Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown, Dec 7, 2025

Episode Summary: "Is Consciousness Outside the Brain?! (Part Two)"

Guest: Federico Faggin, Physicist & Inventor of the Microprocessor
Host: Mayim Bialik

Overview:

In this compelling continuation, Mayim Bialik sits down for part two of her conversation with Federico Faggin, a pioneering physicist and technology inventor who experienced a profound spiritual awakening. The discussion interweaves Faggin’s insights on consciousness, the merging of science and spirituality, the nature of the mind, the role of love in existence and in medicine, and the need to rethink competition in favor of cooperation. Practical implications are woven throughout, including a radical vision for the future of health, capitalism, and technology.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Nature of Life and Consciousness

• Life as the First Act of Love
  • Faggin rejects the classical scientific view that life starts with the living cell through random mutation and selection. Instead, he proposes:

    “Life is the first act of love, of one that wants to know itself and creates fields. Those fields are parts whole of one… That self knowing, that is the identity of the field, and that remains for the forever in that field.” – Faggin [04:54]

• Subjective Meaning Creates Reality
  • Language arises from our intrinsic need to communicate meaning, yet meaning itself is endogenous, not external:

    “The creativity is within this, in the spiritual part. It’s not in the body and not even in the mind… The mind does computation about what we have learned… reality is created by our choices as spiritual beings…” – Faggin [06:53]

• Laws are Byproducts, Not Dictators
  • Scientific laws express underlying coherence, but do not determine outcomes:

    “The laws simply are saying that there is coherence within one… But the mathematical law don’t dictate what has to happen.” – Faggin [06:53]

2. Love Versus Capitalism & The Evolution of Society

• From Competition to Cooperation
  • Faggin calls for a fundamental societal shift to cooperation:

    “Once we start to accept that cooperation is the only game in town as opposed to competition, we have to rethink everything that we do.” – Faggin [09:11]

  • He acknowledges the challenge: to change, people must first realize they are not just bodies:

    “Before we can do that, people have to understand that they are no longer bodies… you have to have an experience that you are not the body, exactly like I had. And everybody can do that.” – Faggin [09:11]

• Bridging Science and Spirituality
  • The union between science and spirituality must embrace both rationality and subjective experience:

    “We have to cross that divide. We have to merge… There is no longer a boundary between science and spirituality.” – Faggin [11:35]

  • Difference between science and religion: science unifies, religion divides:

    “There is only one physics in the world… physics has already arrived to a level of unity…” – Faggin [13:01]

3. Medicine, Healing & Consciousness

• Cells as Informational Systems
  • Each cell is more than its parts; it’s quantum, classical, and informational:

    “A cell has the potential to understand the other cells because they have the same making… But in living system, the cells make decisions which are highly probabilistic… These cells are quantum and classical system.” – Faggin [22:19]

  • Health depends not just on biochemistry, but on the state of the “field” that connects all cells:

    “All our cells are connected with the field that we are…” – Faggin [23:42]

• Healing From the Inside Out
  • The future of medicine lies in recognizing and activating this field—beginning with love:

    “The way that you approach the cellular system is you start with love again… medicine that we practice today moves away from love because it’s all about machines.” – Faggin [26:09]

  • Miraculous healings can be understood as shifts originating from the inner field:

    “Sometimes it works in ways that appear to be miracles, and they’re not miracles because it shows that there is something that can come from the inside out, not only from the outside in.” – Faggin [26:51]

4. Taking Responsibility and Spiritual Awakening

• Personal Agency
  • Healing and transformation starts with personal responsibility:

    “In my experience, the first step is to take responsibility for what happens in your life… it is mostly by not doing what you should be doing that you attract to yourself suffering…” – Faggin [28:26]

• Changing Mindset as First Step
  • Mayim summarizes:

    “The first step to accessing a spiritual awakening… is to start to change the mindset: First, believe it is possible, and second, to start to understand the mechanism…” – Mayim [27:39]

5. Beyond Mind and Matter

• We Are Spirit
  • Faggin’s forthcoming book will expand on the inseparability of body, mind, and spirit:

