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Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, and my guest today is MINUSCA fatos. Read a brief bio here. Dr. Menas Kafatos is the Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor of computational physics and director of excellence at Chapman University. He received his BA in physics from Cornell in 1967, PhD from University of Massachusetts, excuse me from MIT, in 72. And after postdoctoral work at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, he joined George Mason University and was University professor of Interdisciplinary Sciences there from 84 through 2008. He has authored and co authored numerous books, including the conscious universe, the non local universe and Principles of Integrative Science. And I’ll link to a more detailed biography of Metis. For those who’d like to read it. And is there anything else you’d like to add to that minutes before we plunge in?
Menas Kafatos: No, it’s my research interests are crunched into some quantum physics and also on climate change and hazards. Has.
Rick Archer: We’ll talk about both of those today. Okay. And you were also a student or disciple of Swami. Muktananda. Back in the 70s. Right.
Menas Kafatos: Yeah. Back in the in the early in the No, not sorry, this bargain back in the 80s 80s.
Rick Archer: And did you maintain? Have you maintained some sort of spiritual practice ever since then?
Menas Kafatos: I carry on meditation. Yeah, I do meditation. Yeah. Okay, good. Yeah.
Rick Archer: I should say that medicine. I know each other a little bit from the science and non duality conferences, which I’ve attended. For the past three years. I’ve always enjoyed her his presentations. We had breakfast together this last time. So I’ve been wanting to interview menace for a while now. Thank you. Thank you, Rick. Oh, you’re welcome. So I was it’s funny I was. Well, let me start with a couple of with the point here, there are critics who, who say that the Physics Consciousness parallels are metaphorical and not actual. And you know, but since I don’t know since I guess that guy who wrote The Tao of physics rich off Capra, there have been physicists who have been drawing parallels between spirituality and physics. And you know, conferences like the science non duality conference always have guys like you and John Hagel and, and so on drawing such parallels. Yet, even in your book, at one point, you say, quote, it’s impossible to conclude that Eastern metaphysics legitimates, modern physics, or that modern physics, legitimacy, Eastern metaphysics, and go ahead and respond to that. And then I’m going to ask you a question that a friend of mine sent and relates to this.
Menas Kafatos: Sure. The they would, they don’t correspond one to one because consciousness, okay, let’s, let’s relive metaphysics out consciousness. If it is the underlying reality, if it is the stuff, so to speak, that the universe is made of, then it’s not physical. And therefore, if you are developing physical theories, you can only reach up to a certain point. And what we’re hinting at in the conscious universe with Bob Nadeau and solid my other writings is that there is this complementarity, what I now call generalized complementarity between the physical, if you like, and the mental or let’s say, the physical and the consciousness level, and crush if consciousness is primary, okay, then you can’t expect that the physical will be identical to it. Okay, so I don’t think we can come up with physics theories that will prove consciousness.
Rick Archer: But then physics deals with a lot of stuff these days. It’s not physical. I mean, so much. Cutting edge of physics is dealing with a realm that is beyond the physical,
Menas Kafatos: correct. Well, I guess so. Let’s talk a little bit of what I mean by physical here. What I mean when I say physical, I mean, anything that is within space and time, space time, okay? And if it’s outside space time, then it’s then it’s non physical. Okay, so Well, certainly consciousness. It can be outside of space and time. So it’s more primary, okay. In fact, in, in my view, and I think a number of other physicists space time itself is not primary, but emerges emerges from the deeper layers. So how can we get as close as possible to consciousness? Well, consciousness ultimately, is the experience or the awareness of existence. It’s the existence itself and the experience or awareness of existence. And that cannot be put into physics. And the best way to get as close as possible to consciousness, and this is some reason the work I’m doing is to take the mathematics as far as possible. Mathematics, as you know, of course, is the language of science. So it’s more primary than physics itself. In fact, abstract physics is really nothing more than mathematics. So that’s the approach take it as far as you can throw the mathematics then somebody may say, Well, okay, then the universe is made of mathematics. And in fact, this is what Max Tegmark would would hold. But then the question is, well, what is the math? What is mathematics resigning? You know, Is it some sort of a platonic realm? Or where is it? And of course, the answer to that is, well, again, it’s both it’s both in the mind or in the consciousness. And beyond the consciousness, the I’m talking about human consciousness. Okay. So the main point here is that the universe or reality with a capital R is made of complementary entities that seem to not be identical to each other. And if you try to make them identical, then you’re run into into problems. And of course, the most classical one of those complementarities is wave particle duality, or the wave party complementarity in quantum physics. So the universe is made of the appearance of opposites, which are, however complimentary, all springing out from consciousness, which itself is being an awareness of being, that’s the best, that’s the best I can do.
Rick Archer: That’s pretty good. Here’s a question that a friend of mine pondering this question last couple days, and then just out of the blue, this friend of mine in London, sent in a question related to this. And he didn’t even know I was going to be interviewing a physicist and then a couple of days, but he said, a lot of teachers talk about quantum physics and the fact that essentially, modern physics has told us that the ground of reality is emptiness being something which emptiness something which the mystics have said for 1000s of years. They point to this as evidence that mysticism and modern physics agree with one another. Also, a lot of teachers say that spirituality is about experience or experiential realization, rather than belief or intellectual musings. Therefore, I would like to know how can we be sure that the ground of reality per modern physics, is the same emptiness experienced in Samadhi? Or is it emptiness related to the human nervous system rather than the same emptiness talked about in science? How can we be sure that just because a person experiences emptiness, that it is not just a coincidence, and this is also the nature of atoms on a fundamental level, it feels like the human nervous system is built on the macro level rather than the micro level, much less than much less than subatomic level, it may be that the emptiness a person experiences is just the result of complete balance in their nervous system rather than a direct mirror of the fundamental nature of the subatomic realm. So you’ve kind of addressed that, but maybe give it another spin. Wow, this
Menas Kafatos: is actually a very good question. The quantum vacuum from which the virtual particles spring out, and where, of course, you have, ultimately, the ground of quantum field theory. Okay, let’s say superstrings. I believe it’s not the same as the emptiness of the conscious awareness. Okay. It’s, they are. So there are three principles that I might as well talk about the three principles now, in my most recent development, and it’s not you don’t have that in the crisis universe when it came to not but we didn’t have it developers is now the three principles are universal complementarity. And I will leave the universal so we’ll say complementarity, if you like with a capital C recursion, which really means S here, so elsewhere as above, so below one What you see here also occurs somewhere else. And the third principle is sentience. Or you can, you can call it creative interaction. But we like the term sentience, because actually, sentience is greater action, but also has a little bit more. You can sense the environment you can build, you can build things out of the environment, and you can have new entities form. And basically, if you like, it’s a quote unquote, primitive awareness that even, you know, cells gonna have more primitive than human awareness or human consciousness. So the word consciousness is, of course, a very loaded term. And that’s where most of the problems arise. We have one word to explain or to refer to unconscious awareness, conscious awareness, human awareness, why they just called sentience, social primitive sensing, we have one word for all of these things, subconscious. And, for example, in India, in the, in the old schools, philosophies of schools, they have many different words for consciousness. And, and, again, the analogy here is, we only have in the West, we only have one word for snow. But the Eskimos have, like 30 words for snow. And for us, the snow is a snow, right? Something wide that, you know, that’s it, that’s made of water, and that falls from the sky, but they of course, have different ways to talk about it. So consciousness to make a long story short, operates universally through these principles and those principles. If you think about them, you will see that they operate on all levels. So from that point of view, I would say there are parallels between metaphysics and physics, okay, because of the operation of universal principles, and the universal principles are manifesting the existence of consciousness. But I would not derive physics, from consciousness or consciousness from physics.
Rick Archer: Would it be fair to say that both spiritually spiritual aspirants, especially Eastern ones, and physicists, each seek to know or understand ultimate reality, but they’ve taken very different methods to do that. And if they have been successful, and certainly in the east, there are many, many people who are said to have attained Enlightenment or which is supposed to be that sort of experiential grounding, and the ultimate reality the ground state of the universe, then, you know, physics might be poking around in that field with mathematics. But Could it really be and maybe they’re not Kate, maybe the human nervous system is, is, you know, the kind of instruments if sophisticated enough to investigate that field and no Large Hadron Collider or anything comes close to that degree of sophistication. And therefore, physicists can only hope to sort of reach it in a in a sort of a distant vicarious way. But still wouldn’t be fair to say that even if they don’t actually realize it, physicists are trying to arrive at an understanding of the ground of being that mystics have actually understood for a long time. Now,
Menas Kafatos: again, I would say that Keep it keep in mind complementarity, okay, the two are the opposite opposite bear or the opposite poles of a pair, which is complementary, okay. One does not displace the other you want you cannot, right. So, now depend on those, the parallels are through these principles. And exactly right, when you said, physicists, we believe that there’s one reality. So the mystics also believed there is only one reality. Physicists say, well, we don’t have all the laws we don’t understand everything, but we keep at it. The Mystics will probably tell you pretty much the same thing. Keep audit, you know, of course, there is eventually, supposedly a dichotomy when somebody reaches the highest level. But you know, in terms of ordinary human experience, you know, you you try both ways, let’s say and one is, gets you into the physical understanding or the understand the physical universe, the other is, perhaps getting you to understand even more your own experience or to live your own experience. Ultimately, it cannot be a matter of understanding as an object because consciousness is this subject itself. And that’s where it departs from science. That’s what we’re trying to say, in the consciousness universe. If you try to prove consciousness, from the point of view of an external object is like, John algebrator wheelers, famous drawing, where the eye turns around and tries to see the eye can do it, you know, the eye cannot see the eye, you know, whenever you see your eye, it’s that reflection something else, either on your camera or in a mirror, you can have the eye look at the eye, okay, you can have the ear, hear the ear, you know, I’m saying you. So there’s something else that is manifesting. And I would say, it’s the one behind the scene behind the hearing behind the taste behind the five senses, the wall, the very the experience, we experienced it through the five senses. And we see objects we see, I see you now in the camera, you see me in the camera, but from your subjective experience, you’re the subject and I infer my subjective experience, I am the subject. So you can get this subject out of the way. And in fact, if you think about it, if you keep going the same way, there’s really only one subject. And both you and I are aspects of that subject. In the same way, when we study the universe, we study aspects of the universe. We cannot study the entire enchilada, so to speak or not, and study the entire universe. Why? Well, for the very simple reason that the universe contains, if you want to put it that way, or is in consciousness, and therefore, you know, no matter how many physics, physical principles you come up with, you won’t be able to get to the subjective experience.
