← Mayim Bialik's Breakdown
Mayim Bialik's Breakdown
Is Consciousness Outside of The Brain?! Physicist and Inventor of the Microprocessor, Federico Faggin, explains how Science and Spirituality are Merging In His Quantum Field Theory of Consciousness. His powerful awakened Revealed the Truth About Reality.
00:47:30
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- [00:00]
Jonathan Cohen
Mind Breakdown is supported by Helix Sleep.
- [00:04]
Mayim Bialik
Spring is in the air and so are all of the allergens that come with it. Spring allergens means you need more sleep, but there are a ton of factors that can prevent us from getting a good night's rest. Night sweats, back pain, feeling the person next to you when they roll over a million times. We were so excited to hear that Helix wanted to partner with us. I've had my Helix mattress for about five years now and I have been sleeping so much better. Jonathan and also our kids love their Helix mattresses and all night sweats, back pain, motion transfer. Those things are significantly better with a Helix mattress. Helix delivers your mattress right to your door which is so much fun. With free shipping in the US they have a 120 night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty. Plus they're happy with Helix Guarantee Rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges. The Happy with Helix Guarantee offers a risk free customer first experience designed to ensure that you're completely satisfied with your new mattress. Go to helix sleep.com breakdown for 27% off sitewide that's helixsleep do for 27% off site wide helixsleep.com breakdown early birds always rise to the occasion for summer vacation planning because early gets you closer to the action. So don't be late. Book your next vacation early on VRBO and save over $120. Rise and shine. Average savings $141 select homes only I
- [01:25]
Federico Faggin
had been pretending to be happy for a number of years, but I was not paying attention to my inner life. I woke up around midnight, incredible energy coming out of my chest and it was white scintillating light. And it was love, but also peace and joy. The peace I've never felt before. And my consciousness is everywhere. That consciousness was not just in my body. We are a field, we are not the body. I am a part, whole of one. Only quantum physics could explain what happened.
- [01:57]
Mayim Bialik
Physicist Federico Faggian invented Silicon Gate technology and the microprocessor, the foundational breakthrough now powering all modern technology. Remarkable and spontaneous spiritual experience revealed the true nature of reality and changed how quantum science is explaining consciousness and how the world really works.
- [02:18]
Federico Faggin
There is no longer a boundary between science and spirituality. Who I am was not at all what I thought I was. I thought that I was separate from the world. I was studying neuroscience, biology, trying to understand how things work. I realized that books were talking about electrical biochemical signals in the brain as if that was our conscious experience. That doesn't make any sense for Me to know myself. I need to know the others like myself. That's what cooperation is and what is that allows us to cooperate. Love. Love is the taste of meaning.
- [02:56]
Mayim Bialik
The next evolution in medicine would be for all of us to have a better collective understanding of this oneness and the deeper reality that consciousness and free will are providing, so that even medicine could be affected by the ways that we approach the cellular systems.
- [03:14]
Federico Faggin
That was the problem that no scientists had actually solved.
- [03:23]
Mayim Bialik
Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik.
- [03:24]
Jonathan Cohen
And I'm Jonathan Cohen.
- [03:26]
Mayim Bialik
And welcome to our breakdown. We've talked a lot about reality here, and maybe reality is more than we can see. But today we have the opportunity to speak to one of the greatest technologically savvy, intellectually rigorous physicists who has changed the way we literally live our lives. Meaning he created Silicon gate technology in 1968. That's what underlies all of modern computing. Why would we speak to this man about consciousness and reality? Because he had a remarkable spontaneous spiritual experience which allowed him to combine everything he knew about physics, neuroscience, biology and computers to construct a theory of everything that explains literally not everything you experience, not everything you think you know, everything that subserves everything that we experience. Federico Fagin is an Italian physicist turned inventor. His latest book, Consciousness, Life, Computers and Human Nature, is a fantastic journey about the oneness and the totality of our existence, as well as the significance of consciousness and free will as fundamental components not just of our existence, but the existence of the universe.
- [04:57]
Jonathan Cohen
This is a fascinating conversation. We touch on health, our internal experience, the idea that we create our reality and how to shift it, the nature of happiness and what will actually bring us happiness, as well as how the world can possibly change by better understanding that we were all interconnected and a part of the whole.
