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Death or Life Transition

23 Feb

Death or Life Transition

An age-old question for human beings is why do we die – sometimes in a senseless, violent manner? Why do good people die young? This is what self-conscious beings ask. After reflecting more on this from a perspective of the teaching of the Buddha and Quantum Information Panpsychism, I thought to put in words some of thoughts on death.

A year ago, I read a short but interesting blog by Joe Goldfarb on his ethical dilemma of killing plants. He wrote, “For one organism to live another must die. There is no escaping this. Having a tiered value status of life, i.e. a mammal has a higher status than a plant, based on assigned arbitrary values is a false perception of reality. I believe in a reality of equality, not inequality, regardless of the form and capabilities of the organism. A bear does not have more value than a flower, for both their names, and bodies are not real. The only thing that is real is their life, of which they both have of equal value. With that said, it is the gift of life, which I acknowledge and respect… Even killing less life, one is still taking life. This is why Veganism has good intentions but is inherently flawed. Because of this moral problem, I have been studying Native American belief systems in hopes of finding a resolution.”

Now, I don’t know if he has resolved this moral problem for himself, but his thoughts point out an important fact: in life, there is death. After hearing the News, there were more seemingly endless situations where the lives of people being at the wrong place, at the wrong time, are ended. It could be a natural disaster or a killing or some other calamity, but the result is the same: death. Their lives are quickly ended. If one removes the usual eulogy of Cataphatic priests, rabbis, ministers, or Imams that God has a purpose that we don’t understand and the person who has died will be in the hands of God (perhaps) – we must admit, we just don’t know exactly why. Death happens.

Thus, death is as natural as living. Under various conditions, life flourishes or perishes. We have seen that stars and planets extinguish only to be reborn, and our own sun and solar system will share a similar fate. Maybe even the universe endures cycles of death and renewal. All materialistic entities are transient and impermanent. As far as we know, there exists only energy/Consciousness.

Is this perspective depressing? Not at all. Embracing the fragility and brevity of life fosters a profound sensitivity and reverence for life, transforming our existence into a precious opportunity. Each fleeting moment propels us forward, creating ripples of effect that extend into the future making us more cautious about our actions being wholesome. When we comprehend that a permanent separate ‘self’ is illusory; an illusion, the prospect of losing it through death is alleviated.

Grief will express itself when one ponders they no longer experiencing life in the human materialistic existence. Yet, if one understands there is no substantial separate I or me, then the idea of losing it through death is not a problem. It is by not comprehending the ground of the fundamental Universal Consciousness, through the mistaken psychological separation caused by the ignorance of the identification in a dualism and a Self, that the fear and angst of death appears. Instead, when one realizes that we are an integral part of Panpsychism, the ALL of Consciousness, the grief of loss disappears.

As Mary Elizabeth Frye  expressed it poetically:

Do not stand at my grave and weepI am not there. I do not sleep.I am a thousand winds that blow.I am the diamond glints on snow.I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning’s hush I am the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry;I am not there. I did not die.

And my sentiments now about death…

When I die, bury me deep in a place where where my physical elements will support trees growing tall and flowers blossoming. My smile beneath will follow the colors spreading for joy. Mark not my place with statues or stones, find me where life can be found. My body will join the elements and energy of the universe and my consciousness will completely rejoin the Universal Consciousness from which I have always existed and continue on again for eternity in the cycle of life.   

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‘Information Links All Things in the Universe’

20 Feb

Information and Inter-Communication

Science has traditionally held that matter and energy are the foundations of physical reality. But an emerging viewpoint posits that a more subtle, but equally fundamental, factor is also important: information. In Science and the Akashic Field, Ervin Laszlo stresses the importance of information for the interdependent functioning of the cosmos: “Information links all things in the universe, atoms as well as galaxies, organisms and minds. This discovery transforms the fragmented world-concept of the mainstream sciences into an integral, holistic worldview.”

In order to account for the presence of a significant number of particles in the universe, and for the ongoing evolution of the existing things, we need to recognize the presence of a factor that is neither matter nor energy. The importance of this factor is now acknowledged not only in the human and the social sciences, but also in the physical and the life sciences. It is information – information as a real and effective factor setting the parameters of the universe at its birth, and thereafter governing the evolution of its basic elements into complex systems. Information is an inherent aspect of both physical and biological nature . . . Information is not a human artefact, not something we produce by writing, calculating, speaking, and messaging. As ancient sages knew, and as scientists are now rediscovering, information is present in the world independent of human volition and action and is a decisive factor in the evolution of the things that furnish the real world. The basis for creating a genuine “theory of everything” is the recognition that “information” is a fundamental factor in nature. (18)

Laszlo provides a useful operational definition of information (or “in-formation”): “Information is the subtle, quasi-instant, non-evanescent and non-energetic connection between things at different locations in space and events at different points in time. Such connections are termed “nonlocal” in the natural sciences and “transpersonal” in consciousness research. In-formation links things (particles, atoms, molecules, organisms, ecologies, solar systems, entire galaxies, as well as the mind and consciousness associated with some of these things), regardless of how far they are from each other and how much time has passed since connections were created between them.”

A number of scientists have suggested that some of the quandaries of current cosmological theories can be resolved through the concept of information. “A common theme among researchers trying to look beyond general relativity and quantum theory to a more unified understanding of nature is that something else lies at the root of all things: information.”

The discoveries of quantum physicists in the early 20th century had tremendous implications for understanding the nature of reality. In The Field, Lynne McTaggart stresses the importance of their findings: “They realized that the very underpinnings of our universe is a heaving sea of energy – one vast quantum field. If this were true, everything would be connected to everything else like some invisible web.”

They also discovered that we were made of the same basic material. On our most fundamental level, living beings, including human beings, were packets of quantum energy constantly exchanging information with this inexhaustible energy sea. Information about all aspects of life, from cellular communication to the vast array of controls of DNA, was relayed through an information exchange on the quantum level. Even our minds operated according to quantum processes. Thinking, feeling – every higher cognitive function – had to do with quantum information pulsing simultaneously through our brain and body. Human perception occurred because of interaction between the subatomic particles of our brains and the quantum energy sea. We literally resonated with our world. In a stroke, they had challenged many of the most basic laws of biology and physics. What they may have uncovered was no less than the key to all information processing and exchange in our world, from the communication between cells to perception of the world at large. More fundamentally, they had provided evidence that all of us connect with each other and the world at the very undercoat of our being. (19)

One of the strangest features of quantum physics is the phenomenon of “nonlocality” or “entanglement.” Physicists discovered that some pairs of sub-atomic particles or atoms are entangled or correlated, and remain instantly connected over time: “Their nonlocality respects neither time nor space: it exists whether the distance that separates the particles and the atoms is measured in millimeters or in light-years, and whether the time that separates them consists of seconds or millions of years.”

