Spacetime Is the Memory of a Self Knowing Universe (Federico Faggin! Part Two) - Musings and Meditations
- filipvk
- Apr 23
- 5 min read
Dear friends,
I am pleased to share this second interview with the brilliant quantum physicist and inventor Frederico Faggin with you.
Frederico Faggin is the man who invented the first microchip, making him, in a way, the father of all modern computers. He also invented the touch screen on your phone and the touchpad on your computer. On top of that, he contributed to the first “neural networks,” the technology that forms the basis of all modern AI models. So, fair to say he is a truly remarkable scientist!
But as you learned in the previous Musing, I am sharing these interviews with Faggin primarily because of his extraordinarily fascinating perspective—as a quantum physicist—on our consciousness and on the nature of what we call “reality.”
If you have not yet watched the previous interview with Faggin (which dates from 2025) I recommend doing so before watching this equally fascinating conversation, which was recorded in January 2026.
In the first interview, Frederico began by recounting his extraordinary experience during a night on vacation, an experience that made him question his materialistic beliefs about the world.
During that conversation, he gradually laid out his theory on the nature of our consciousness, the result of decades of research following his extraordinary experience that night.
In the vision Faggin developed—which closely aligns with what is called philosophical or scientific idealism—our consciousness is not a byproduct of material processes in the brain, but the internal state of a quantum field, which can manifest itself in our spacetime dimension through our brains and bodies, yet is neither limited by nor dependent on them.
Moreover, our individual consciousness is a “fractal” part of the single field of consciousness that gives rise to our entire universe, a “part-whole” that contains all the information of the whole, much like the cells in our body contain all the genetic information of the entire body.
In this second conversation, Faggin delves further into the implications and consequences of this worldview, implications that prove increasingly fascinating and even bewildering as the conversation progresses.
As in the previous interview, there are parts that get quite technical and are a bit harder to follow. But hang in there—as the interview progresses, there are fantastic insights and conclusions again, always logically substantiated and scientifically grounded.
Be sure not to miss the last forty minutes of the conversation, in which Faggin reflects further on some implications of the realization that our consciousness is not a byproduct, but a fundamental and ontologically irreducible phenomenon that exists eternally and merely makes use of “material reality” and what we call our spacetime in order to learn:
Every individual “part” of consciousness is a “seity,” a field that is aware of its own internal state and possesses free will.
Every ‘seity’ is a ‘part-whole’ of the whole, which Faggin calls ‘One,’ the totality of all that is. Conversely, all information of ‘One’ is contained within every fractal aspect of it, that is, every individual consciousness-field.
‘One’ wants to know itself, and to do so it needs experience. To this end, it creates an endless number of perspectives and ‘parts-whole’ of itself, all of which represent a potential perspective and learn through experience in this space-time. These ‘parts-whole’ are... we ourselves.
Every individual experience thus becomes a part of ‘One,’ which thereby comes to know itself more and more.
Time-space and matter represent the permanent memory of the experience of ‘One’ and all its partial aspects (that is, us).
From this perspective, it makes sense that every ‘seity’ has more than one life: reincarnation is not only a potential perspective within idealism or ‘quantum panpsychism,’ but is even more logical than the opposite.
With each successive life, the self-knowledge of the ‘seity’ grows, and with it the self-knowledge of the totality of all-that-is.
What we experience as the ‘ego’ is an overlap between the ‘quantum-seity’ and the ‘classical’ space-time dimension, a necessary instrument for navigating this dimension, but infinitely more limited than the ‘seity’.
‘Mind’ is quantum information, ‘spirit’ is the meaning of that information, the meaning of the internal state of the quantum field or seity.
The infinite energy density of the quantum vacuum and ‘empty space’ is nothing other than the infinite creative potential of ‘One’.
As with the previous interview, I could go on with this list for a while. It is impossible to do justice to the richness, depth, and breadth of this conversation, which offers us a first glimpse of a new worldview and a new cosmology that are on the horizon, and which will be totally different from what we currently imagine.
This conversation (just like the previous one) invites multiple viewings: with each new viewing, you notice different things or another piece of the puzzle begins to fall into place. It is not an easy subject, especially because it runs so counter to our consensus reality and the materialistic view of the world into which we have all been so indoctrinated.
Of course, I do not know whether Faggin’s vision will prove to be correct in every respect, but after all my years of research on the subject, it strikes me as a well-founded theory with many points of convergence with what, among others, the fathers of quantum physics told us a century ago—and a theory that may come closest to a scientifically and spiritually grounded view of what reality is, who or what we are, why we are here, and why there is something rather than nothing.
This theory can also offer an explanation for the apparent chaos and anomalies we observe at the quantum level (free will!), can explain the connection between the “collapse of the wave function” and the observer, clarifies what “quantum entanglement” is, offers an interpretation for the endless creativity we observe on every scale in our universe, and provides a framework within which we can discuss teleology or purposefulness in the evolution of the universe and life, and clarifies why something like biological life is necessary and inevitable in this universe. Moreover, this theory overlaps remarkably well with what many wisdom traditions and religions from around the world have been telling us for millennia, above all the Vedas and Upanishads from India some four millennia ago.
The worldview that emerges here can also point us toward the much-needed “re-enchantment” of the world—the realization that everything is animated and sacred, and that everything exists for a reason: the development, growth, and self-knowledge of consciousness itself. And that can in turn give us the conviction and energy to develop ourselves into the “parts-whole” of the community of life on this planet, and give us the strength to take on our role in helping to protect this wondrous planet from depletion and destruction.
We are not insignificant little robots of flesh and blood resulting from a random and cruel evolution without meaning or purpose; we are part of a wondrous process of evolution and awakening of the entire universe. And if that sounds exaggerated or “woo-woo” to you, I invite you once again to listen to Frederico Faggin and his passionate vision of the wonder of our consciousness and of reality.
But as mentioned earlier, we’ll come back to this; to be continued! A new worldview cannot be explained in a single day!
Thank you for reading and watching, and until the next episode,
All the best to you,
Filip