- [05:19]
Mayim Bialik
And if you're watching this episode and you think there might be something wrong with your screen because you see smoke coming out of our ears, that's just our brains working really hard to grasp and understand this conversation and the implications it has for how we view reality and how we go about loving each other and loving ourselves, and how the role of love actually can change the entire world. Without further ado, we welcome, from Italy, Federico Fagin to the breakdown. Break it down. I wonder if you can tell us, what is your mission? What do you think your purpose is before we get into how you got here?
- [05:59]
Federico Faggin
Obviously my purpose is to do what I came here to do. And so then the next question is, what did I came here to do? I think what I'm Doing right now, I think, is my purpose, you know, to have lived many lives in one life and to have reached a level of understanding that without the. I'm speaking about my fourth life now, without the other three lives, I could never have achieved. And the other three lives were quite full. My second life, my first life, of course, I was born, raised, you know, and educated, and first work experiences in Italy, then went to the US My second life was as an inventor, both technology and products, and then managing the R and D of intel at one point and then deciding to be an entrepreneur. So I started my own company, started several companies, and that developed different aspects of me. After having done all of that, I was unhappy. And so I didn't understand why. Why should I be unhappy when I have achieved everything that I could possibly imagine to be happy. And I had all the reasons to be happy. And then I had an extraordinary experience of consciousness because I wanted to understand. And that changed my life. And so I'm on my fourth life after this extraordinary experience, and I'm really. Now I know that I came here to do that and I needed all the other lives in order to do that.
- [07:39]
Mayim Bialik
So many people look for happiness in things and in titles and in accolades and in careers. What do you think was necessary about that journey? Do we all need to struggle? Like, does everyone have their own personal struggle? And at the end, there's a spiritual awakening waiting.
- [08:02]
Federico Faggin
I don't know if that is for everybody, but certainly for me was I had to go through many struggles, but also I enjoyed every part of my life. So it wasn't like, oh, my God, you know, how, what am I going to do? To do now? No, I've always followed my passion. But I was expecting, though, that after having achieved all of what I've achieved, you know, beautiful family, everybody healthy, you know, a beautiful career, famous enough money that I didn't need to work, you know, all that kind of stuff that normally living in a beautiful place like Silicon Valley and on it goes, right? I wasn't happy and I didn't know why. And of course, now I can tell you because I was believing outside of me and not paying attention to my inner life. And I had completely neglected my interiority. But it took a while. Then I had to go through some struggles to actually figure out what was going on. And after 20 years of work, I realized that I actually ended living many of the traumas when I grew up and so on, so that those were out of the way and I achieved a high level of tranquility. If you want just. My mind is not busy. My mind is, you know, it's perfectly fine. And I don't have all these jumbles and stuff that goes on. All the time that I had before, I was restless. Before, I didn't know that I was restless, but because I thought that I was doing the right thing. But now I can tell you I never was where I was. I was always somewhere else in my mind. I was, you know, my project, what I was going to do, you know, two weeks from now, tomorrow, a year from now, and on it goes, right? So now I'm just. I'm living my life, and I'm living my life day to day, as it happens. But I know that I am living exactly what I need to live. And that changed completely. My inner. My interiority is very tranquil, serene.
- [10:23]
Mayim Bialik
A lot of the focus of our podcast and our interest is the intersection of science and spirituality. And one of the reasons we're so eager to talk to you is because your brain, right, is holding so much of what many would deem the materialist side, right? You have the ability to be rational. You're an inventor. I mean, you've changed the world with the technology that you created. And also you have access to a completely other side that many people consider unable to be reconciled with this scientific, rational side. I wonder if you can talk us through what the actual spiritual experience was that you had and how your rational mind came to understand what was transforming inside of you.