As Niels Bohr, a Nobel prize-winning pioneer of quantum physics, discovered, once subatomic particles such as electrons or photons are in contact, they remain forever influenced by each other instantaneously and for no apparent reason, over any time or any distance. When particles are entangled, the actions of one will always influence the other in the same or the opposite direction, no matter how far they are separated. They act like a pair of star-crossed lovers who are forced to separate and live independently forever, but who continue not only to know each other’s moves but also to imitate the other’s every activity for the rest of their days. Albert Einstein had refused to accept nonlocality, disparaging the theory as “spooky action at a distance.” Einstein claimed this type of instantaneous connection couldn’t occur because it would require information traveling faster than the speed of light, which he considered the absolute outer boundary of how quickly one thing can affect something else. Even subatomic particles were not supposed to be able to affect other particles faster than the time it would take the first to travel to the second at the speed of light. (20)

In 1972, physicist John Bell proposed a possible test of the validity of nonlocality – taking measurements on a pair of quantum particles which were initially in contact but later separated. A decade later in Paris, physicist Alain Aspect and his team conducted an actual experiment which confirmed Bell’s theory. In The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot describes the results: “Aspect’s real-life experiment showed that when two photons were fired off from a single atom, the measurement of one photon affected the position of the second photon. Whatever happened to one was identical to, or the very opposite of, what happened to the other. A comparison of the measurements showed that both were the same. Some invisible wire appeared to be connecting these two quantum particles across space, to make them follow each other forever.”

The phenomenon of nonlocality and the transmission of information across levels of the universe appears in fields as diverse as cosmology, evolutionary biology, ecology and consciousness research:

It is clear that nonlocal coherence has important implications. It signals that there is not only matter and energy in the universe, but also a more subtle yet real element: an element that connects, and which produces the observed quasi-instant forms of coherence. Identifying this connecting element could solve the puzzle at the forefront of scientific research and point the way toward a more fertile paradigm. We can take the first step toward this goal by affirming that information is present, and has a decisive role, in all principal domains of nature. Of course, this information that is present in nature is not the everyday form of information but a special kind: it is “in-formation” – the active, physically effective variety that “forms” the recipient, whether it is a quantum, a galaxy, or a human being. (21)

Although nonlocality or entanglement was first discovered at the quantum level, it is not limited to this domain, and also surfaces at macroscopic scales in the universe, such as electromagnetic and other fields. Ervin Laszlo proposes that the structures and processes of the manifest physical world are determined by interacting waves or patterns of energy and information embedded in the “Akashic field.”

A world where connection, coherence, and coevolution are fundamental features is not a fragmented and fragmentable world, but an integral one. In this world nonlocality is a fundamental factor: things that occur at one place and time also occur at other places and times – in some sense, they occur at all places and times . . . There is an urgent need for a paradigm in which nonlocality is a basic feature – the paradigm of a world that is intrinsically nonlocal. Such a paradigm is now emerging at the leading edge of scientific inquiry. It is based on a new understanding of how parts interact within wholes; ultimately how the parts we know as quanta and the macroscale entities built as coordinated sequences of quanta interact within the larger whole we call “cosmos.” The basic concept that can convey scientific meaning and legitimacy to this understanding is field. Fields are bona fide elements of the physical world, although they are not in themselves observable. They are like fishing nets so fine that their strands cannot be seen. The fields themselves are not visible, but they produce observable effects. Fields connect phenomena. Local fields connect things within a particular region of space and time, but there are also universal fields that connect things throughout space and time. Quanta, and the things constituted of quanta, interact through fields, and they interact universally. (22)

Scientists are becoming aware of the primary role of information in describing the laws and workings of physical reality. “Information really is physical and it literally in-forms our Universe, while at the same time transforming our view of what we actually mean by the term physical.”

The laws of motion and thermodynamics that define how matter and energy move and how they interact are basically laws of information. The concept of information content and flow is starting to be used powerfully to describe physical phenomena at deeper and more all-encompassing levels. The two twentieth century pillars of science, the quantum and relativity theories, are also being re-evaluated as informational theories, a development that is being seen as having the potential to finally bring together these as yet unreconciled perspectives of our Universe. This is just the first step to a much more encompassing perception, one that not only aims to understand the completeness of the physical world but also proposes a cosmology that encompasses all aspects of existence and experience and seeks answers to the deeper question of not only how reality is as it is but also why. (23)

Information exchange seems to occur at all levels of reality. For instance, an electron is much more than a simple structureless point. The active use of information by electrons, and indeed by all sub-atomic particles, indicates that the ability to respond to meaning is an innate characteristic not only of consciousness but of all matter. There is also evidence that at the smallest atomic scale, space-time is pixellated, suggesting that this is the foundational level for information and holographic reality.

The content and flow of information creates patterns and relationships between and within all scales of existence. The events and processes at each level of reality are not random or based on chance – rather, they are dependent on the information they embody. In The Cosmic Hologram, Jude Currivan writes: “Our Universe is fundamentally interconnected as a unified entity that is underpinned and permeated by information. The universal speed limit exhibited by light ensures that information is transferred at a constant and finite limit within space-time, maintaining causality and enabling our universe to experience and evolve.”

Information literally in-forms all that we call physical reality, and from the innate instructions, conditions, ingredients, recipe, and container, of the information that make up the cosmic hologram, enables the outcome of a universe that nurtures the evolution of complexity and ever more self-aware consciousness – makes a universe that is perfect for us. To understand the essential wholeness of reality requires that the principles and laws of physics be restated in informational terms. At every scale from the most minute up to its entirety, the reality of our Universe is indeed being restated in this way, revealing itself as being constituted of holographically expressed information, which is more fundamental than space-time and energy-matter . . . There’s no fundamental difference between quantum and macroscopic scales. They only appear different owing to the difficulty of informationally isolating larger entities from their surroundings. This shows that our Universe is innately coherent and nonlocally unified, where everything is fundamentally interconnected and informational in nature. (24)

The fundamental flow of information is integral to the ordering and evolution of the universe and the development of individual biological entities. Ervin Laszlo: “The network of information applies to all scales, from the genesis and evolution of the universe itself to the development and increase in complexity and ordering of matter – leading all the way to the emergence of the order defining biological organisms and systems expressing self-awareness, by which the universe is ultimately aware of itself.”