Rick Archer: So here’s a couple of good verses for you, based on what you just said, you know, one is that verse that the self realizes itself by itself, in other words, the, you know, no external, there’s, there’s, like you said, about the eye, the self is not something which can step apart from itself and observe itself because it is the observer. Yet the realization of that comes through it, recognize, you know, realizing itself by itself. Second thing is, you know, that that verse where it says, that one perceives the self and all beings, and all beings in the self, so what you said to me a minute ago about from, for me, you’re the object, and I’m the subject and vice versa. If we both had the requisite level of consciousness, we would only see the self and looking at one another. And what was Muktananda is famous, famous phrase, God dwells within you as you write. But obviously, God doesn’t just dwell within God is omnipresent. So if we can perceive things are right, we would see God in all things as well as discovered God within the self correct?
Menas Kafatos: Correct, I generally avoid using the word God, because it immediately brings in concepts about God, which God is it the monotheistic God, is the politics that God is the God of Zarathustra? Or is the God of the prophets of so? And of course the answer to this, it’s all of the above. But you know, I, in terms of modern science, perhaps a better a better term, and when not a better or worse, but let’s say a more useful term, if you want to talk about neuroscience, and it’s actually consciousness, because then you’re tied to conscious awareness. Somebody may say, well, but ultimately, the God, God and consciousness are the same, aren’t they? Well, I would say, if you want to tell me what is consciousness, then I can tell you if it is God, or vice versa. And of course, it is the sum total of everything that exists then fine, but then, what have we said? What What have we done to advance our own understanding of the physical universe? So do what are again are the parallels between, let’s say, the, let’s say perennial philosophy, or Mississippi or we want to call it and, and natural philosophy, that’s what Newton used to call the science. So they’re both philosophy, natural philosophy and perennial philosophy what they are they have in common? Is this understanding deep understanding that the universe is knowable, it can be known. But having said that, because of the complementarities because of recursion, and all this infinite relationships, you can’t possibly know it all through The human mind and the human brain. We only have and I think they bombed actually talk about the implicate order, he had a very nice image for that. You can think of the implicate order order as being more or less. Like this camera here, you know, it’s a gives a three dimensional, you know, appearance. But you see any part of it as a two dimensional or two dimensional cut. Okay. So in order for me, you know, the right now you see me on a flat screen in order to see another aspect for me, I have to do this or I will move around the camera, right? And then you get a different view of me, right? So the implicit order, if you like, because an infinite set of views that eventually manifest as what Bom called the explicate order, and what we see around us is the explicate order and through the explicate order. Now I’m putting this may not have been necessarily exactly the way they’ve been talking about it, but this my understanding of it through the explicate order, we begin to get a sense of the implicit order, but you cannot see cause them to call it the implicit order, just with the XSplit eyes. Okay, or the explicate ears?
Rick Archer: If I understand what you’re saying, though, if you talk to some people who, you know, I let me just use the words easily without having to, you know, pussyfoot around them. But you know, people who are enlightened, let’s say, okay, yeah, then, you know, some people will say, well, actually, when I perceive anything, I’m perceiving the implicit order. In it, I primarily, appreciate or perceive the intelligence that ultimately comprises the world of objects, and only in a sort of a secondary sense, do I see them as objects? In fact, in Sanskrit, there’s a term Glacia video, which means faint remains of ignorance, right? And the understanding is that primarily one is seeing the world as Brahman, you’ve heard that phrase, you know, I am, I am that, that all of this is that. But in a secondary sense, you need to see telephones as telephones and cars as cars, or you couldn’t function in the world. So there has to be at least a sheen of duality and multiplicity on the ocean of unity, in order for life to be lived.
Menas Kafatos: That’s a That’s a beautiful way to do to describe it. I guess. Now, I mean, now the question is always realizing it was not realized. And of course, a game that would tell you or I read that, for someone who is realize they don’t consider anybody else not being realized,
Rick Archer: Right. Because when they look at people, what do they see?
Menas Kafatos: Right? They see if your spirit, they see unity of consciousness, so they say, oh, okay, this particular, this particular beam, or whatever it is called connection or condensed form of consciousness is Rick Archer, or Menas Kafatos. And they think they’re individuals, right. So that is, you know, the great play of universal consciousness, you know, it just creates images of itself, and then forgets that it creates the images and takes the images as the real thing, and I guess maybe, and I said, I’m not going to get into religion. So I won’t get into much of the religion. But some of these big controversy, for example, that had to do at the time of the Orthodox, Greek Arthur’s, you know, in terms of icons, are they, you know, are they? They had a icon iconoclast, you had the icon, friends, and they were on opposite sides of the spectrum. And the iconic class was saying, well, you’re you are have an icon to see the divine That’s absurd. The Divine is beyond the icon. On the other hand, they would say, well, the icon gets you into that feeling. So you communion with with the divine so actually, in modern day interpretation that we’re both right. Many times in human human history and human endeavor, we find out that we’re arguing about things forever had war said, you know, that really just complementary aspects of one or the other.
Rick Archer: Reminds me of Gulliver’s Travels where they had a big fight about the small Enders and the big Enders you know, which and the crack they’re hard boiled egg,
Menas Kafatos: right. Exactly. Yeah. So yeah.
Rick Archer: It’s funny, you know, you just reminded me that today’s the Ides of March, and so it’s,
Menas Kafatos: Oh, that’s right.
Rick Archer: The world is sort of like a play, if you will, and it’s like Julius Caesar. just forgotten that he’s just an actor playing Julius Caesar, he thinks he’s really Julius Caesar, and is going to get stabbed and all that stuff. So we’ve all kind of forgotten our true identity.
Menas Kafatos: So the true identity is hidden. And that’s, again, if you take the little bit mystical approach is hidden from experience through the sensory body. So we identify ourselves with the body. And the ego then becomes encapsulated into the body. And then I say, Well, I mean, that’s godfathers. I’m a physicist, I am, you know, Director of the Center of Excellence, I, my job is at Chapman University. I’m sitting right now in Marina Del Rey, talking to through Skype with my friend Rick Archer. Okay, so yes, that level of reality, all of that is correct. However, that’s not permanent. And when they were there was saying that only Brahman is is real, they meant after all, or other all because this body will fall down one day, it will disappear, it will be decomposed into pretty much molecules, organic at the beginning, and eventually, even the organic molecules will be well, they will be part of the Earth or the ground. And of course, as you know, the ground itself has a lot of organic molecules. So you would go back to the soup that we call the Geosphere, or the Gaia. And so what has been nice is that new situation? Yeah, where did this reside? Okay, when you know, or let’s say, if you don’t want to think about our end, because death is always something we cannot, we don’t want to handle it. Let’s think about our birth. What happened before were born before were conceived? Where were we? So, okay, the reductionist or the physicalist was, there was say, You didn’t exist, you start existing, from the moment that there was the conception, you know, that you were conceived in your mother’s womb. And when you’re gone, you’re gone. That’s the end of it. So that’s one point of view. And that’s bad is, of course, the ego, ego point of view. And it’s actually pretty miserable, if you think about it, because scary, the ego is born, and then he dies. And that’s the end of it. So the ego does want to die. But from the point of view of the self, there is no death. It’s only transformation.
Rick Archer: Yeah, you know, actually, on this show, I don’t spend a whole lot of time trying to kowtow to people who have that perspective, you know, that, that it’s only in the material world. And you know, when you do and you’re dead, you’re dead? I kind of blow right past that, because most of this audience has also blown already blown right past that. Right? Yeah. And but this whole thing, what you’re, what you just said, kind of brings up an interesting point, which is that, you know, you’re talking about, well, when you die, you’re going to decompose, you’re going to go back to organic elements and so on. But it seems to me that if we look at any, if we see anything, as physical, or, you know, either biological or organic, you know, inanimate or anything, we’re actually not looking close enough. Because if you look closer, you get down to a less physical level closer, still a less yes level. And, you know, so human beings are almost just like lenses, which kind of focus us in within a certain strata of perception, which is ultimately not real. Who was it? I have a quote from somebody here. Von Neumann, I think, talking about the collapse of
Menas Kafatos: Of von Neumann.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I can’t find it at the moment. But
Menas Kafatos: yeah, von Neumann advance what we now call the orthodox view of quantum theory, and I believe it’s still the golden what I, I, I talked about in my talks, is that is still the golden standard. Any interpretation of quantum theory has to do at least as well as online, my theory. And as far as I’m concerned, why give up the Von Neumann theory, if ever something that you know, favors something else if something else gotta do at least as well as the one I’m with here.
Rick Archer: Yeah, what he said, quote, I found the wave function collapses and the consciousness of human beings and I don’t know if that’s what I don’t know as well as you do what that actually means.