- [11:15]
Federico Faggin
I had several, many, in fact, transformative experiences. But the first one was the most important because it revealed that who I am was not at all what I thought I was. I thought that I was separate from the world, and I lived as a separate individual. Even if I love many people, obviously my wife, my children, but still I'm separate. I don't know if it was end of December or early January, but it was in the Christmas holidays of 1990, and it was after I had realized that I had been pretending to be happy for a number of years, but I wasn't happy. And I was studying neuroscience at that time. I was developing neural networks. My company was in that business. Starting 1986, I was studying neuroscience, biology. I was trying to understand how things work. And I realized that those books were talking about electrical signals, biochemical signals in the brain, as if that was our experience. They were describing, in essence, our conscious experience by electrical signals and biochemical signals. I said, wait a second, that doesn't make any sense. Yes, there is something going on in the brain, and clearly has to be connected with our experience. But how can electrical signals in the brain be the taste of food or the smell of, you know, flowers, or, you know, the touch that I have when I touch something that goes, you know, that is a transformation that has to go from there to the feeling side. Because I understand not by seeing electrical signal. I understand by the sensations and feelings that, you know, Equalia. That David Chalmers, as you probably know, you know, later on, seven years later, wrote a book, you know. You know, the. You know, the unconsciousness. He realized that that was the problem that no scientist had actually solved. And so I actually discovered that on my own at that time, because I was trying to understand what's going on, trying to understand how to make better computers that learn and so on and so forth. But I also realized that that was my problem. My inner problem was about that, you know, that I realized that consciousness must exist somehow, but I didn't know what it was. And consciousness was also what made me suffer. And I didn't know that. Or so I had two good reasons to find out. Personal reason and of course, an intellectual reason, because I wanted to understand. As a physicist, I'm always trying to figure out things. And it was in that climate that one night I woke up around midnight. I was thirsty. I went to get a glass of water, went back to bed. And while I was trying to get back to sleep, a beam of light. It was energy, but incredible energy was coming out of my chest. And it was white, scintillating light, and it was love. It was me. Because my consciousness was in this energy. I was also this thing that was coming out of me. How is that possible? Then this thing expands or blows up, covers all the space. There's white light everywhere, and my consciousness is everywhere. So now I'm observing myself outside of myself because I realized that I am that consciousness. But that consciousness was not just in my body, it was also outside of me.
- [15:11]
Mayim Bialik
I want to hit pause here because most of us do not go about our lives and all of a sudden have a beam of light explode from the center of our chest and ex, like go into the universe. It's not something normal that we experience.
- [15:27]
Federico Faggin
It's not normal, of course, right?
- [15:30]
Mayim Bialik
You were not drunk, you were not sleeping.
- [15:32]
Federico Faggin
I didn't drink more than a glass of water than night. Everything was fine. I was in my best form. I was skiing all days. So I was physically very, very active as well. I mean, you know, this is completely incomprehensible from any points of view. I never had Anything like that I couldn't not even have imagined possible.
- [15:58]
Jonathan Cohen
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- [16:01]
Mayim Bialik
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- [17:26]
Jonathan Cohen
Make 2026 the year you finally start sleeping again. Mind Biox breakdown is supported by Bioptimizers.
- [17:33]
Mayim Bialik
You know, I struggled to get good quality sleep and I just assumed it was stress. But as I learned during perimenopause and menopause, your hormones shift in a way that affects your magnesium levels. And low magnesium, it makes everything harder. Not just sleep, focus, mood, your tolerance for stress. That's why I have added Magnesium Breakthrough bye bye Optimizers to my nightly routine. It's a blend of seven different forms of magnesium designed to support relaxation and overall sleep quality. Try it. See if you wake up more rested, refreshed, you've got nothing to lose and a lot to gain. Bio Optimizers offers a 365 day no questions asked money back guarantee. Magnesium Breakthrough is a huge breakthrough to improve hormonal balance to Help with focus, decrease brain fog, improve sleep hygiene. Overall. Bio optimizers makes it very easy. Jonathan. What do they get when they go to bioptimizers.com breaker and use the code breaker?
- [18:26]
Jonathan Cohen
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Mayim Bialik
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Jonathan Cohen
That's a $20 product, free on top of your discount already.
- [18:41]
Mayim Bialik
This is a limited time offer and while supplies last, you can't get it on Amazon, you can't get it in stores. This offer exists in one place. Our link, our code. That's it. So maybe you were already thinking about it. This is the sign. Go to buyoptimizers.com breaker use the code breaker. Grab it before it's gone. Make 2026 the year you finally start sleeping again. Besides the feeling of love, were you able to kind of step outside of the experience and say, what is going on? Or were you so immersed in the experience that you didn't have that perspective?