Information exchange is the key to understanding the evolution of the universe. The laws and processes of the flow of information provide a deeper understanding of the nature of physical reality as well as integrating quantum theory (which describes universally conserved energy-matter) and relativity theory (universally entropic space-time). “The origin of our universe, in an extraordinarily ordered state, embodied its minimum informational entropy that ever since has increased inexorably, causing the arrow of time to flow and the principle of causality within space-time to be inviolate.” In The Cosmic Hologram, Jude Currivan explores the significance of information in the evolution of the universe:

From its birth, [the universe] encoded the complete information and algorithmic instructions that ensured that all laws of physics pertaining to the behavior of energy-matter and that are described by quantum theory prevail universally and so enable it to exist as a unified entity. Such encoding and coherence also empowered the creation of elementary particles and the fundamental processes and interactions that progressively gave rise to stars, galaxies, and the evolution of ever-greater complexity and diversity. Information expressed as energy-matter, visible and dark, is both conserved and balances exactly to zero throughout its entire lifetime. Such conservation of information expressed as energy-matter on a universal basis is a statement of the first law of information. As such, the first law of information is essentially also the generalized expression of quantum theory . . . The continually increasing entropic flow of information within space-time, rising to a maximum at the end of the lifetime of our Universe, has enabled the development of ever-higher levels of consciousness and self-awareness to be expressed, embodied, and experienced. The nature of time itself can even be considered as being the accumulated flow of informational entropy, ever increasing from past to present to future. Indeed, just as the first law of information is an expression of quantum theory, so the second law of information is that for relativity theory. The first law of information enables our Universe to exist; the second law enables it to evolve. (25)

Rodger R Ricketts

  • Ervin Laszlo Science and the Akashic Field (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2007), p. 13.
  • Lynne McTaggart The Field (New York: Harper Perennial, 2003), pp. xvii-xviii.
  • Michael Talbot The Holographic Universe (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011), pp. xiii-xiv.
  • Ervin Laszlo Science and the Akashic Field (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2007), pp. 60-61.
  • Ervin Laszlo The Self-Actualizing Cosmos Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2014), pp. 8-9.
  • Jude Currivan The Cosmic Hologram (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2017), pp. 2-3.
  • Jude Currivan The Cosmic Hologram (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2017), pp. 112-113.
  • Jude Currivan The Cosmic Hologram (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2017), pp. 113-115.

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All Levels of Interrelationship

20 Feb

Science and Interrelationship

Science has revealed that a pattern of mutual relationships occurs at all levels of the universe, from the minute quantum world of sub-atomic physics to the inconceivably vast realm of stars, nebulae, supernovas, quasars, black holes and galaxies studied by modern astronomy. The relationships between the different elements and levels of the natural world can take a variety of forms: equivalent, symmetrical, mutually supportive, hierarchical, or asymmetric.

The fundamental laws of physics are universal and apply throughout the universe. They reveal that an intrinsic interconnectivity pervades the entire universe at all levels of reality, linking disparate phenomena in a harmonious, indivisible whole. In The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra writes: “The universe is seen as a dynamic web of interrelated events. None of the properties of any part of this web is fundamental; they all follow from the properties of other parts, and the overall consistency of their mutual interrelations determines the structure of the entire web.”

The concept of the hologram has been applied to describe a universe in which everything is interrelated and part of a greater whole, and supposed dualities are recast as complementary polarities. This ‘unity in diversity’ is one of the hallmarks of the new vision of the cosmos enunciated by leading thinkers and scientists. In this paradigm, all things in the phenomenal world are intrinsic elements in an integral whole: “The holographic nature of the manifest world enables the coherent oneness, the integral wholeness of the universe, to be expressed through the many facets of cosmic order at all scales of existence. It is the means by which every aspect of the cosmos can relate to and interface with every other aspect as well as the whole.”

For much of human history, the visible universe was conceived as a “machine” composed of separate, independent objects. The discoveries of quantum physics in the early 20th century changed this prevailing paradigm and ushered in a completely new world-view characterized by energy fields, subatomic particles, probability, complementarity, uncertainty, and dynamic relationship. Physicist Max Planck: “In quantum mechanics it is impossible to obtain an adequate version of the laws for which we are looking, unless the physical system is regarded as a whole. According to field theory, each individual particle of the system, in a certain sense, at any one time, exists simultaneously in every part of the space occupied by the system.”

Modern physics now recognizes the unbroken wholeness of a reality in which the universe is seen not as a collection of discrete physical objects, but rather as a vast nexus of relationships between the various parts of a unified whole. Quantum theory supports the notion of a basic interconnectedness of all the constituent parts of the universe. Physicist David Bohm: “We say that inseparable quantum interconnectedness of the whole universe is the fundamental reality, and that relatively independently behaving parts are merely particular and contingent forms within this whole.”

Our work brings out in an intuitive way just how and why a quantum manybody system cannot properly be analyzed into independently existent parts, with fixed and determinate dynamical relationships between each of the parts. Rather, the “parts” are seen to be in immediate connection, in which their dynamical relationships depend, in an irreducible way, on the state of the whole system (and indeed on that of broader systems in which they are contained, extending ultimately and in principle to the entire universe). Thus, one is led to a new notion of unbroken wholeness which denies the classical idea of analyzability of the world into separately and independently existent parts. We now find that the relationships between any two particles depend on something going beyond what can be described in terms of these particles alone. Indeed, more generally, this relationship may depend on the quantum state of even larger systems, within which the system in question is contained, ultimately going on to the universe as a whole. (11)

Interconnectivity also operates at the human physiological level. For instance, the human body is constantly renewing itself as it interacts with the surrounding environment – a process sometimes called a “biodance” or the “dance of life.” Dr. Larry Dossey: “Each body structure has its own rate of reformation: the lining of the stomach renews itself in a week; the skin is entirely replaced in a month; the liver is regenerated in six weeks. Some tissue is relatively resistant to the constant turnover, such as the supporting tissue called collagen and the iron in the blood’s hemoglobin molecules. But even though these rates of replacement differ, after five years one can presume that the entire body is renewed even to the very last atom.”