Menas Kafatos: So yeah, we can say what it means. Yeah. Well, weather really means is that the knowledge or the collapse is in the our knowledge of, or awareness of an external object. Now we know something specific, and that’s the collapse the wave so it’s a little bit and of course, in his case, he said the whole thing is quantum. So from that point of view, You, he went beyond the Copenhagen interpretation. Now we’re getting into specifics because the comic Hungary interpretation had this duality between the micro cause or the quantum world and the micro Coase. And if you have a duality, you always had a prominent How do you bridge the duality how you go from one to the other by name and said No, it’s all it’s all quantum it appears, it appears as classical. Right? Okay. And those people and there are many of them and in many fields, even today email through so many years of quantum theory, they go back over and over again. And of course, the biggest proponent was Einstein himself and say, Well, you know, where is the objective reality and the you know, there has to be an objective reality. As you said, Rick, when you focus in more and more it dissolves and eventually becomes a quantum field and beyond it becomes the superstrings and beyond that, it becomes the quantum foam the the wheeler or if you like, what Wheeler would say, everything dissolves and the phenomenon is not the phenomenon till is the record of the phenomena. So what does it dissolve while it dissolves into quantum foam or plank on blank scale? And was is there beyond something beyond that? Well, of course, there has to be something beyond that, because we still don’t have subjective experience. Right? Everything I said up to this point, I didn’t you know, I didn’t there’s no subjective experience. So, we have to have the qualia, the qualia, our views of reality through the experiential self, okay. And in fact, some of us now Deepak Chopra and myself for example, we say that what is more fundamental than quarks or quanta is qualia they all Q Right. So, we say q q cube, you know, the qualia is the most fundamental aspect of this quanta and, and quarks quarks Of course, being solid matter and quantum being the the the medicine sort of the field or the field aspects
Rick Archer: and just once more defined qualia qualia are
Menas Kafatos: the subjective experiences. So everything that you see here feel qualia, you either have a sensory input, you have a feeling you have a mental construct,
Rick Archer: but then quality, this, all of these are quality, but quality is still wouldn’t be ultimate, because it’s still a observer observe process of observation situation, there’s still that sort of threefold structure there. So if you want to take it even deeper, you get down to pure consciousness itself where that threefold structure hasn’t emerged.
Menas Kafatos: You’re absolutely right. The qualia arise, as soon as you have a separate object. If you and that actually in the east, or in the old schools, they call it the Maya, then of course, there has been a lot of books written about Maya, and why does the Maya and cetera et cetera and of course those sages said, Maya is the most understood power of the Lord, are you trying to understand Maya? Yeah, gotta be sucked in and you’re never going to escape. So, Maya is actually the veiling or the if you like the clock and you put like a something over your head and now or your mask, you put a mask over and now you look you look something somebody else. So, this clock or mask is with the object subject division. In fact, the mathematics I was talking about, if primary by mathematics is talking about is where the you get as close as possible to the object subject division. And that even at the highest levels, the there’s this complementarity, you know, the, the identity begins to have the experience of the that I am that right? What when the statement I haven’t done what does that mean? That of course, is universal consciousness and AI is also universal consciousness, right? So we didn’t say I am that basically, at that level, you say, Oh, well, I am everything. There is no difference between that and me. But there is the beginning, there is just the faint beginning of a division. Okay, has not happened yet. The division becomes absolute and inseparable. And the two sides of the river or if you’d like to, you know, are split, there’s no bridge between them. When you have the object has been separate from the subject, and in fact, von Neumann, same guy said in physics you always have obvious subjects split. And therefore science can only get us up to a certain point.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Sure. I mean, given the tools that physics has at its disposal, that’s right. Right. best you can. Do you ever hear that story about my aware? forget who it was Lord Krishna and Orion, or somebody is with a disciple. And this disciple says, Tell me about my and he says, Okay, fine, but I’m thirsty, which gave me a glass of water first. So he sends him off for some water, and the guy gets to the well, and he sees this real pretty girl there and he falls there any marriage and they have kids, and this that the other thing, and then some big disaster happens, and they’re all about to drown or something. And he says, You remember is the Lord. He says, Help me Help me and boom, the whole thing disappears. And, and he’s standing there with his master again, the master says, well, where’s my water?
Menas Kafatos: Just similar to the Zen, Zen koans. Another, of course story on along those lines is, it isn’t the Bhagavad Gita, where our Jnana asks Krishna, Grace, of course, his chariot here, and says, Can you please show me your cosmic form? And Krishna says, Are you sure you want to see that? It says, Yes, I really want to see your cosmic form, and said, okay, here he goes. So he’s blown back because he says, infinite universe discusses the, his relatives that he’s about ready to kill in the big battle that’s going to take place because his walls disappearing, and fire and drowning, and universities, explosions, and all of that. And of course, birth and death, he says, Everything taking place. And he’s completely overwhelmed. He says, you know, Lord, please take away but the cosmic form, just give me a back, you’re all form. And so of course, Krishna comes back to him, and he’s another human being and his friend. And the moral of the story is, it’s better to just stick with a friend rather than rather than try to get the cosmic question this type of, yeah, vision,
Rick Archer: another moral, the story might be that, you know, whereas you can experience consciousness in its pure form as unbounded, you better not try to incorporate all the myriad details of the universe within the capacity of a human nervous system, because it really wasn’t designed to, to take in that much.
Menas Kafatos: The human I mean, we still don’t know exactly why, why it was designed, but I think you’re probably right, it was designed for us to leave and experience quote, unquote, everyday life. Right. So it’s, it’s actually doing very well with that, thank you. You know, it’s also designed to make us escape from from Hungry tigers, or whatever, we have turned the tables around. And of course, it is known tigers and all the other animals to the point that we’re driving them to extinction. But in any case, you know, it was it was an evolutionary product, you know, the human brain and human awareness. So there is evolution is not that there’s no evolution in everything. It was just created, right? There’s evolution. But the evolution we’re talking about is self directed, if you like, is it’s made. And that’s where quantum theory comes in quantum is part of the whole thing is driven by quantum principles, and allow us probabilistically to get too high to this, if you like, to these peaks where something now is manifest from a huge complex field where the field is mostly empty, and you don’t really have experience of just about anything. So we have to keep it on your mind that actually, our brain and perhaps the neocortex, itself is complimentary. It’s very obvious we have a left brain, right brain that do as you know, the two brains, the way they interact with each other. Sometimes they feel that the other the other one is an enemy says, Where are you, you know, and it’s the same same being, it’s just a different, deeper part of the brain. So complementarity is a building from the get go. And so in, in the way, in my view, rather than trying to understand the universe, at infinitum, because that it will be a Mission Impossible, and rather than trying to understand consciousness, rather than experiencing it, let’s see if they are these universal principles, and they apply at every level. And then through them. Perhaps we have the common ground for understanding brain science as well as quantum physics. It’s very, it’s actually very rational and very pragmatic. I would say.
Rick Archer: There’s a phrase in Sanskrit and the Greek VEDA, is that something that goes ritual Akshay param, Avi Oman, and it goes on. I don’t know the rest of it. But the the essence of it is that, that all the impulses of intelligence which govern the universe are they reside in the transcendent they reside in consciousness. And if you can know consciousness fully, and be that in its fullness, then you sort of gain the benefit of all knowledge, as it were, you know, because you’re kind of residing on that level from which nature itself is governed. Right? And, you know, without having to know all the specific myriad details of physics and chemistry and biology, and which would be humanly impossible, you can, you can kind of live in the goal of all those disciplines and all conceivable disciplines, and derive the benefit that would be had, were you to somehow go through the study of the mall, which again, is impossible.
Menas Kafatos: Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. Yeah.
Rick Archer: There’s a point that I’ve been kind of having the back of my mind for last 15 minutes, I’ve been playing around with all this in order to lead up to it. And it would be this. If everything is ultimately consciousness, if we can agree on that, then then everything is really nothing but consciousness, when we say ultimately, it means that is essentially and ultimately what it is. So what’s what’s actually happening is that when we were perceiving the world, and driving our car, and playing with our dog, and all that stuff, what’s actually happening is that consciousness itself, through a self interacting process, is sort of playing with itself. And it’s appearing to create forms through which it can play within itself. But there’s really nothing that if you analyze it, clearly enough, could be said to be anything other than consciousness.
Menas Kafatos: That’s a, that’s a beautiful way to put it. And they’re all of of the clocking or the Maya, or if you like, the limiting principle is to make it appear as something else. So that take place. So the play conducted, you know, in fact, I mean, we all know that when we go to the movies, right? It’s just a movie, right? When we go to play, and we watch a watch, it’s a Shakespeare play, or an ancient Greek tragedy or whatever. We know, it’s a play. And in fact, escolas you know, actually, in Greece, he gave a definition of you know, of tragedy and comedy. And basically, from what I remember, he was to uplift the, the observer or to uplift the human being who watches the whole thing, because you see these things happening out there, you see it on the stage, right? You see really horrible things happening, like this song killing and the mother, you know, like Oedipus and all of that. And, and the wife killing the husband, and toddler, etc, or Zeus doing this and that all these things happening. And he said, the end of the place, uh huh. Oh, that was a good play. I made let’s go home now. And of course, similar thing together with a common day, we got that with a law firm. So essentially, you’re transcend your own your own existence by seeing the play out there. You know, and that’s why that’s why movies are so popular. That’s why the Hollywood is such a great enterprise, so to speak, right? But don’t forget, and of course, an actor who forgets that he is just an actor, or she’s an actor becomes ridiculous, right? Suppose you suppose Sean Connery was going around. And you know, his he’s a good athlete. He’s played in many different roles. Suppose he went around and consider himself to be double seven, because he was quite famous double seven.
Rick Archer: I heard that the guy who played the original Superman ended up dying but jumping off a building because he thought he could fly. I don’t know if that’s true, but I heard that.
Menas Kafatos: Oh, my God. Poor guy. Well, he found out that of course, that gravity still works. So you know, but okay, I don’t know. We don’t know about the first Superman, but certainly in terms of Sean Connery. And of course, Sean Connery is not doing that. He’s not saying, Oh, I’m W seven. He’s moved on Indiana Jones, all of that in other roles. So we forget that they’re playing a role and identify with their all rather than the play.