- [19:12]
Federico Faggin
I was the experience while the experience was going on. I was the experience clearly, right while this was going on, this light was everywhere, scintillating. A thought forms in my mind and the thought is, wow, this is the stuff of which everything is made. And by them those were mental words. But before the mental words there was a thought. And for the first time there was a thought. That was before it became words. This I realized later. But when I was doing it, it was like I was stunned because it was a thought and then there were words, you know, where normally before I was always thinking in words. So there were never thoughts that were without words. And in fact it was only with a lot of work that I did later that I could separate. The thought before is verbalized is reifying in our mind, which is how it must be in consciousness before it is transformed into words, mental words. And then the thought that we normally think is the thought which is already mental. It took me years to actually, you know, meditation, so on, and then realizing what I was doing. So I'm now moving back many years forward, but back at this point, I realized that there was a distinction. There was a distinction between this flash of insight and then the words. This is what everything is made of. Also at that time, the feeling with that energy was not only love, but also peace and joy. They were mixed in. They were not separable. But the peace I have never, never felt before. Peace was a new idea for me. Peace Was I am that my restlessness was no longer there in that experience, you know, because my restlessness was the fact that I was never where I was. Now in this experience, I am that this stuff is me. Because my self, the sense of self, my consciousness was out there. So I was both the observer and the observed. That's another complete change of perspective. As I was telling you before, I thought that I was separate from the world. Now, these experiences, I am the world observing myself. Big change of perspective. I am a part, whole of one. Because I have the same character of one. I have the same potentiality of one, but I'm also a part of one. Just like a cell in our body is a part all of the body. Because it has the genome of the entire body. Every cell contains the genome of the whole organism of one of the one organism. This case, we are. We are a part of the universe which, you know, we are a field. We are not the body. So clearly, you know, the idea that I am before my consciousness descends from myself was only in my head. I was not even in my body. Was in my head. And now with this experience, it's everywhere. Not only in my body, but also outside of my body. I mean, that's a. That's a change like this to this, right? Complete reversal of perspective that I had before. And the other thing is, in my body was vibrating, you know, and it was hard. So every aspect of me was in the. Was living this experience. This was a lived experience. It was. It's a lived way to know, you know, because you experience all those things. I can say now, but they were implicit in that experience. But it took years to unroll in a way, that experience, which probably lasted a minute, maybe two, but no more. So this was just like a, you know, unbelievable flash. But it changed my life because he told me that what I thought I was was not what I was. Because the sense of truth of that experience was so strong that I could not compare to anything that had happened in my life before. That was as true as powerful. Consciousness is the one that allows you to know that. Is this an imagination? Is this a, you know, a fantasy? You know, consciousness can actually tell you if that is true or not. Or close to the truth than any other thing. All of us have, one day or another, had a dream that was so vivid that you thought you were the dream, right? And you truly existed in that dream. I had many dreams before of that nature. But even more later after this experience. But, you know, where basically you wake up and for a Second, you thought you were actually, you know, this reality was a dream, not the other one. But this one was even stronger than that. And that's why he had the power to transform. It transformed my life. Otherwise, how could he have the power to transform my life? I would have doubted my own, you know, my own experience, right. I would have said, well, maybe I better go see a psychiatrist here, see what he tells me, right? So he tells me what I feel. Well, you know, we should be able to know what we feel ourselves.
- [25:15]
Jonathan Cohen
There's a few points here in your story that stand out for me. One is we hear a lot of people who have a drastic spiritual awakening, which sounds like this was for you, where they question it, right? They wonder, am I going crazy? Am I making it up? What did I feel or not? And the difference between an imagination and a fully embodied experience is the vibrating of the body. The fact that it was full, fully immersive, and that you are not just imagining something in a waking state or an imaginative state. You're not daydreaming. You're having a full visceral experience that is exceptionally powerful.
- [25:58]
Federico Faggin
Everything was going with it. You know, there was a unity in the experience. A unity in the experience. I am inside, outside and body, mind and spirit.
- [26:10]
Jonathan Cohen
The other thing that's fascinating and describes a lot of what is common, in a way, when you have a spiritual experience is realizing that thoughts exist before we're able to translate them. That information and ideas exist in this collective field that we're going to get into. And we want the scientific explanation of how you think that exists. But that the universe, the world that we live in, is made up of all of this information. And simply our brains are the interpreters and the translators of that information into a language. So that things can, for lack of a better word, exist all around us. And yet they just can appear. And we have to figure out, what does that mean? How do we communicate them? How do we translate that into something that's shareable?