    “We’re not matter, we’re not mind. We are spirit. That is meaning, love, joy, and peace… we must all radically change direction together. And to do this, we must first change our minds about who we are.” – Faggin [31:33]

  • All three—body, mind, and spirit—are always present, always interacting:

    “Body, mind and spirit are three inseparable aspects which have overlaps… plus the overlap in the center, which is all three together, which is the essence of one.” – Faggin [31:50]

6. Hot Takes: Afterlife & Simulation Theory

• Collective Consciousness

  “There is a collective consciousness. I mean, you know, in a sense we are a collective consciousness. We are fields of fields of fields of fields of fields.” – Faggin [35:46]

• Afterlife

  “I believe the essence of the near death experiences… they have extraordinary experiences that change their life. How can that be… if we are the body?” – Faggin [36:24]

• Simulation Theory

  “No, we are not in a simulation. But this reality, however, is mostly virtual reality in the sense that… it’s a virtual reality that we create…” – Faggin [37:33] “This is a game that we have created, and we are in the game that we created. So we are actors, but also the creators of this game.” – Faggin [37:33]

7. Technology, Creativity, and Human Limits

• On Inventing the Microprocessor
  • Faggin describes the intuition-led innovation behind technology that changed the world:

    “Perhaps my biggest invention was the invention of the silicon gate technology that allowed to make a microprocessor… And it was a number of intuitions that allow me to do that. And then of course a lot of work.” – Faggin [41:23]

• Tech’s Potential and Dangers
  • Human brain is still vastly more complex than AI:

    “Our brain… has about 100 trillion parameters. ChatGPT has 3 trillion parameters. So… nobody can build a computer better than the brain, but not even close…” – Faggin [44:18]

  • Technology’s risks and rewards depend on our self-understanding:

    “Technology, just use the way we use technology today, without a sense of who we are, can become dangerous. And that's the danger that I see… To be used right, we need to change the idea of what we are.” – Faggin [45:21]

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the evolution of medicine:

  “The next sort of evolution in medicine would be for all of us to have a better collective understanding of this sort of oneness and the deeper reality that consciousness and free will are providing so that even medicine could be affected…” – Host 1 [25:49]

• On personal transformation and responsibility:

  “That very important, because if you don't go there, you will always find outside. The problems that affects you, they always come from the outside.” – Faggin [29:34]

• On love as fundamental:

  “It’s where we want to get to within ourselves in communicating and so on, to get to that meaning that unites. That brings us back to one.” – Faggin [31:50]

• On the meaning of life experiences and awakening:

  “If he didn’t create the microprocessor, would someone else have. The answer is, is yes, of course. But would another human being have his particular awakening experience? No, that was his alone. But as he indicated, that part is indicative of the entire whole.” – Host 1 [49:02]

Memorable Moments by Timestamp

| Timestamp | Segment/Event | |-----------|------------------------------------------------------------| | 04:54 | Faggin on life as the first act of love | | 09:11 | Cooperation vs. competition: societal evolution | | 22:19 | Differences between cells and computers | | 26:09 | Healing from within: the importance of love in medicine | | 28:26 | Responsibility as the start of spiritual awakening | | 31:33 | Introduction to Faggin’s forthcoming book | | 35:46 | Rapid-fire Q&A: collective consciousness, afterlife, simulation | | 41:23 | Inventing the microprocessor: intuition and logic in tech | | 44:18 | Brains vs. AI: why humanity remains unique | | 45:21 | The urgent need for self-knowledge to avoid tech misuse |

The Episode’s Tone

Cerebral yet warm, merging scientific rigor with spiritual openness. Faggin speaks with authoritative gentleness; Mayim and co-host’s musings ground abstract concepts in lived reality.

For New Listeners

This episode offers a rare blend of practical science, deep philosophical and spiritual inquiry, and actionable insight for personal and societal change. If you’re curious about the boundaries of consciousness, the future of health, or why love might literally underpin reality, this thought-provoking conversation is not to be missed.