Rick Archer: And it would almost seem that if we couldn’t, what I’m not saying that forgetting was necessary. I mean, I want to get into this thing about the Einstein Bohr debate. And you know, whether the universe or the moon is there, if nobody’s perceiving it, and so on. But it seems to me that relates to us in a way. Because, first of all, not only the moon but the sun, or that it took billions of years before. Heavy elements sea were developed to the point where we could have biological systems which could evolve to the point where anybody could even think about this stuff. Right. And yet, the universe actually was developing through all those billions of years without any sentient beings who could perceive it. So it wasn’t Einstein, right. I mean, the moon was there before there. Was anyone but perhaps more loved to be able to see them on the Mars did create the moon that had been developing through, you know, splitting off from the sun or from the earth and becoming, you know, cooler and so on.
Menas Kafatos: Okay, so here’s I’m going to be heretic and I’m going to say that they’re both right. So here’s the big debate between the two. They they were talking past each other. Of course, Einstein is right, yeah, the moon is there, even when nobody is looking at it. Okay, but who is that? Nobody’s looking at it? Are we talking about human observers? Yeah, the moon is there when no human observer is observed? While you say well, what about? Okay, before human observers? What about apes? What about the great apes? What about? Plants? Even before that? Well, the plants certainly know the sun is there because they they move their leaves in a particular way to capture the sun and the maximum solar light? And probably they do something with the moon as well. We’re not sure about that. So yes, I mean, of course, the moon is there, even if human awareness not there. But more was also right. Because you can’t at the end of the day, then this is why I’ve reached the conclusion that you can’t get consciousness out of the whole thing. It’s inherent, it’s always there. You might say, Well, okay, it’s not, it’s not humans, well. But if you go, if it goes all the way to the bottom, and the entire thing is conscious, then the hard problem so called hard problem and disappears, and becomes a trivial problem.
Rick Archer: To explain what the hard problem is for the benefit of listeners who the hard problem
Menas Kafatos: has been posed as a question. How can we explain the qualia? How can we get the experience of red color red? There’s nothing in physics. In fact, Chandogya was very famous to say that there’s nothing in physics or quantum physics that will give you the color red, and Fab you understand it? So you’re experiencing this what are called qualia, right. This is what qualia is. So you can’t get the qualia out of the picture. You can’t get the experience out of the picture. So the question is meaningful, and it’s also meaningless in a bar, we say, the question is meaningless because you’re asking a question within an observational context. And this, of course, why the whaler would say, it’s a context that you’re asking. It’s not that the moon is not there, or nobody’s asking because you are watching the moon. And that’s the context right now we’re talking about it’s not, it’s not something that it’s out there, that you only think about it and you imagine. Yeah, complement complementarity, again, complementarity, paradoxical. It’s both. It is there, and it’s not there. Now, my point of view and I would say one layman’s point of view, Henry staff’s point of view, I think also to a large extent. John Hagelin, I would say, of course, Deepak Chopra. I think you too, are in that camp, and many, many actually, many of us are the Tanzeem Subash, Kok etc. Neil tie ties. Yeah. And Neil ties, ties, okay, then. Yeah. All all of us, then many more. But let’s say one line, let’s just take monuments point of view.
Rick Archer: Thanks for putting me in such August company, by the way. Well,
Menas Kafatos: yeah. Of course of Heisenberg and Heisenberg and sharing the jar and Planck. There is the ghosts right there. Max Planck and Bohr, Niels Bohr and Paul Dirac, and Vulcan poly, all of this. Proponents of quantum theory. Okay. Anyone, Einstein to a large extent, okay. The Einstein was really struggling with either or type of situations, right? All I was saying is that the subject or the observer, and I’m using my own terms is one showing, the judge said that the subjective experience is one, there’s only one subject, there’s not really many main subjects. So if that’s the case, then Einstein’s statement or question is meaningless because everything is conscious. So what do you mean when nobody’s there? You mean, when no consciousness is there? But if we start with the assumption that everything is consciousness, then the hard problem disappears, and Einstein’s question disappears.
Rick Archer: Alright, so whether it’s 10 seconds after the Big Bang, or or 10 billion years after the Big Bang and sentient life has evolved, there’s still Only one observer,
Menas Kafatos: the observer. Yeah. And in fact, when we look at, you know, there’s now the delay chose experiments that are being performed by using a light from distant quasars. The the delayed choice experiment was proposed by John Archibald Wheeler, to show this paradox that the past, the present and future are tied together through the act of observation through the, again, the context of observation. So now, actually, you know, then the last nanosecond, you make a choice here in the laboratory, about the two paths, followed by this and quasar. That gives you either the particle aspect or the wave aspect and you say, Well, how can that be because the light left at this and Quasar 4 billion years ago. And now you do something that gives you one or the other. So it does matter whether it’s a few meters of laboratory or 10 billion light years away. It’s the context, the observation, so the observer, you cannot get the observer out, can not get the observer out.
Rick Archer: And I think the important point to keep coming back to is that not only is there one observer, but that which is observed is essentially identical to the observer itself. You know, the self realizes itself, the self perceives itself, in and it, you know, through the self interacting dynamics, it appears to take on specific precipitated forms, but it’s really only consciousness playing within itself.
Menas Kafatos: It would be like Kevin, and of course, there are plays like that, and they can, they can be very good, but they’re also tough plays, you could be only one actor, and one act, right. And then the, the actor just keeps talking. Of course, there are, as I say, there are plates like that they are difficult, maybe not as exciting, because you don’t have the quality in there. Or it’s a perceived quality or, you know, maybe it’s a quality within the person who’s talking to himself or something. But it’s so much easier if we have the objective reality out there. And that’s why the universe is created to give us this objective, so called objective reality. But it’s just whether you said the two are two poles, or the two aspects of the same thing. And at the end of the day, they’re really nothing more than if you like mirror phantoms or mirror images that consciousness creates on the self or on its self mirror. It’s a saint, it’s a magical mirror. It’s a strange mirror because you cannot see it in a regular mirror you see yourself it’s like the the wheeler eyes in so in the, in the regular mirror, you see yourself in the mirror, and you see all the things inside the Mirror. This mirror we’re talking about is self conscious, that stuff I was it’s IT projects on itself itself. So it’s a strange mirror, magical mirror.
Rick Archer: Yeah, is marshy, Mahesh Yogi spent years giving lectures on this dynamics of how, you know, when conscious when when, when existence becomes conscious than consciousness becomes intelligent and begins to assume the role of creative intelligence, he went into great, great detail about how, you know, the bifurcation or the manifestation takes place from, you know, fundamental unity. Right and, and yet, ultimately, it doesn’t take place, it just appears to be taking place. It’s this sort of, you know, cosmic rigmarole. It was interesting stuff. But basically, when someone would ask him in a simple way, what you know why the universe manifested? He would just say, No, there’s no fun in loneliness. And other times he would say, you know, the, it’s for the sake of the expansion of happiness for the expansion of bliss, expansion of joy,
Menas Kafatos: right? Or I would I would add, or maybe I’ll paraphrase a little bit, its nature is to create infinity universes. Yeah. So and of course, one final way to say it, why not?
Rick Archer: Right? Yeah. Nothing else to do?
Menas Kafatos: Why not today? So yes, there is there is there is creative moments taking place all the time. It’s not just one creation or the beginning by an external God. But the whole thing is conscious. And that’s why they’re called I mean, when I say the conscious universe is self driven, however, you cannot prove it. You cannot prove it from the outside because we are inside, but you can prove it from the inside. You can experience from the inside Yeah, if proof is experienced, you can experience from the inside but you cannot prove it as a separate object. Because again, it will be like the eye trying to see the eye.
Rick Archer: Right, but you know, experiencing it from the inside. I mean, how difficult is it to get the level of technical and intellectual sophistication to be able to operate the Large Hadron Collider and interpret its findings. Now only a handful of people on the Planet have perhaps achieved that level of sophistication. But millions of people practice spiritual techniques practice meditation. And if those techniques systematically lead to the experience of consciousness in its pure form, and the the stable foundation of that the establish the permanent fund establishment of that, then for those people, they have proven it to themselves, they’ve sort of discovered the ground state of existence in a way that’s completely satisfactory, from their perspective at least. Yes. tackle that anybody else thinks it’s like it has its own? You’re, you’re the only one there at your graduation? And, you know, you enjoy the bliss of that of that state?