- [26:54]
Federico Faggin
Yeah, well, in the way I say it these days is that meaning comes first. In other words, meaning comes before symbols. The symbols are invented in order to carry meaning. But if there is no meaning, there shouldn't be any symbols because the meaning comes first. Come before symbols. In science, symbols have no meaning. The information is only the probability the symbols appear or not. That's it. Has no meaning to the symbols. That's it. You know, Now I can say clearly, at that time, it was, you know, it was. It was inherent in the experience. But to unpack that experience, it took me years, right, but also years to get to the source of understanding. Now, my theory actually can explain what happened. But before it was. This is the opposite of what scientism has been telling me. Not science with the capital S, but scientism, the ideas that we have about the world.
- [28:04]
Jonathan Cohen
What was it like for you after that minute, the next day, remembering that you had this experience? Were you able to go back to that state? Or was it something like a reminder that. Was it something in your memory that you were like, wait a second, that existed? So I have to unpack it and understand it. How did it change your life in the day, the week after?
- [28:28]
Federico Faggin
Basically, it was very clear that there was a message from a deeper part of reality, which I couldn't know. But that that message had to be followed. It was very clear. And it was some. Was a personal message. Almost. Naya would say, my high self opening up the kimono and saying, look, man, this is what's real. Then, you know, figure it out.
- [28:57]
Jonathan Cohen
So you were set out on a journey in that moment afterwards?
- [29:00]
Federico Faggin
Absolutely, I was set out on a journey. They started immediately, you know, within days. I mean, after I came back. And, you know, obviously, you know, I was running a company, so on. But I think it was probably two weeks before, later on, that I found a person to go and begin the process. And that was the, you know, process that lasted about 20 years. That allow me to arrive at the conclusion. The consciousness and free will must go hand in hand. And they must be fundamental. They cannot be explained in any other ways. When I got to that point, I said, now my next step is to join science and spirituality. Figure out a way to combine. Because it was clear that only quantum physics could explain, if any, what happened. But now, actually, you know, I've arrived to the point where I said, we have to start there. And the fact that we are conscious and have free will. Can explain why the world has to manifest itself as quantum physics. You see, it's a complete reversal again. For many years, I was trying to explain consciousness and free will, quantum physics, as this. Quantum physics was more fundamental than consciousness and free will. Now, I'd say, no, Consciousness and free will are the fundamental ontology. And quantum physics is the way, the manifestation of that ontology. That then begets certain mathematical properties. Which are really maps of a territory. But the territory is consciousness and free will. These fields that have this property. They communicate with each other entities. But they're not entities in space and time. They're entities in a deeper reality. That Control bodies which are in what we collectively call space time. Which is a constructor that we made because we have similar bodies, similar ways of thinking, similar culture and so on. But the deeper reality is a reality that has entities that want to know themselves. And through those entities knowing themselves, 1. The totality of what exists, knows itself well.
- [31:21]
Mayim Bialik
Yeah. And in irreducible, you kind of take us through all of these paths.
- [31:26]
Federico Faggin
Yes. But the new book actually goes the next step. Which is because that book still wanted to explain consciousness and free will with mathematics, with quantum physics. And then it was only writing my third book that I realized one day I said, oh, I'm stupid. Yeah, this is. You know, I had to turn it around. We have to. I cannot explain consciousness. You know, we have to start there. That's ontology. And then the math is. Which is quantum physics is really math. The only ontology of quantum physics is the quantum fields are ontological. That's it. And you start there with quantum physics. You start with the quantum fields. And the ontology is there. But that ontology does not contain consciousness and free will. And so. So you only describe the outer aspect
- [32:21]
Mayim Bialik
or beyond this level of depth, though I think, is one that we want to spend a little bit of time in. So consciousness, you say, is the ability to experience qualia. Right. To experience the. The qualities of the things that we kind of identify and experience. And to know the meaning of the experience.
- [32:38]
Federico Faggin
That's exactly right. That's the deeper thing of qualia. Qualia are just. Just like symbols are bringers of experience. Qualia, qualia, the bringers of meaning of the experience. And that's a deeper aspect.
- [32:54]
Mayim Bialik
So there's things that we experience. Then there's the meaning that we draw from them. But what we're now talking about is what does it mean to say that the universe was alive and conscious from its outset? Because this is something that you talk about. That consciousness is a quantum property of a field. And not the property of the states of the field. Can you explain kind of how this works into our understanding of the difference between meaning. And sort of a larger oneness of meaning?