Biodance – the endless exchange of the elements of living things with the earth itself – proceeds silently, giving us no hint that it is happening. It is a dervish dance, animated and purposeful and disciplined; and it is a dance in which every living organism participates. These observations simply defy any definition of a static and fixed body. Even our genes, our claim to biologic individuality, constantly dissolve and are renewed. We are in a persistent equilibrium with the earth. Yet the boundary of our body has to be extended even farther than the earth itself. We know that certain elements in our body, such as the phosphorus in our bones, were formed at an earlier stage in the evolution of our galaxy. Like many elements in the earth’s crust, it was cycled through the lifetime of several stars before appearing terrestrially, eventually finding its way into our body. A strictly bounded body does not exist. The concept of a physical I that is fixed in space and that endures in time is at odds with our knowledge that living structures are richly connected with the world around them. Our roots go deep; we are anchored in the stars. (12)

Humanity has a deep spiritual responsibility for the welfare of the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, and a recognition of the primacy of Great Nature, for which we depend for so many of our needs. One of the consequences of the fact of universal interdependency is to awaken a respect for all forms of life. Fourth Way author Keith Buzzell: “We live in one continuous and harmonious cosmos. Studies in many diverse fields of science reveal a cosmos of such grandeur and subtlety, of such tightly interwoven and interdependent energies, that past myth, imagery and analogy pale in their ability to convey its real dimensions.”

Everything, every state of matter or energy, every idea, feeling and motion in our entire Cosmos is interconnected (webbed and woofed) into one great moving whole. This interconnectedness is not an abstract, indifferent, mechanical process but is, rather, an endless, multi-layered feeding – sustaining – nurturing. Since everything is essential and has its roles to fulfill within the whole, everything is to be valued in balanced proportion. The balanced proportion can only be approached if man’s third brain is constantly alerted to and reminded of the real hazard of egoism and enabled to explore and create new and more harmonious personal (first brain) and social (second brain) images . . . If so, then we can only encourage you to consider with care and sobriety, the world inside and outside of us. Consider the uncountable wars and the unremitting weight of suffering of the mothers and children of this world. Consider what we have done to this beautiful, fragile planet. Is this what we wish for our children and for all children to come? (13)

Rodger R Ricketts

  • Bob Toben Space-Time and Beyond (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1975), p. 135.
  • Larry Dossey Space, Time & Medicine (Boulder: Shambhala, 1982), pp.74-75.
  • Keith Buzzell Man – A Three-Brained Being (Salt Lake City: Fifth Press, 2007). pp. 58-59.

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All Is Interrelated

20 Feb

Gurdjieff and ‘Reciprocal Maintenance’

One of the cornerstones of Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way cosmological teachings is the concept of ‘reciprocal maintenance’ or ‘reciprocal feeding.’ In his magnum opus Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, he termed this process as Trogoautoegocrat (“I keep myself by feeding”), and described it as a universal principle which interrelates all levels of the universe and results in the reciprocal maintenance or feeding of “All and Everything.” In Gurdjieff: Making a New World, John G. Bennett succinctly outlines the main features of this cosmic process: “The transformation of energies depends on the relationship of entities, whereby each maintains the existence of others in a kind of universal mutual support system. Each order of beings is endowed with a form of energy that enables it to play its part in the cosmic process.”

Reciprocal maintenance in its special sense connotes that the universe has a built-in structure or pattern whereby every class of existing things produces energies or substances that are required for maintaining the existence of other classes. Gurdjieff uses the terms involution and evolution to describe the process. Involution is the transformation process in which a high level of energy acts on lower energies through an apparatus which provides the necessary environment and conditions. The human body is such an apparatus and so is any other living organism. The earth also provides an environment for high level energy – such as solar radiation – to act upon the more passive elements of the earth’s crust and atmosphere. Involution is entropic, that is to say the overall level of energy is always lowered in all involutionary changes. Evolution is the reverse process. It is the production of high level energy from a lower level source. This also requires an apparatus, but of a different kind, for the ‘up-grading’ of energy is improbable and cannot occur at all unless some high level energy is present. Life is an evolutionary process that goes against the direction of probability. The work by which man is transformed is evolutionary. It goes against the stream of life. (6)

In a talk to his students in 1918, Gurdjieff presented the theoretical basis of the principle of reciprocal maintenance: the transformation of matter and energy as a universal process of descent (involution) and ascent (evolution):

Everything in the world is material and – in accordance with universal law – everything is in motion and is constantly being transformed. The direction of this transformation is from the finest matter to the coarsest, and vice versa. Between these two limits there are many degrees of density of matter. At some points in the development there are, as it were, stops or transmitting stations. These stations are everything that can be called organisms in the broadest sense of the word – the sun, the earth, man and microbe. These stations are commutators which transform matter both in its ascending movement, when it becomes finer, and in its descending movement, toward greater density . . . This transformation of substances in two directions, which is called evolution and involution, proceeds not only along the main line from the absolutely fine to the absolutely coarse and vice versa, but at all intermediate stations, on all levels, it branches aside. A substance needed by some entity may be taken by it and absorbed, thus serving the evolution or involution of that entity. Everything absorbs, that is, eats something else, and also serves as food. This is what reciprocal exchange means. This reciprocal exchange takes place in everything, in both organic and inorganic matter. (7)

According to Gurdjieff, the universe was created as an unending chain of systems bound by universal interdependence. In this cosmic process of ‘exchange of substances’ everything that exists is dependent on and connected to everything else; nothing is separate:

The principle of universal interdependence is certainly not found only in the teaching of Gurdjieff. It appears in many traditional teachings. But his convincing exposition of it is indisputably original. A generalized non-separability characterizes the universe of Gurdjieff. Systems on different scales have their own autonomy, for according to the terminology of Gurdjieff, the Absolute only intervenes directly at the creation of the first cosmos. The other cosmoses formed themselves freely by self-organizing principles – always, however, in submission to the law of three and the law of seven. In this way the diversity of the universe is assured. On the other hand, the interaction of the different cosmoses by means of the universal exchange of energy-substances assures unity in diversity. Life itself appears not as an accident, but as a necessity in this universe of universal interdependence . . . Gurdjieff’s universe is not a static universe, but a universe in perpetual movement and change, not only on the physical plane, but also on the biological and psychic planes. Evolution and involution are always at work in the different worlds. And when we consider the important number of different matters characterized by different degrees of materiality, we can understand the essential role of the universal exchange of substances in evolution and involution. (8)