Menas Kafatos: Well, it’s, but I actually I would go a little bit further, I would say yes, of course, to understand the engineering, amazing engineering has gone into, into the collider. And, you know, and the what really took to basically millions and millions of observations to get a little blip that we call the Higgs boson, right? That’s, of course that you gotta have it is technical training, you got to have a PhD, probably, it’s either it’s either either physics or engineer, or it’s either it’s either however, I claim that the the fundamentals of general relativity fundamentals or quantum theory, if indeed, these are fundamental theories about the universe should be understood by everybody. Not the mathematics, not when you start, not when you started, right? They know, of course, as you know, the Field Equations of Einstein are a bear, you know, even Einstein himself, he hung around and mathematicians, because he could kindly make himself so you know, you guys figure out how to solve these equations or whatever. They’re very nasty. And same thing with quantum theory. Of course, gender digression really only has been solved exactly for for hydrogen and you know, more or less, you know, the molecular hydrogen, I mean, atomic hydrogen. And of course, we know more or less molecular hydrogen how to go. But beyond helium, you are you run against big problems in terms of solving the Schrodinger equation by the shortage equation is correct, right. So, the point is that the this ways of us understanding the universe only get us to a certain level. And there should be foundational principles. That is really the main point I wanted to make here, foundational principles that can be understood, or experienced by everybody. So I tell when I give my my talk about quantum theory, I pretty much talk about the three principles, complementarity, recursion, and sentience. And I say, Okay, let’s see, do they apply to your everyday life? And I give examples. And within 10 minutes, they all say, yeah, actually, they do apply tomorrow, I say, Well, you know, what they apply to the physical world, they apply to the mental world, and they apply to the biological world. So maybe let’s start with those. If you really want to get down to the nitty gritty of quantum field theory, and you want to really tackle that bear that’s close superstrings, good luck to you, right, you know, the brightest minds. Now, mathematical physicists are going into that. And it’s even people like myself, you know, we can really can really tackle that can really handle I mean, I can understand the basics, but the mathematics but to really get down to all this different kinds of mathematics and really, for the, for the super, super strings is you’ll have to have spent many years studying this stuff. So, you know, what we’re trying to do? Are we trying to? That’s why, you know, there is a danger, and I’m not saying the future copra Dean Dean. Do it huge service. But there is a, there is a danger of cheapen both sides. You know, it’s the if you say well, yeah, quantum theory proves Eastern mysticism, or Eastern mysticism really proves quantum theory. No, it doesn’t, neither of them proves the other, you know, they are the powerless, and they are perhaps the powerless, I would say, through these principles, but one cannot be derived from the other. I don’t
Rick Archer: think either of them really needs the other. You know, I mean, you know, the Mystics are happy in their, in their subjective experience, and the physicists are happy in their laboratories with their mathematics and so on. And it’s nice for them to touch base at conferences and so on and compare notes. But they’re each doing their own thing. They’re each in their own Dharma, you know,
Menas Kafatos: well, yeah, but there are so there’s, some of us are trying to bridge the two and say, you know, and how do you bridge the two while they have the dialogue? Yeah, yeah, the dollar with no expectations, so to speak. Now the Daleks. Okay. We’re going to have $1 You know, let’s see. Oh, I see. Oh, is that what you’re saying? Hmm. Actually, what we have that you know, we actually have the principal as well. So you can have a dialogue. But you know, it’s not. It’s not a dialogue that you expect from the beginning to prove one. That is correct. And the other is not correct or do prove the ones derived from the other. That’s not a dialogue. It’s something it’s like an absolute statement.
Rick Archer: So you’re saying that, you know, that the layman such as myself without an understanding of the mathematics can intuit from his own experience if it if it’s pointed out clearly, some of these principles that quantum physicists deal with such as complementarity, recursion and sentience, right, let’s let’s pick off a list. You got those three, we have quantum entanglement, we have
Menas Kafatos: Quantum Entanglement’s part of complementarity.
Rick Archer: And then we have indeterminacy, we have nonlocality. So let’s go through some of these terms, and talk about what they mean, and how they can be sort of intuited at least in an everyday experience, or at least in deep spiritual experience. So
Menas Kafatos: you you asked actually a very good question. And you brought in some other principles, and the question that some of us are tackling or playing with is, which ones are more fundamental. And of course, you can replace the three principles I mentioned with something else, but we find that these three principles
Rick Archer: subsume the others
Menas Kafatos: subsume a large set of the others. Maybe not everything so we it’s a continuous search, including nonlocality. One of these Yeah. nonlocality, of course, it’s the wave particle duality sort of complementarity because nonlocality, nonlocality comes because of the wave aspects. So let’s pick
Rick Archer: apart complementarity. First
Menas Kafatos: complementarity is mores a state that and he actually picked that one, even though they knew about nonlocality. So, if you must have heard the right French, so we’re just following his steps, he bakes complementarity as the fundamental way that we interact with nature, he said, Okay. So, you know, the Heisenberg picture and the Trinity picture or complement or pictures, mathematical pictures of the quantum the wave and the wave and the particle are complementary aspects, the energy and the time are complementary aspects, you know, and in fact, you ultimately tie the quantum quality quantities, you tie them to the uncertainty principle because, in fact, they are what are called non commuting variables. And I don’t need to go into the details there, but basically, you know, you they’re both there, but they’re not there at the same time. So, that gives you rise to the uncertainty. So, the uncertainty
Rick Archer: Okay, now, hang on, we might be losing people here. So, losing me a little bit. So Okay. In a nutshell, what is complementarity in a nutshell,
Menas Kafatos: complementarity is the principle that the operative I just paraphrase are the opposites on an absolute, but they are in a particular context in the context of which you are studying. So they are complementarity is the way we interact with nature. And it is the complementarity is a good way to account for the wave particle duality, and the measurement measurement theory in quantum theory, which of course, the fundamental aspects of quantum theory.
Rick Archer: Would it also relate to something you said in your book, you quoted Heraclitus as saying that the tension between opposites keeps the whole from passing away? Exactly. Okay. Right. Yeah. In fact, I’ve been told by some spiritual teachers that the the whole mythology of gods and demons battling each other all the time is a sort of a, you know, a symbolic representation of the kind of opposition of forces that has to sort of be structured into relative creation in order for it not to just fold back on itself and to the unmanifest. And this
Menas Kafatos: right, right. So that’s, that’s the Yin Yang, from the east. And of course, Niels Bohr, actually, his coat of arms, basically had the ying yang symbol as because he felt that complementarity was fundamental.
Rick Archer: So you said that nonlocality is part of complementarity, because of the way by split because of the wave aspect and, and nonlocality is, I understand that you can have a particle here, and then on the other side of the universe, the other side of the galaxy, you can have a kind of a complementary or connected particle. And if, if one turns up the other turns down instantaneously with, you know, in complete violation of the speed of light and any kind of relative influences that could connect the two of them.
Menas Kafatos: Right? So in complete violation of the speed of light in space time, so maybe this conductivity is outside of spacetime,
Rick Archer: and it’s pretty well established that this is the case, right? And then it works this way. It’s
Menas Kafatos: pretty much establish, you know, the aspect experiments that were carried out in France were repeated were repeated later on by the team of in in Geneva and and now we even have these delayed choice experiment which actually sorry proves so says that, in fact, even in time you have entanglement.
Rick Archer: Okay, so Oh, so that’s what entanglement is this this thing we just described the two parts. Okay. For some reason Rachel wants to make that the theme of the next science and non duality conference, how much we can all talk about entanglement for a weekend? But um,
Menas Kafatos: well, thank you. I mean, of course, also implies law implies you know, if you’d come from that point of view, Mother, Mother Child entanglement, but in physics, it’s very, very specific. Yeah, yeah.
Rick Archer: And so our physicists tearing their hair out if they have any about why that how this could possibly work? Or has it? Or have they, some of them just ignored it? Or what what resolution have they come to to understand how to things you know, infants are vastly distant from one another could communicate instantaneously.
Menas Kafatos: A number of quantum physicists will like this by NASA and Zurich. And so they’re etc. Henry stab each other would say yeah, of course Elementary, my dear Watson, of course, just the way it is, it’s Quantum. The real is and of course, among them, Einstein was the most famous one. They said, well, we don’t have the complete picture here. The so called EPR experiment, something is missing here, excuse me, the quantum physicists who work with this and in fact, you know, Bell himself when he wrote the bell, the bell Bell’s theorem, the bell inequalities basically, he was trying to show that quantum theory is not right. And the EPR experiments as performed by aspect and guessing GIS i n, Nicholas Gessen in Geneva will show that in fact, there there is violations of the principle of locality, the idea we get in a classical in the local classical universe. And therefore, the universe is definitely non classical, non non local, the way quantum theory says is no local. So, that’s that’s one school, of course, there are these specialties, then there are specialists there are those who have not given up on the hidden so called hidden variables. And, and one of them was in fact, they bomb who was a protege of Albert Einstein, and they bomb came up with this beautiful, hidden variables. But again, these experiments show that hidden variables don’t work. So then people are saying, well, maybe we have, you know, we don’t have the complete picture because there’s always noise in the results. And therefore it could be you know, that we don’t really see nonlocal and in fact, you don’t really see nonlocality. you infer nonlocality. You conclude there is nonlocality. But you cannot see directly? And
Rick Archer: so presuming it works that way, then yeah.
Menas Kafatos: Right. So and so that’s another school of thought, I don’t think that’s going to go very far is over and over again, all the efforts that have done have not borne out and have been borne out in the laboratory. And then there is a vast pool of people that are just agnostic, they they don’t know what, what it is. They don’t but actually, I would say that as we said in our book, the non law called universe that this nonlocality it’s perhaps one of the biggest if you like findings of modern science,
Rick Archer: yeah. Perhaps you and I would understand this in terms of the sort of the infinitely correlated nature of creation on on page 179 of the book, you just referred to, you said each individual particle of the system in a certain sense, at any one time exists simultaneously in every part of space occupied by the system, right? And the system is the entire cosmos. Right? So it’s like, this is a recursion now. Yes. Okay, great. We’re getting into recursion. So, recursion then means that each particle in some sense, on some deep level is infinitely correlated with each other particle in the units
Menas Kafatos: in each particle. It contains the hall, the hall contains all the particles. And as you will see, very quickly, the three principles are intimately tied together, there’s not two three separate principles. Does the word graphic come in here? Exactly. It’s they’re all holographically complemented each other, you know, complementarity, recursion and, and creative interactivity or sentience, they’re all part of each other, you can’t have one without the other. It’s sort of like the Trinity. And you, you get ontology even though the three, the three aspects, you cannot or Brahma Vishnu, you know, regarding Shiva, you go to the east, you cannot separate the three, they’re always there.