- [33:25]
Federico Faggin
First of all, there is one. Right? One is the totality of what exists. And one described by quantum physics has two fundamental properties. Is dynamic. Meaning is never the same. Keeps on changing, never the same. But we all experience that. And second is holistic. That took a while. Because holism comes from a property called entanglement. That exists only in quantum physics. Particles. When particles interact, they get into common joint states. That information that is created in that interaction independent of distance afterwards. And that is, you know, nobody can explain how that can happen. But what it means is that everything is interconnected. The universe is not made of separable parts. Not only that, but the particles, what we imagine, we have imagined as little ball. You know, when you measure them, you measure me in one point you think is a point particle. They are states of fields. They're not separable from the field, they're states of the field like waves of a sea. The wave of the sea are states of the sea. But if we don't see the sea, we only see the wave. We think that the wave is separate from the sea. That's a little bit to understand what we have thought about an electron. Electron is a wave in the sea, which is the field of electrons. Only when it is an excited state of the field, because it can exist. That electron can exist as a non excited state of the field. And it still exists. But we don't. It's inside. It's inside the water. We don't know. We cannot tell anything about it.
- [35:17]
Jonathan Cohen
This episode is sponsored by Wandering Jews, an open door media brand.
- [35:23]
Mayim Bialik
If you've ever found yourself feeling like you have more questions than answers, you're in good company. The Jewish people have been like that for thousands of years. Wandering Jews with Michal and Noam is a podcast where two of today's most dynamic Jewish voices, Michal Bitton and Noam Weissman, dig into the biggest questions about life through a Jewish lens. It's the kind of conversation where you'll laugh, learn something new, and probably shout in disagreement at least once. Michal and Noam tackle the tough topics like antisemitism in America, what happens after we die, and the future of religion with guests like Bret Stephens, Michael Roberts and Sarah Hurwitz. And this past month, in honor of Jewish American Heritage Month, they've been celebrating some of the Jewish lives and institutions that have shaped American life, from food to music and comedy. Thoughtful, joyful and always honest. That's Wondering Jews with Michal and Noam, a production of Unpacked. Find it on your favorite podcast app or on YouTube and make sure to hit subscribe. Check out Wondering Jews with Michal and Noam podcast and subscribe at Unpacked Bio nmx.
- [36:24]
Federico Faggin
Reality is just not even close to the reality that is revealed to us in the physical space and time where there are microscopic objects and the microscopic object are separate from each other and so also the world of computers, the world of computer. The bit of the computer is separate from the Other bit, there is nothing. The bits don't have anything in common with the other bits, okay? So we create numbers with those bits. But each bit is independent. And has to have only two states, 0 or 1. So we use physics to create this logical thing that we have invented. Because we have invented the bits. The bits are not in the computer. If you open up the computer and say, do you see bits moving around? And there are no bits moving around. There are signals moving around. But those signals are structured in such a way. That they carry distinguishable states. That you then can use to do whatever we do with the computers. But those states are not the same states. Like an electron is to the field. Those bits are our creation. That is imposed on matter. And it works until matter is deterministic. Behaves in predictable ways. If you raise the temperature of the computer too much. The computer stops working. Because the death distinction that we have put into matter. Can no longer be, you know, can no longer be maintained. So it's an R construction. It's a construction of consciousness. It's not a construction in the computer. The computer doesn't know anything about bits. You see the subtlety here. Because we think the reality is made in a certain way. But in fact, we are imposing a certain type of distinction. That there are mental distinctions and conscious distinctions, then we attribute to reality. Probabilities, for example. Can only happen if you are conscious. Because only a conscious being wants to predict what will happen in the future. Especially in a reality like the classical reality, which is deterministic. In a deterministic reality, there are no probabilities. There are only certainties. The probability are a lack of knowing about something. That if we knew we could predict the future. And therefore there would be no probability. We would predict exactly what will happen. So probabilities already include quantity. Include the existence of consciousness. In the definition. Quantum physics is all about probabilities. It's not about physical variables. It's all about probability.
- [39:14]
Mayim Bialik
When you talk about reality. And obviously this is a concept you can talk about conceptually. But I'd like you as a physicist. To explain to us what you mean when you say reality is not what we think it is. And you can go as micro or as macro as you'd like. And I think the beauty of what you talk about. Is that it includes the micro in the macro. And the macro in the micro.
