A brave new vision of life and existence

‘I believe the union of science and spirituality is the necessary step to solving the outstanding problems we are facing at this critical juncture in human history.’ Federico Faggin

While on holiday at Lake Tahoe, California, the Italian-American physicist Federico Faggin happened to wake up at midnight, went to pour himself a glass of water, and contemplated the lake, ‘dark and mysterious’.

Returning to bed, he suddenly felt a powerful rush of energy from his chest ‘like nothing I have ever experienced before and could not even imagine possible’. It was ‘a love so intense and so incredibly fulfilling that it surpassed any other notion I had about love’, he writes. He experienced it as a shimmering white light, alive and beatific, gushing from his heart with incredible strength.

The light exploded and expanded ‘to embrace the entire universe with the same white brilliance. I knew then, without a shadow of a doubt, that this was the substance out of which everything that exists is made. This was what created the universe out of itself. Then, with immense surprise, I recognised that I was that light!’ (Faggin’s italics).

This was in 1990. The epiphany lasted maybe a minute, but it changed Faggin’s life. No longer was he a separate observer perceiving the universe as outside himself; he was the world…