Rick Archer: The way I want to understand it is that if each particle in the way each particle would can contain the whole is that each particle is ultimately consciousness, and how, you know, you can’t have like, a gallon of consciousness versus a swimming pool of consciousness versus an ocean of consciousness, consciousness. Weather is just beyond any kind of spatial or volumetric considerations. It’s infinite in its nature. And so any point which is ultimately seemed to be consciousness, would naturally contain the whole because Consciousness contains the whole,
Menas Kafatos: right. So this is exactly what what Shraddha just said, he said, You cannot divide consciousness, you cannot, you know, there’s only singular, the sign of secret, I think, I think we’re all saying the same thing. And then, because of this holographic holographic overlay, or if you’d like scaling variance, what you see here, Hamas every word, therefore, what you see here in a particle contains the hall, and the hall contains the particles. So that’s the second principle. But the second principle is really part of the first principle, the first first period principles really part of the second principle, they are all really inter connected, there are three of them. And if
Rick Archer: you like malaria, and curly, yeah,
Menas Kafatos: something like that. It’s you can get them right now. Or if you’d like them, if you’d like the quarks, right? You can, you can split your date, you can split them, you know, the point that yeah, the strong forces very strong, because you cannot split the party apart.
Rick Archer: So have we done justice to ensure that we could spend the whole time talking about recursion, but what more should we say that’s really essential to know about recursion?
Menas Kafatos: Well, actually, you may say, Well, what is in quantum theory, that gives you recursion, and I would say the pile exclusion principle is is recursion right there, which is, the ball exclusion principle tells you that you can only put a certain number of electrons, let’s say, a certain number of, of quanta of certain kind, like electrons, not photons, because you can put an infinite number of photons together, but not electrons, you can put on a maximum number together in a particular state. And it is because of the pile exclusion principle that you have chemical bonds, that you have atoms that you have molecules that you’d have. If you didn’t have the politics agreed, in principle, you could have basically, there would be no atoms, there will be no molecules, there would be just the ground state. And then you will not have structure. So whenever people say, Oh, we don’t really see quantum effects in everyday life. And I always say, Absolutely not. I just see them. Well, you’re on ice all the time. Your eyes see quantum effects all the time. If you mean, when I say non trivial quantum effects, like nonlocality, entanglement, yes, those are not easy to see, quote, unquote. But whenever I see a plant out there, you know, from my window, I see a tree. It’s because of the proximity principle that it has the structure that it has. It’s as simple as
Rick Archer: that. So the Pauli exclusion principle gives sort of discreteness and structure to things it gives us everything from just being an amorphous soup,
Menas Kafatos: it gives exactly it prevents as to exactly the set from everything just becoming an amorphous soup of like a cloud, a cloud. If the universe is like a cloud, or huge plasma, with no structure, that’s not our universe. You know, of course, there’s a lot of plasma in our universe, you know, a lot of clouds of hydrogen, etc, etc. And it tends to aggregate into a dense aggregate and tends to form structures and eventually planets and eventually human beings and eventually plants. And the plants exists or the human beings exist because of this. So called covalent bonds. We have, you know, four carbon you have four equally spaced bonds, which allow carbon to become very stable. It’s a very stable glue that you can glue together large numbers of atoms to form molecules.
Rick Archer: So could the Pauli exclusion principle be credited with having kickstarted the universe itself for you? You know, having diversity sprang from uniformity or not so much maybe it emerged later,
Menas Kafatos: emerge later. Of course, it’s always there. I mean, you went, when the universe was just one of them, or you know, law matters, or original or one item, there was no structure in terms of particles. And this is, of course, it’s super, super string, then what you what your head was basically, a recursion, or if you like, the same, then the hall and the pods, were wondering, the same thing. You know, they just want a huge soup. As the universe cooled down, call them call it and it became cooler in terms of the temperature, then you started having conversations or symmetry breakings. Okay. See whether your break is that took away the symmetries from the primordial soup and now allow structures to start being built. And of course, when he was cooling off, then you got atoms and molecules. But it’s but it’s inherent it is it is part of the halting the pile exclusion principle. Or, if you like, a more general term is the quantum statistics. Because you can have the the you can have photons, which don’t obey the exclusion principle, and you can pack them, as many of them together as Yuan. So that’s another kind of structure that actually liquid helium, liquid helium is that way. It shows those kinds of called balsams. Those those bodies are called balsams.
Rick Archer: So the relevance of this to the whole spiritual angle, could it be that, you know, the principles we’re talking about here, are responsible for the emergence of structure and specification and complexity and, you know, without which, we wouldn’t have these marvelous perceiving apparatus to you know, with which to talk about this and perceive the universe and all, there needed to be a sort of a individuation in order for universality to become a living reality, and not just sort of a an unmanifest reality in itself in and of itself without anyone living it or experiencing it?
Menas Kafatos: Right? I guess that’s what’s going on. By that we don’t have an explanation of why. Just Well, we
Rick Archer: can poke around with some explanations. In fact, that’s kind of the next area I’d like to get into. But I think maybe your your point on sentience would be a segue to that. So tell us about sentience.
Menas Kafatos: Well, sentience? How do you prove that something is conscious? Well, it’s impossible, right? I can’t really prove that you’re conscious. But it’s highly likely that you’re not conscious, and I am conscious and aware, interacting, okay, highly unlikely. So it’s all by reasonableness. And I would say the universe at the end of the day, and maybe that’s where it all comes razor comes in the at the end of the day, the universe can be understood and it’s a reasonable universe is not that crazy universe, it’s not a universe where you know, nothing makes sense, etc, etc. That may be the odd the universe like that, but not our universe. So, say sentience allows for even molecules that say, to come together and formed DNA for the let’s say, the four bases to come together formed DNA and then have strands of DNA strands of DNA and that you have the genetic code in there and the you know, together in the mitochondria together in the cells, etc, etc. All of that is sentience, the molecules sensors, the environment and creates more elaborate structures, okay. You say well, can they just be nonlinear dynamic dynamical system? Its dynamical system is exhibit exactly that, but we are adding the element of some sort of primitive awareness. Okay. An atom is aware of its environment, even even electron is aware that there’s a proton around, otherwise they will not they will not come together. So is an atom conscious? Well, it is sentient in that sense, but it’s not humanly aware, like we are.
Rick Archer: No and probably skeptics with I don’t know what skeptics would say. But they would probably say something. Well, it has nothing to do with consciousness. It just has to do with forces of attraction, electromagnetism and so on that cause this stuff to work the way it does, but you shouldn’t bring any kind of intelligence or consciousness into the equation. I’m not
Menas Kafatos: bringing intelligence. And but then, we’re going back to the question of what And I guess that’s the fundamental question for one Neumann where the what is the divide? What is the cut between conscious and unconscious? Well, where is the divide between life and non life? Because they, in fact, we know that what we used to think of, you know, characteristic of life, you can have those in very, very primitive forms that don’t really seem to be living, right, in the sense of even cells. So, I would say that today, we know way more than we used to, and I cannot prove it, none of the specimens can be proven, by the way. They’re not they’re not principles to be proven their axiomatic starting points. Okay,
Rick Archer: they can’t be proven by scientific method as it’s ordinarily applied. But I still think that all this stuff can be explored. It can be explored in a mystical sense, you know, three convex, right, yeah. And thereby can be proven to anyone who does sufficiently deep exploration to their satisfaction, you know, when I would like somebody, but how could they convince somebody else? You know, if I’m experiencing the world in terms of myself, how can I can say that to somebody, but they’re gonna say, Yeah, sure, you that you’re gonna have to say to that person, well, you got to do the same experiment. I did meditate for 20 years or something, and then you’ll have you’ll you’ll agree with me?
Menas Kafatos: Well, and of course, as you know, the different kinds of meditations and different kinds of experiences standardized, it’s not just under eyes, but there are some general principles apply there as well, I would say that, rather than trying to, you know, said they cannot be proven, because they’re like the axioms of mathematics. They you take them as the beginning. And then, but you don’t stop there. You come back as look at the loop and say, do these things really actually make sense? Oh, yeah, actually, they do, because they seem to apply everywhere. Hmm. So maybe my original hunch is not just a meaningless statement? Well, you know, everything is everything is connected or something, you know, something like that. But it’s actually can give you some insights, for example, have used it was Neil Tice, to talk about biological structures, the complementarity. And Niels Bohr himself talked about that. And so he he took it beyond beyond quantum the quantum realm. You cannot prove them. And if you make them too simple, then people say, Well, really, what you’re not saying the obvious, but all three of them, take it together, I think they give us deep insights. I would say that in today’s world, and this is now I may jump up on a soapbox in today’s world, which is ruled by duality, and by us versus them, we are right or wrong, which is getting us pretty darn close to self extinction. Pretty close. Maybe we need to look at a different paradigm philosophical paradigm and say, you know, maybe we aren’t one. You know, maybe in fact, it is. This complimentary is are not complimentary truths are not opposite, and denying each other, but they reinforce each other. If you like there is a unity in diversity, and diversity in unity. And right now, we are just focusing on the diversity, per se. Yeah, I’m different from you. If you’re saying that, I must say something the opposite, because you’re different from me.
Rick Archer: Yeah, so diversity needs an infusion of unity on all levels. And if that infusion were sufficient, then I imagine there’s so many different conflicts and squabbles that could be harmoniously resolved just by sort of seeing things in a bigger from a bigger context.
Menas Kafatos: See, see the bigger picture. So for example, they in fact, those, for example, this three principal, you know, the second principle says, everything everywhere, as here as above, so what you experience or maybe I’m experienced, or what would you feel? Maybe I feel, okay, so that actually opens up the whole issue of love, you know, or compassion? Because if indeed it is, everything is reflected in everyone else. Well, you know, I don’t want to do something harm to you, because by doing that, I’m really harming myself. Okay. And then, of course, the third principle is that after all, you know, structures and St. sentience allows for complicated structures to arise and evolution to take place.