- [39:41]
Federico Faggin
The fundamental reality is the reality of our inner experience. And yet that inner experience is not separate from the material or the mental aspect. That inner experience is part of what we call spirit. The spiritual reality. In reality, there are three aspects of reality. Which are intertwined that cannot be separated. The material, which is the body. The mental, which is actually the prediction of what might happen in the future. That's what actually quantum physics does. It gives you probabilities. But then is the spiritual nature that has the experience of that reality. And also the free will decisions that by knowing the probabilities. They pick whatever they want with free will. So we construct the future by the collective decisions that we fields, not we bodies, we fields make. In other words, the deeper reality is the reality of meaning and experience. That's the deep end. Free will and the self knowing that we get out of it. And the love. The aspect in which all those three aspects are superimposed. They exist together. The body is like red. The mind is like, you know, blue, green, green. And the spirit is like blue. Right. When they combine together, they create white. The white light. Right? So the three together. But where you have red and green. That superposition is quantum and classical. A type of information which is the one that would describe living systems. A cell works with the principles of quantum physics and classical physics. Computer works with only the principle of classical physics. That's the body. The center of the body is that type. The center of the quantum reality is actually the quantum state. Which actually allow you to predict possibilities in the future. Which then the spirit decides. And the spirit. The center of the spirit is the meaning of the information. Where the mind and the spirit overlap, there is qualia, the experience. And that experience can be described with the quantum state of a field. But that description is not a description of the experience. Is only a map. The territory is the experience. The map is just a quantum state which is a vector in Hilbert space. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that is a map, right?
- [42:31]
Mayim Bialik
And our limitation is that we identify our ego. We identify with our body. So the reality that we have and that we construct the world with is. Well, I see this, I touch that. This is my job. This is my political party. This is the color of my skin. This is my religion. This is reality. This is who I am. But what you have said is that that way of thinking. And that over identification of the ego with basically our sensory system. Right? You said that it can lead us to censorship. The parts of ourselves that actually give us the true reality of what we can perceive from the body, the mind and. And the spirit. Is this the seity which is spelled like deity, but it has an S?
- [43:16]
Federico Faggin
Yeah. They say the sati is this field with these properties. You See, so consciousness cannot be seen as a, as an entity. Consciousness is a property of a satiety. In sati, I use the word sati because the quantum field, which is the quantum aspect of that reality, is only a portion of that reality, which is the only portion that physics recognize, which then is describing quantum states with all the equations and blah, blah, blah. But that portion has eliminated the deeper aspects which are the, you know, the body and the most important, the spiritual aspect, which are the fact that we have experience and the fact that from the experience we get meaning, we get self knowing. The meaning is the essence of the self knowing.
- [44:12]
Mayim Bialik
One of the most practical applications of your spiritual experience and this really approach to understanding reality is you talk about how the destruction of the environment is one example of us not being in alignment with how the sum of the parts, right, are bigger than the whole. That the notion of a continuous cooperation as a species is actually consistent. And obviously there's so many. The politicization of climate change is a ridiculous conversation that we don't need to get into, but the notion of what does it mean not just to be in alignment with yourself, which we're very good at in capitalist Western societies, but what does it mean to be in alignment with not only those around us, but with the species as a whole. Can you talk about how this understanding, I mean, I literally quoted this, you said that when our rationality is uniquely informed by the principles of materialism, reductionism and survival of the fittest, it can only lead to an unbridled competition, racism and war. So you talk about this kind of competition and racism, war and the environment as consequences of what happens as a species when we are not aligned with true reality.
- [45:37]
Federico Faggin
Yeah, because the true reality starts with what is the purpose of one? Of course you can say, well, but who can tell the purpose of one? Of course I cannot tell the purpose of one. But by looking at the deepest aspect of ourselves, we can infer that one wants to do exactly what we want, which is to know itself. We want to know who we are, we are here. I mean, the deepest aspects of human beings is we want to understand who we are. Knowing yourself, you know, is in, you know, the temple of Apollo, you know, in Delphi, you know, you know, is in the history of humanity. But even before, you know, the Vedas talk about this same principle. So I start with that principle. I start one. The totality of what exists is dynamicalistic. And before I didn't finish and I put one third condition on one. One wants to know itself. So the wanting to know itself. The wanting is what then reflects into our will, our free will, because we also want to know ourselves. But we have to have the will to do that and the capacity to do that. And to know itself, one must be conscious. So conscious is a necessity of the fundamental principle which I consider a postulate. You know, you have to believe it or not, but because you cannot prove it. But then from there you, you can see that quantum physics emerges naturally from those properties.