Gurdjieff emphasized the importance of reciprocal maintenance in the overall organization and functioning of the cosmos. Reciprocal maintenance shows how existing forms interact with other forms in a symbiotic relationship of mutual support. Functionally, higher levels of reality “spiritualize” lower levels of existence by organizing and then transforming them, under the direction of fundamental cosmic laws, into “higher patterns of meaning and value.” John G. Bennett: “Our customary way of thinking and talking about the world is in terms of objects and events, both of which are abstractions. Gurdjieff saw the world as the universal process of the transformation of energies, regulated by two fundamental laws (the law of three and the law of seven) and various ‘second-grade’ laws arising from their interaction. The two basic realities are relations and transformations.”

The world was brought into existence because ‘being’ and ‘time’ are mutually destructive. Everything separate and closed within itself must perish for lack of a principle of renewal. There is partial renewal by borrowing energy from outside, but this is not enough. Full renewal requires full mutuality. It is by Universal giving and receiving of energies that Cosmic Harmony is maintained. This, in turn, requires an organized structure which is given by the interaction of the different classes and levels of reality. (9)

Some contemporary physicists have noted a correspondence between Gurdjieff’s idea of reciprocal maintenance and the ‘bootstrap’ principle of modern physics. The bootstrap concept implies that at every level of nature there is an underlying unity which is maintained by a dynamic intelligence in permanent evolution. Such a universe is capable of self-creation and self-organization, without any other external intervention of other energies and forces. In the words of physicist Paul Davies: “The universe fills itself exclusively from within its own physical nature with all the energy necessary to create animate matter.” Physicist Basarab Nicolescu expresses a similar idea: “It seems evident that self-creation and self-organization only have meaning in a universe which is made up of an infinite chain of systems regulated by universal interdependence. Unity in diversity and diversity through unity are the conditions for selfcreation and self-organization. Otherwise there is nothing but the law of accident that can act.”

The trogoautoegocratic process of Gurdjieff presents a remarkable correspondence to the ‘bootstrap’ principle formulated in physics around 1960 by American physicist Geoffrey Chew. This word “bootstrap” also implies “to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.” The closest equivalence in the scientific context would be ‘self-consistency.’ In the bootstrap theory, the part appears at the same time as the whole. What is put in question in bootstrap theory is the very notion of a particle’s identity: it substitutes instead the notion of the relationship between “events.” It is the relations between events which are responsible for the appearance of what we call a particle. There is no object in itself possessing its own identity, that we could define in a separate or distinct manner from other particles. A particle is what it is because all other particles exist at the same time: the attributes of a determined physical entity are the results of interactions with all the other particles. According to bootstrap, there really is a “law of reciprocal maintenance” of all quantum particles. Also, as in the trogoautoegocratic process, a system is what it is because all other systems exist at the same time. The role of self-consistency in the construction of reality should be emphasized – a self-consistency which assures the coherence of the All. (10)

Rodger R Ricketts

  • John G. Bennett Gurdjieff: Making a New World (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 189-190.
  • G.I. Gurdjieff Views from the Real World: Early Talks of Gurdjieff (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1973), pp. 209-210.
  • Basarab Nicolescu “Gurdjieff’s Philosophy of Nature” in Jacob Needleman and George Baker, eds. Gurdjieff: Essays and Reflections on the Man and His Teaching (New York: Continuum, 1996), pp. 48-49.
  • John G. Bennett Gurdjieff: Making a New World (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), p. 206.
  • Basarab Nicolescu “Gurdjieff’s Philosophy of Nature” in Jacob Needleman and George Baker, eds. Gurdjieff: Essays and Reflections on the Man and His Teaching (New York: Continuum, 1996), pp. 49-50.

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THE INTERCONNECTED UNIVERSE

19 Feb

THE INTERCONNECTED UNIVERSE

‘Causes and results are infinite in number and variety. Everything affects everything. In this universe, when one thing changes, everything changes.’

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Spiritual Teachings and Interdependence

Both science and spiritual and metaphysical teachings recognize that all things and events are interconnected, and part of a greater Whole. Every part of the universe is directly or indirectly related to every other part, and the description of any one part is inseparable from the description of the whole. Sufi teacher Murat Yagan: “Interdependence is a state of mutual support for the greater good of the Whole.” The concept of an interconnected universe appears throughout history, in philosophical and spiritual writings:

  • Egyptian magus Hermes Trismegistus: “The without is like the within of things; the small is like the large.”
  • Greek philosopher Empedocles: “The nature of God is a circle of which the centre is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.”
  • Hindu Avatamsaka Sutra: “Each object in the world is not merely itself, but involves every other object and, in fact, is everything else.”
  • Buddhist Fa-Tsang: “Suspending a candle in the middle of a room full of mirrors represents the relationship of the One to the Many; placing a polished crystal in the centre of the room so that it reflects everything around it, shows the relationship of the Many to the One.”
  • Oglala Sioux medicine man Black Elk: “Anywhere is the centre of the world.” And, he reported in a vision “seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the Spirit, and the shapes of all shapes as they must live together as one being.”

The world-view of traditional Eastern spiritual teachings is based on the underlying unity of all that exists and the interdependent relationship of all phenomena. In The Tao of Physics, physicist Fritjof Capra describes this connected and interactive universe: “The most important characteristic of the Eastern worldview is the awareness of the unity and mutual interrelation of all things and events, the experience of all phenomena in the world as manifestations of a basic oneness. All things are seen as interdependent and inseparable parts of this cosmic whole; of different manifestations of the same indivisible ultimate reality.”

