters quarrel for the same reason that corporations quarrel — they seek power over one another.”
— Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul
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