Rick Archer: Now, you said earlier that you didn’t really use the word God too much because it’s so easily misunderstood and you just miscommunicate if you use it too much, but I’ll tell you, I mean, when I hear explanations of it, Intelligent Design. For instance, here, here’s a definition of it from dictionary, the theory that life for the universe cannot have arisen by chance, and was designed or created by some intelligent entity. Now the word entity to me is too localized it isolated. But if we take, if we broaden it out to use the word sort of, to think of intelligence as being like the ocean of existence, and it has an inherently intelligent intelligence in its nature, then it to me, it helps to put a lot of the pieces of the puzzle together. I mean, when you look at anything, you know, the way a heart beats, or the way a cell functions, or, you know, anything, there’s, there’s so much I can’t help but keep using the word so much intelligence inherent in it. biocentrism, for instance, this guy, Robert Lanza, talks about 200 different variables that had they been even slightly different life as we know it, or even the universe itself could not have arisen. So does that sound to you, like, kind of billiard balls running into each other? Or? Or is there some sort of intelligence that permeates and pervades this whole thing that and thereby orchestrates it in ways that are that boggle the mind?
Menas Kafatos: It’s not an entity that’s
Rick Archer: Well entity is localized.
Menas Kafatos: Exactly.
Rick Archer: Big guy in the cloud with a beard.
Menas Kafatos: Exactly.
Rick Archer: I’m not saying that.
Menas Kafatos: Right. I know you’re not you’re not but I think a lot of, and again, I’m not saying that. And you’re not saying that. So maybe what they’re saying let them say it the way they want to. Yeah, but the intelligent design people, maybe they have an agenda, maybe there’s an agenda there, you know, the Bible in the schools or whatever, or whatever, you know, and yes, of course, there is an intelligent intelligence, Universal Intelligence, but it’s self driven and the entire universe, it’s, it’s the conscious universe is not, oh, there’s God. And there’s a universe. Right? Okay.
Rick Archer: So one big wholeness. It’s all one big hall, and of course, God from it. Exactly where to find God.
Menas Kafatos: Exactly. So, I generally, again, I don’t want to get into these arguments, because then there are other people that are much better, of course, and I am in terms of theology, and, and they should carry out those arguments about the realm. I’m perfectly happy to talk about consciousness. And they’re all the perilous if you like, and see where that takes us.
Rick Archer: Well, presented as an argument, and imagine if we had, you know, some intelligent design people here, it might turn into one. But, you know, I’m presenting it in terms of our understanding of you, as a physicist, and me as a layman, who, you know, has had, you and we both have had spiritual practice for for many years, and trying to understand this stuff in a way that makes it a little bit more sumptuous than to then to just use sort of more of the more dry kinds of sort of terminology. I mean, as you know, you know, religious, rather, enlightened people very become very devotional, generally, Ramana, Maharshi, and Shankara. And many others, they’re not content with just kind of a heartless cognition of reality, their hearts begin to blossom, and they begin to, you know, sing hymns to God or to Arunachala, or whatever. Because, and they speak of the sort of the sort of the marvel of, of the Creator, who seems to be running this show. So I kind of think that that’s where spirituality is going and has already gone for many people. And it would be nice for physics to be able to walk hand in hand with it as it goes there.
Menas Kafatos: That would be that would be marvelous. Yes. And, again, it’s a different kind of, it’s a different kind of walled view, so to speak. But that to claim that, all you need to do is flip a coin, and number of times where n goes to infinity, and Aha, you get Hamlet or you get the nine symphony. And it’s all nothing more than random processes that somehow combine to form it’s, it’s just not enough. Not enough seconds in the in the universe. To do that. I mean, the universe, you need to have a universe much older than the observable universe we live in. If you wanted to have everything happen by flips of coins, 5050 chance,
Rick Archer: and even if it had somehow gone that way, and brought us to where we are now, wouldn’t it all start to fall apart immediately, I mean, the second law of thermodynamics we’d write we’d be dust in no time. So there’s obviously something which counteracts entropy and keeps breathing life, right orderliness into create shouldn’t
Menas Kafatos: write Of course, as you know, for a living organism, we go against entropy, we have a so called negative entropy nega, then again and again entropy or negative entropy, because we use the environment to survive, you know, of course, the universities and the environment is, is running downhill. But life goes uphill it goes against the downhill aspect. And so, yeah, okay. It’s all random. And it’s all if you also from point of view of metaphysics or like a philosophical, ontological view of reality of oneself, if you take that seriously, then there’s no purpose in life. There is no ethics, there is no ethos, there’s no, you know, it’s all just a bunch of random things. And of course, some faces out there will remain nameless, say exactly that. They say, yeah, it’s all meaningless. And, wow, okay. So what do you tell a kid that is disturbed? And maybe it’s contemplating suicide? Because it’s, it says no, meaning in his or her life? You have to come out and say, well, actually, there is meaning and don’t take your life. Otherwise, why not take our lives? You know, I mean, you know, why not? What the heck, well, it’s all random. Anyway, it’s all happened by accident. And, of course, as you know, it is multiple multiverse idea that somehow we just happen to live in the right universe. And there tend to be 500 universes out there that are not the right universe for us,
Rick Archer: seems very improbable to me. I mean, we even see in this universe, that life exists in the most inhospitable places, you know, the bottom of the ocean, the ice in Antarctica, it’s like, their life just. And if we, you know, if we think of what we’ve been defining as life in a deeper sense, intelligence consciousness, then it exists in outer space, it exists in the heart of the sun. I mean, everything is, well here’s, here’s a quote from your book. Thalys of millet dose, right? There’s a pervasive unifying substance out of which everything emerges and into which everything returns, right, the world is full of gods and the unifying substances charged with spiritual presence, right? I don’t even have a problem with the world is full of gods, I just see that as organizing principles, organize principles and impulses of intelligence, which actually are sentient to use your sentience term, which are as conscious as you and I are, which have a role or function, perhaps unseen to us, but which are every bit as real as as rabbits and kangaroos.
Menas Kafatos: And ancient Greek mythology or the Hindu mythology, they, the gods were as real as you and me just said, Yeah. And now, are they real? Are they not real? Well, again, it’s a context. What do you mean by that? Are they real, they were definitely real in the stories and in the sacrifices perform, and perhaps even, I don’t know, Gavin’s getting some, if you pray enough to them, something may happen, that will not happen. Otherwise, you know, we don’t really know the full picture here.
Rick Archer: But I’m going to interview a guy next week, who claims to perceive them all the time. Okay. Here’s another quote from your book, that relates to this parts constitute a genuine hole when the universal principle of order is inside the parts and thereby adjust each to all so that they interlock and become mutually complementary. So that again, to me is a fancy way of saying, I’m the present intelligence, there’s, there’s a sort of order inherent in everything, not not God, the cloud of the beards, but, you know, just permeating every iota of existence. That is, you could say orchestrating it, but orchestrating it makes it sound like it’s separate, you know, like, the conductor is separate from the orchestra. Really, it’s within it, it’s what we were saying earlier, consciousness functioning or playing within itself.
Menas Kafatos: Yeah, it’s, it’s the old model, which back then, which of course, there’s a clockwork universe, that if you see a clock, then there must be somebody who made the clock. But the universe is not a clock. And, and so the analogy breaks down very quickly. And so the entity as as, as they call it, is not an external entity. The whole thing is the entity an inside job. It’s it’s self driven, quantum mechanically self driven, otherwise, the probabilities would not would never take place.
Rick Archer: I interviewed John Hagel and a couple of months ago, and he said something that I’ve been thinking about ever since maybe you can shed a little light on it, and then we’ll wrap up in a few minutes but we’re talking about relativistic time dilation and how you as you approach the speed of light time seems to slow down and, and and, of course He said or do correct me if I’m not doing justice to that. But he said that from the photons perspective, if you’re writing on the photon, so to speak, if you’re if you’re going at the speed of light space collapses, so that let’s say you’re the photons from the Andromeda Galaxy, which, to us is stationary observers looked like they’ve taken 200 million years to get here, from their perspective, as it were, to have arrived instantaneously,
Menas Kafatos: 2 million, 2 million years. 2 million.
Rick Archer: Yeah. But you know, whatever. So what do you say to that?
Menas Kafatos: Because, right, yeah, basically, space collapses. And there’s only now for 14, there’s so many, there’s no time passage.
Rick Archer: So who’s to say that our perspective is any more valid than than the perspective of photons perspective,
Menas Kafatos: it’s not, it’s just again, the context the point of view of the 14th. Of course, we are not thought on this we have photons in our bodies, but we have physical you know, we have quarks, we have you know, other other particles that are make make up our bodies making molecules. So we have a finite mass 14 00 Mass from the point of view of zero mass. Basically, you can have energy, photons have energy. But the time that it takes to go from one space, point to another space, or I should say a space time point, another space time point, is of zero length, in this circle, geodesic way of looking at things, and therefore, you’re everywhere. It takes you no time to go from here to Andromeda. And, in fact, it fortunately, like is eternal. But of course, once it gets absorbed, it’s not eternal anymore, because it’s something else that happened, right? But through through space, if a photon from the sun once he leaves the sun and travels to the end of the universe, it travels in no time. Even though for us, it may take 2 billion years or 10 billion years to get there.
Rick Archer: Yeah, which seems to me to speak to the kind of elastic nature of perspective, it’s all about perspective. And that, you know, we again, like filters, which sort of structure kind of a spacetime, solidity or, or, you know, what’s the word sort of a kind of a lethargy, not lethargy, I don’t know the word I’m looking for. But we’ve kind of we’ve we’ve structured, we’ve created a structure through our mechanism of our physiologies of our consciousness, which is we take as being so real, and we take for granted to such a great extent, but which is really not what’s going on, you know, at all, I mean, if we, if we just think of it as from the perspective of the photon, it’s a completely different universe. And every much is real from that perspective, as are apps. Absolutely. Yeah.