Although the various schools of Eastern mysticism differ in many details, they all emphasize the basic unity of the universe which is the central feature of their teachings. The highest aim for their followers – whether they are Hindus, Buddhists or Taoists – is to become aware of the unity and mutual interrelation of all things, to transcend the notion of an isolated individual self and to identify themselves with the ultimate reality . . . In the Eastern view, then, the division of nature into separate objects is not fundamental and any such objects have a fluid and ever-changing character. The Eastern worldview is therefore instrinsically dynamic and contains time and change as essential features. The cosmos is seen as one inseparable reality – forever in motion, alive, organic; spiritual and material at the same time. (1)

One of the fundamental principles of Buddhism is the ‘interdependent nature of all things.’ This takes the form of an infinite network of interrelationships among all forms of existence. Zen roshi Philip Kapleau: “Everything is connected and interrelated; all things are mutually dependent for their existence. All things in the universe depend upon one another, the influence of each mutually permeating and thereby making a universal symphony of harmonious totality.” In Zen Keys, Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh writes: The expression “the interdependent relational nature” of things is tied directly to the concept of non-identity. To see things in their interdependent relational nature is to perceive their nature of non-identity. Put another way, it is to recognize their existence, even when they are not present. Let us look, for example, at a table. It exists at this very moment. We recognize its existence only when the interdependent conditions, upon which its presence is grounded, converge; but we cannot recognize its existence before these conditions are brought together. Nevertheless, the table existed before being there; it existed formerly through the play of interdependent factors such as the wood, the saw, the nails, the carpenter, and the multitude of other elements directly or indirectly connected with its existence. If one can see the existence of the table through these interdependent conditions, one can also see it in unlimited space and infinite time. (2)

The Dalai Lama articulates the traditional Tibetan Buddhist understanding of the interdependence of all phenomena in The New Physics and Cosmology: Dialogues with the Dalai Lama: “[Interdependence] does not entail that these interacting events or facts have some kind of intrinsic, objective reality in and of themselves, but rather that this absence, or emptiness, of independent existence is at the heart of their existence. Their existence and reality can make sense only within the context of interrelationships and interconnectedness.”

This accords with the core teachings of Mahayana Buddhism which describes the world as “a perfect network of mutual relations where all things and events interact with each other in an infinitely complicated way.” Buddhist scholar Lama Anagarika Govinda:

The Buddhist does not believe in an independent or separately existing external world, into whose dynamic forces he could insert himself. The external world and his internal world are for him only two sides of the same fabric, in which the threads of all forces and of all events, of all forms of consciousness and of their objects, are woven into an inseparable net of endless, mutually conditioned relations. (3)

An interconnected universe in which all parts are, at some level, related to all other parts is at odds with simple cause and effect models of reality. In fact, no event occurs in isolation, as multiple interdependent causes may be involved. “Everything is interlinked, and therefore everything has numerous causes. The entire universe contributes to the least thing. A thing is as it is, because the world is as it is.” Sufi author and teacher Idries Shah argues that cause and effect is a “primitive short-term rule of thumb.”

For example, we tend to look at events one-sidedly. We also assume, without any justification, that an event happens as it were in a vacuum. In actual fact, all events are associated with all other events. It is only when we are ready to experience our interrelation with the organism of life that we can appreciate mystical experience. If you look at any action which you do, or which anyone else does, you will find that it was prompted by one of many possible stimuli; and also that it is never an isolated action – it has consequences, many of them ones which you would never expect, certainly which you could not have planned. (4)

Other spiritual traditions agree with this contention. According to Advaita Vedanta, the principle of cause and effect is only a conceptual category. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj: “It is the illusion of time that makes you talk of causality. When the past and the future are seen in the timeless now, as parts of a common pattern, the idea of cause-effect loses its validity and creative freedom takes its place.”

Like everything mental, the so-called law of causation contradicts itself. No thing in existence has a particular cause; the entire universe contributes to the existence of even the smallest thing; nothing could be as it is without the universe being what it is. When the source and ground of everything is the only cause of everything, to speak of causality as a universal law is wrong. The universe is not bound by its content, because its potentialities are infinite; besides it is a manifestation, or expression of a principle fundamentally and totally free . . . For everything there are innumerable causal factors. But the source of all that is, is the Infinite possibility, the Supreme Reality, which is in you and which throws its power and light and love on every experience. But, this source is not a cause and no cause is a source. Because of that, everything is uncaused. You may try to trace how a thing happens, but you cannot find out why a thing is as it is. A thing is as it is, because the universe is as it is.

Rodger R Ricketts

  • Fritjof Capra The Tao of Physics (Boulder: Shambhala, 1975), p. 24.
  • Thich Nhat Hanh Zen Keys (New York: Anchor Books, 1974), pp. 88-89.
  • Lama Anagarika Govinda Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism (New York: Samuel Weiser, (1974), p. 93.
  • Idries Shah The Sufis (London: Octagon Press, 1984), pp. 71-72.
  • Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj I Am That (Durham, North Carolina: The Acorn Press, 2005), pp. 9-11.

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Everything is interconnected – Quotes

15 Feb

♦♦♦

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied together into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality . . . Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured; this is its interrelated quality. We aren’t going to have peace on Earth until we recognize the basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.
– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Christmas 1967

∞Peace comes within the souls of men when they realize their oneness with the universe, when they realize it is everywhere, it is within each one of us.  – Black Elk.

∞All things are connected
like the blood that unites us.
We did not weave the web of life,
We are merely a strand in it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
– Chief Seattle

∞We are awesome beyond all imagining, because we are part of everything that has been, is now and ever will be.  – Maggie Hamilton

∞But I’ll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything.  – Alan Watts

∞A hundred times a day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depends on the labours of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving.
– Albert Einstein

∞We do not realize often enough that we are dependent on one another; at the simplest material level, we are all interdependent for our daily needs, and in this way we owe a debt to all beings.   – Kalu Rinpoche

∞It is important to understand how much your own happiness is linked to that of others.  There is no individual happiness totally independent of others.     – The 14th Dalai Lama

∞This is the highest praise, to say you have ubuntu. This is a person who recognises that he exists only because others exist; a person is a person through other persons. When we say you have ubuntu, we mean that you are gentle, you are compassionate, you are hospitable, you want to share, and you care about the welfare of other. This is because my humanity is caught up with your humanity.
– Bishop Tutu.