- [47:19]
Mayim Bialik
That's a really important point that so many of us think of quantum physics and all of these like subjects that, that not everybody understands as something outside of us. When the fact is, it's just the attempt to articulate a deeper reality that the mystics have known for thousands of years. You experienced at midnight outside of Lake Tahoe, which no one knows why. But I think that that is the thing that also people who have psychedelic or transcendental experiences, they describe a very, very similar explanation of our purpose here. People who have near death experiences, who leave this realm and have experiences of consciousness that also include 360 degree vision, which isn't even a thing unless you remove your consciousness from the body that it's in. So the fact that we're seeing all of these things align, you give it such validity because you are a man of science. You are a person who has invented the things that structure the way we understand a biologically mechanical world. And yet you have this insight to be able to say, guess what? There's something that you can't even see or touch. You, you can feel it, but not with your senses. It's something deeper that very few will touch. But our purpose here is to keep looking for it.
- [48:42]
Federico Faggin
Science is about knowing, right? So you know, why so important science? Because it is, you know, it is knowing outside what is outside. But, but science today has forgotten there is also an interiority that is an inside. In fact, scientism erase the inside, there is nothing there. We are only a machine, right? If we are just a machine that is only outside, there is nothing inside. That is the fundamental problem. But if you start with one dynamic holistic wants to know itself. And when one knows itself, it creates a field. It creates what it knows. Because knowing and you know and existing are two words for the same thing. When one knows itself, you bring into existence what it knows. And so knowing is existence. Ontology is in the knowing, in the meaning, in the interiority. That's the point. And then we fields, you know, then there are fields, fields of fields, blah, blah, blah, you know, It's a complicated world. But the point is that for me to know myself, I need to know the others like myself. That's what cooperation is. I cannot know the others like myself if I don't cooperate. And what is that allows us to cooperate? Love. Love. And what is love? Love is the taste of meaning. Love from the inside is the taste of meaning. The more meaning, the more taste. The 10,000 more powerful love that I ever tasted was the meaning of me experiencing Tahoe. That was me. My meaning. Incredible love. That's me.
- [50:33]
Mayim Bialik
You sound like a deadhead. You sound like someone who wants to travel the world, just spreading love and good times.
- [50:40]
Federico Faggin
The point. But from the outside, what is love from the outside? From the outside, love is a force, a force that brings into resonance the interiorities of our fields. That is not classical in resonance. It's not pendulums that oscillate in synchrony. It is the inner state which is the meaning. That meaning becomes the same meaning, and it is love that brings the meaning to be the same. In the various fields, what is the equivalent from the seen by the physicist? I don't know, but I suspect possibility, gravitational force. Why? Because the gravitational force is the only universal force and is only attractive. It's only attractive. And it is the smallest force. But that smallest force can create stars, out of which we create the nucleons, which cannot be created into in any other way.
- [51:47]
Mayim Bialik
We're going to hit pause here on our conversation with Federico Fajin. There is so much more in part two and so much that we cannot wait for you to hear. So make sure you tune into the second part of our conversation with Federico where we talk about how love fits into a world that is ruled by capitalism. We talk about the boundaries between science and spirituality and how he thinks there does not need to be any boundaries. He's also going to talk about how happiness literally depends on you and your ability to understand not only your inner world, but your outer world as well. And we do a really, really fun kind of cycling through so many concepts that we talk about here on the podcast Collective consciousness. What happens when we die? Simulation theory, virtual reality. He says we're in a game we created. We can't wait for you to hear what he means.
- [52:37]
Jonathan Cohen
We also cover the next evolution of medicine and how it's related to consciousness. We can't wait for you to hear part two of this episode, from our
- [52:45]
Mayim Bialik
breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time.
- [52:48]
Federico Faggin
It's my ambiolic's breakdown. She's going to break it down for you she's got a neuroscience PhD or two non fiction now she's going to break down to break down she's going to break it down.