∞We must understand each other and work in harmony with one another, because it is our responsibility to develop in human beings their natural disposition for peace.
– The 14th Dalai Lama

∞I look at every human being from a more positive angle; I try to look for their positive aspects.  This attitude immediately creates a feeling of affinity, a kind of connectedness.  – The 14th Dalai Lama

∞According to Buddhism, the life of all beings –human, animal, or otherwise –is precious, and all have the same right to happiness.  It is certain that birds, wild animals – all the creatures inhabiting our planet –are our companions.  They are a part of our world, we share it with them.     – The 14th Dalai Lama

∞The friend who is a helpmate,
the friend in happiness and woe,
the friend who gives good counsel, the friend who sympathizes too –
these four as friends the wise behold
and cherish them devotedly
as does a mother her own child.
– Buddha

∞Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others, cannot keep it from themselves.
– James M. Barrie

∞A human being is part of the whole called by us ‘universe’, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self [ego]. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.  ― Albert Einstein

∞An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
― Martin Luther King, Jr.

∞Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.  ― Mahatma Gandhi

 ∞The good man is the friend of all living things.  ― Mahatma Gandhi

∞Friendship is based on the oldest and most intrinsic human awareness that there is more to life than just ourselves.  ― Christopher Hansard

∞There is no true joy in a life lived closed up in the little shell of the self. When you take one step to reach out to people, when you meet with others and share their thoughts and sufferings, infinite compassion and wisdom well up within your heart. Your life is transformed.   – Daisaku Ikeda

∞True spirituality is to be aware that if we are interdependent with everything and everyone else, even our smallest, least significant thoughts, words and actions has real consequences throughout the universe.
– Sogyal Rinpoche

∞We are her to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.
–Thich Nhat Hahn

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Omniscient Love—the ‘all-seeing’ eye of Universal Consciousness.

31 Jan

Omniscient Love is unconditional love in its most self-less, objective mode: “A love that is open to and nonjudgmental about all perceptions, cognitions, and intuitions.” It is the ‘enlightened’ state of consciousness sought in the meditative practices entailed in all human disciplines—viz, spiritual, artistic, intellectual, therapeutic, corporal, social, and so forth. As the highest state of love, Omniscient Love is present as an inherent potential in all humans. It embodies our ever-present psychoenergetic interconnection with everyone and everything around us— including the Universe itself, and hence, is the access channel to our highest psychic and spiritual proficiencies.

Bradley RT. Love, Consciousness, Energy, and Matter: The Heart’s Vital Role in Coherence and Creation. Cardiol Vasc Res. 2024; 8(1): 1-25.

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We cannot be separate from anything, everything is everything, the one is the all, a great oneness.

25 Jan
  • By Paul Moses
  • By Paul O’Hara Copyright © UniMed Living Pty Ltd

We gaze outwardly to the stars and inwardly to the atom, still seeking to measure it all in three-dimensions, which is in direct contrast to what we know the nature of the multi-dimensional Universe to be. This desire to measure and see everything in terms of our three-dimensional world allows a sleight of hand that reduces or collapses, or squashes, what is unified vibration or waves into what it is not – i.e., a particle that behaves as an individual solid, separate from the vast interconnectedness of vibration. And these particles are the building blocks of what we call matter, which we have observed to be separate from each other.

This is not true of course, but simply an illusion, as we know atoms are 99.99…% space, and space is filled with vibration. Even if it has become densified it is still just vibration and still very much connected to all other vibration, whether we like it or not.

We have this perception or need to unify, to come together, however in truth we are already all unified as one, and in this oneness we cannot help but be connected to everything else – such are the mechanics of vibration in space, our universe. Connecting to our oneness comes from a surrender to our multi-dimensional state, as it has been there all along. Whenever we try to unify ourselves, or anything in life, we are actually coming from a point of separateness, and we only ever achieve separateness from this.

In our desire to make sense of the world we seek to create and recreate everything to fit into the image of the material world that we uphold to be. We create the illusion that the world is made up of particles, and we use this to reinforce the notion of the individual. Therefore, it can be said quite clearly that there is no such thing as the individual, and therefore there is no such thing as the ‘I think’. By identifying purely as physical beings, have we disconnected from that which we truly are?

If we are only open to the physical reality with our separate identities, our gaze comes from that individuality and seeks separateness.

Quantum Mechanics simply describes the truth of our Universe.

If we say that it is only describing the atomic-world, are we denying the fact that all our chemistry is bound by the laws of quantum mechanics? This includes all biology, our bodies, the planet and all the stars. QM is not merely a theory, it is the basis of every aspect of life right down to the most practical, it is in fact a very practical science. Without these laws of quantum-physics we would not have mobile phones, GPS, laser, LED screens, MRI scanners, all our computer technology and communication media.

How did our modern-day science become separated into a myriad of very separate parts, often ignoring each other and the truths presented by one another? Quantum Mechanics naturally is central to all of science for it offers absolute truth to how all matter and energy in all sciences relate and interact. Yet the vast majority within the so-called ‘science’ field know very little of Quantum Mechanics. The very foundation of modern ‘evidence-based-science’ is flawed when a basic understanding of Quantum Mechanics is applied, for the ‘evidence’ is always affected by the observer.

We are actually living as a reduced or collapsed version of what we are, gazing with eyes that are blinkered from the truth: we are not individuals as such but rather inextricably connected to everyone and everything – just as every particle in the universe is connected to every other particle.

If we choose to see and recognise individuality we are creating and recreating that illusion, a corruption of the truth, simply a lie. The truth is that our Universe, as the name implies, is one song, or one unified vibration where nothing happens by itself. There is no such thing as individualisation – we cannot be separate from anything, everything is everything, the one is the all, a great oneness.

Our responsibility as scientists, as we all are, is to open our being to our world of space, a space filled with vibration constantly communicating with itself. And to know: I am that I am.

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 Irreducible: Consciousness, Life, Computers, and Human Nature. Federico Faggin: 2024 John Hunt Publishing

23 Jan

COMPUTERS AND HUMAN NATURE

On Human Nature vs. Machines: “Man is not a machine; he is a spiritual being, expressing a depth of consciousness and emotion that transcends mere mechanical function.”

On the Danger of Misconception: “The idea that classical computers can become smarter than human beings is a dangerous fantasy. It is dangerous because if we accept this notion, we will inherently limit ourselves to expressing only a very small fraction of who we are, reducing the rich tapestry of human experience to mere computations.”

On Consciousness and Quantum Systems: “We are not even close to computers in terms of understanding the complexities of consciousness. While comparisons are often drawn, the reality is that the brain functions on an entirely different level. We are quantum systems, embodying a depth and intricacy that far surpasses that of artificial constructs.“

On Free Will: “Humanity stands at a significant crossroads. Either it chooses to return to the belief that it holds a fundamentally different nature than machines, or it risks being reduced to a mere machine among machines, losing the essence of what it means to be human.”

On Meaning and Understanding: “A computer ‘knows without knowing that it knows,’ highlighting a crucial distinction. It processes symbols without genuine understanding; there is no witness, no pause for reflection, and no self that engages in true comprehension of its actions or outputs.”

On the Limitations of AI: “AI cannot truly be empathic. The notion of ’empathic robots’ being developed to care for the elderly is overly simplistic and naive. Such claims fail to recognize the profound human capacity for empathy, which cannot be replicated through programmed responses or algorithms.”

 

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The Awakening – Federico Faggin

20 Jan

IRREDUCIBLE- 2024 John Hunt Publishing

Top physicist and inventor of the microprocessor & touch screen, Federico Faggin, for an intriguing conversation into the nature of reality. Federico once had a materialistic scientific perspective on consciousness and reality until one day a spontaneous spiritual awakening changed his perspective forever. In this episode he shares that very experience and how it has shaped his current view on reality. With this deeper knowing, he spent decades researching reality, today he shares his findings. He reveals why computers can never be conscious, who we are our essence, what carries on after death, and our unbreakable connection to something larger than ourselves. He also discusses the very real force of love that underlies all things, the secret to spiritual growth, and why humans can never be replaced by artificial intelligence.

“Love is the feeling out of which all other feelings emerge.

It’s the force that motivates you to find out who you are.”

– Federico Faggin

The Hard Problem of Consciousness

David Chalmers formulated the “hard problem” of consciousness as the question of how and why neural activity in the brain gives rise to subjective experiences (qualia). Traditional science considers consciousness an emergent property of brain complexity, but Faggin offers a radically different perspective:

  1. Consciousness is fundamental and primary: it is not a byproduct of the brain but exists independently of matter.
  2. The material world is an expression of consciousness: rather than consciousness emerging from matter, matter itself is shaped by consciousness.
  3. The Self is irreducible and unified: each individual is a unique manifestation of a universal consciousness.
  4. Information alone cannot explain consciousness: unlike computers and AI, which process information but lack subjectivity and intentionality, consciousness involves direct experience.

Faggin proposes a reinterpretation of quantum mechanics based on the primacy of consciousness. He builds upon key quantum phenomena that challenge materialist views and integrates them into his metaphysical framework.

Federico Faggin’s Quantum Metaphysics

One of the most enigmatic and debated aspects of quantum mechanics is the collapse of the wavefunction. In the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, physical systems exist in a superposition of multiple states until they are observed. This raises the profound question: what causes the collapse of possibilities into a single reality? 

Federico Faggin’s metaphysical interpretation suggests that consciousness itself plays an active role in this process. Rather than being a passive observer of an already-determined reality, consciousness participates in shaping what is actualized. In this view, observation is not merely an act of measurement but an act of creation, where consciousness determines the outcome of quantum potentialities. 

This perspective aligns with interpretations of quantum mechanics that emphasize the role of the observer, such as the von Neumann–Wigner interpretation, but extends further by positing consciousness as the foundational element of reality rather than an emergent property of the brain.

This framework naturally leads to the idea that the universe is fundamentally interconnected, a notion strongly supported by the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. When two particles become entangled, their states remain correlated regardless of the distance between them, even across vast cosmic scales. The speed at which this correlation manifests exceeds the limits of classical physics, defying the constraints of locality. 

If consciousness is indeed fundamental, then this interconnectedness might not be merely a physical anomaly but a reflection of a deeper unity within reality itself. The separation between objects, beings, and events could perhaps appears from our limited perception, while at the most fundamental level, all things are interwoven within a single, complex and conscious reality. This evokes the concept of Wholeness which is central to our research in the Science & Philosophy Institute.

However, contrasting with our approach, Faggin suggest that matter itself is not independent of consciousness but rather a manifestation of it. Classical physics treats matter as the fundamental substrate of reality, governed by deterministic laws. However, quantum mechanics reveals a world in which particles do not have fixed properties until they are measured, existing instead as a field of probabilities. 

Faggin argues that these probabilities are not mere abstract mathematical constructs but expressions of consciousness interacting with the physical world. In this sense, what we perceive as “matter” is not an independent entity but rather the structured unfolding of consciousness into form. As such, the laws of physics do not emerge from an abstract mathematical framework but from an intrinsic intelligence embedded within reality itself.

This leads to a redefinition of information at the quantum level. In classical computation and physics, information is treated as a purely quantitative measure, devoid of intrinsic meaning. However, if consciousness is primary, then quantum information is not just numerical data—it is qualitative and experiential. 

What Faggin proposes is not merely an extension of quantum theory but a profound rethinking of reality itself, where consciousness and matter are inseparably intertwined, and the universe is understood as a living, conscious whole.

A new Model of Reality: Internal and External Reality

Faggin introduces a dual model of reality, which he calls “Internal Reality” and “External Reality”:

  • External Reality (Material World): the world described by classical and quantum physics, governed by objective laws but devoid of subjectivity.
  • Internal Reality (Consciousness): the domain of subjective experience, intuition, and creativity.

According to Faggin, consciousness is not a byproduct of the brain but the fundamental essence from which the material universe emerges. Internal Reality shapes and informs External Reality.

If consciousness is fundamental and the universe is its manifestation, several profound implications arise:

  • Science must integrate subjectivity: the purely objective study of reality is insufficient and a new paradigm is needed that acknowledges the active role of consciousness.
  • Computers will never achieve consciousness: while AI can simulate intelligence, it will never possess true awareness, or a subjective experience deeply interconnected to its larger context.
  • Quantum mechanics must be reinterpreted: the observer’s role is not just epistemological (as in the Copenhagen interpretation) but ontological.
  • Life has an inherent purpose: if consciousness is primary, then the universe is not random or mechanical but follows an evolution guided by conscious purpose.

Federico Faggin’s theory offers a revolutionary perspective on consciousness and reality, proposing that consciousness is the fundamental essence of existence, while matter is merely one of its expressions. His theory provides a possible answer to the hard problem of consciousness and suggests a new interpretative framework for quantum mechanics, moving beyond reductionist materialism toward a metaphysical vision where each individual is a unique manifestation of the universal primeval consciousness.

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