Menas Kafatos: Absolutely. And if you think of him point of view of neutrino and we’ll leave aside the question whether neutrinos from zero mass or find a mass materials are not like photons, okay, they are fermions. They’re not so. But neutrinos mediate the weak force, okay? They’re part of the weak force, not they don’t meet the weak force, but they are part of the weak force. And so even Adreno has zero mass. It will travel like a photon from here to there in no time. However, because of its spin properties, it will interact with matter in a different way than than fathers do. So the perspective we’re going through now is different than the perspective of Fordham.
Rick Archer: Interesting, and there are so many perspectives.
Menas Kafatos: There’s so many perspectives.
Rick Archer: Infinite blind men feeling a very big elephant.
Menas Kafatos: Well, the thing about this elephant is it’s infinitely infinite. Even an elephant and infinite complexity, the elephant in fact, it does not looking like an animal at all. It’s all elephant, elephants and all alliances and everything else put together.
Rick Archer: Okay, here’s the final thing. And you might even want to say I don’t want to talk about this. We’ll do it another time. But some guys send in a question. And he said addition knowing how they think quantum physics could shed light on phenomena such as subtle bodies, meaning perhaps angels, ghosts, you know, subtle beings, which perhaps relates to hidden sector matter, distant healing, precognition, remote viewing telepathy, it’s really fascinating that in some cases, complete recovery from severe injuries and diseases take place very rapidly. And Anita Moorjani and some of your other guests are excellent examples of such radical healing which the mainstream bio mechanical model of medicine cannot count for that’s just really an elaboration on his point about healing. But there’s only sort of far out stuff that seems to happen at a distance or, you know, without pre cognition, it’s not bound by time, or by space, you know, so how, how would you as a physicist relate to all that?
Menas Kafatos: Well, I, if they are really this phenomena are real. And of course, what I would, I would advise, or what I would propose is that more research is needed. I mean, it’s not the cop out, but it is, you know, we need more research, we need to be asking the right questions, you know, if we honestly, just the wrong questions, you’re gonna get the wrong answers. So we need to be asking the right questions. But within the quantum view of reality, such things may not be that peculiar. You have nonlocality, you have entanglement, okay. If you start thinking in those terms, then maybe these things will make some sense. However, they had to be demonstrated. And as you know, that difficult to demonstrate because of statistics. So there is a statistical problem that enters the picture. And most of the arms that go back and forth, it has to do with statistics. And whether you believe the statistics are the dominant statistic. So for now, I think that that discussion at will that’s like a whole nother discussion. It’s a whole other discussion, but I would say within the context of the knowledge ecology, and it’s a recursion and entanglement and complementarity. You’re taking them all together, well, maybe there’s something to them. But then we had to talk about specific things happen in space time, and specific measurements that are muted, made. And that is an entirely different story.
Rick Archer: In the beginning of the interview, you mentioned an interest in climate change. And you’re addressing that and sent through some of your work. And in your book, you actually managed to tie nonlocality to climate change to a certain extent you were in conclusion of this interview? Do you want to say a few words about that? And, you know, how you feel?
Menas Kafatos: Yeah, so let me let me just finish the previous thought, yeah, this article called SCI phenomena, you know, I think they ought to be opened up, and to scientific scrutiny, and to scientific research. And in fact, there’s a lot of as you know, a lot of the writing, for example, in there about, bam, and etc, they have really follow as far as I can tell, to impeccable scientific criteria to carry out these experiments. So it’s time I think, for this phenomena to really be admitted as not necessarily true or not true, you know, but admitted within the context of scientific methodology and not be excluded. Because then if you exclude something like that, you are practicing documentaries.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And the reason it gets excluded is it doesn’t fit the paradigm of those who don’t want to sort of accept that there may be more to the universe than the gross material nature of it. And science, quantum physics, as you know, at least a century ago, proven them wrong anyway.
Menas Kafatos: Right. And if it were just one with with established points of view, there will be no quantum revolution, there will be no, no to relativity. And there will be an electromagnetic theory, but doesn’t matter, you know, all these things came up because some physicists or some breakfast started question to say, well, maybe this we don’t have the full picture now. It’s not necessarily perhaps the same thing identical, the same it with the same research, but I would say, hey, you know, okay, establish the criteria, and don’t always denied the research to be done, you know, because it’s far out.
Rick Archer: It’s not scientific to do that, right? To deny it. Right. Okay. And so once a word or two about climate change,
Menas Kafatos: well, climate change in a way, it’s actually similar, you have a complementary, right. And this is something that the two sides again, are arguing with each other, they are shouting at each other, more or less like the aggression is and the evolutionary evolution is, you know, their shadow on each other, and maybe they ought to take a look at each other’s point of view. So indeed, there is a climate change. And indeed, something’s going on. There’s no doubt about it. The polar ice is melting, okay. I mean, sorry, but our satellites show that now, whether it is you know, just all of it global warming and how much of it is due to greenhouse gas you know, burning fossil fuels, etc, etc. Perhaps can be debated. In my mind, I would say the vast majority of scientists we believe that it is real and it is human. Human fingers are. Present.
Rick Archer: 97% of climatologist believe that there was some story that came out the other day that only 50 something percent of meteorologists believe that but meteorologists are your TV weatherman. They’re not climatologist 97% of climatologist believe that global warming is real and manmade.
Menas Kafatos: So 97, or 95% believe that it is real, of course, the atmospheric scientists or the meteorologists, they’re looking at it from a different perspective. I think the arguments that go back and forth has to do with what if scenarios, what if we stop burning fossil fuels, and they economic factors enter the picture, okay. Now, I’m not saying that scientists do not address these issues, in fact, they are part of this new interdisciplinary field of science. I mean, that’s what it really means. Or maybe some people call it transdisciplinary. You even go beyond science, you have to bring economics, Energy policy, et cetera, et cetera, international policy, all of these things have to be brought together. I think the problem is just not a simple solution. We actually are doing some of that research here at Chapman University. And we’re asking a much more limited set of questions like, what are the possible effects of climate change, future climate change on agriculture in the southwest, United States, very specific, okay. And that if you wrap your heads around it, that way, you can maybe make some progress. But I would say that, to deny, to deny global warming, and not doing anything about it is getting us closer and closer to the precipice. And we have to when I, when I talk about this in my class, I say, well, it is somebody told you that you’re not you have a risk, perhaps of heart attack, because you know, some markers or some things in your family history. And you say, Well, Dr. yogena, you have not proven that I’m gonna have heart attack. And of course, at the top there cannot prove that you’re gonna have a heart attack. But would you go around foolishly doing the same things that you were doing before, if you knew that, while there is a limit of high probability, in my case, I probably there will be heart attack, okay. There may be I should exercise, maybe I should not be at this manufacturer, you know, pointing saturated fats and all of that. Or I should really not eat so much fried foods, or maybe cut down on the consumption of meat or whatever, whatever your favorite,
Rick Archer: if there’s a chance that it’s true, you know, if it’s a chance, the implications of it panning out are so catastrophic. Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, it’s like, a universal, yeah, that’s universal. And, you know, some people point out, doesn’t really matter if it’s true or not, of course, it matters. But the argument doesn’t have to be resolved, because the solutions to it are so economically exciting and technologically exciting, and would produce such a better world for us anyway, that we ought to make a moonshot effort to implement them. And yeah, absolutely do all we can to, you know, get renewable technologies to the forefront.
Menas Kafatos: Right. So here’s, I just read that. Yesterday, here’s, again, a situation where us versus them, rather us together. So the us versus them is the US and China and I’m not going to take either points of view here, you know, but they they are producing 50% of the of the, all the pollution, they put the carbon dioxide, you know, that is released by burning fossil fuels and burning 35% 25% more on us, actually, China has just surpassed the US. Okay. So, even though the two main culprits, they violent disagree with each other about what to do about it. Okay, come on, guys. And now, they actually in terms of the UN framework, right? They are saying no, we, the UN Framework says something completely different. The Chinese will say, well, it doesn’t put the blame or the onus on on the developing nations, but it puts it on the developed nations or the industrial nations. And the US rightly says, Well, you know, but this is not a static situation, things have really changed. And now, you still have, you know, the Chinese are producing a lot more pollution than they used to. Clearly both sides are right. And of course, now they’re begin to say, well, maybe we should just talk to each other directly. Okay. You guys just talk to each other. So rather than posturing and all of that, but a lot of this problem is the scientific problems have become political problems, and then become and posturing problems, and then Congress gets involved.
Rick Archer: Right. And most of them don’t even understand science. Right. But you know, what puts this in this discussion in the context of this whole interview is that if you, you know, you have this sort of eras, irresolvable conflict going on on one level, if you step it up to the bigger picture, right, then our competition should not be over bickering over who’s producing the most carbon that should be over, you know, who can sort of succeed in the race to find, you know, environmentally friendly technologies. And if the US were to succeed, for instance, we’d be selling those to China.
Menas Kafatos: Right.
Rick Archer: So,
Menas Kafatos: right,
Rick Archer: so we’d win.
Menas Kafatos: We’ll make like bandits. Yeah.
Rick Archer: But instead, the fossil fuel industry controls the Congress. And so most of the Congress’s doesn’t even believe it, global warming is real, and on and on we go, right. But there’s hope there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
Menas Kafatos: Well, there’s hope at the end of the tunnel, because in fact, human beings are human beings and people are now in touch with may turn things around in China is that people are gasping for air. They can’t breathe. You look at those pictures of Shanghai or Beijing, you know, they’re all wearing masks, and people are now becoming very upset. They say, hey, you know, who told you that i Okay. I mean, the government there I didn’t never said, Oh, it’s one or the other, you know, you’re either you’re going to gassed to death, or you’re going to have economic development. If they put it that way. People say, Well, I’m I’m not really sure about that. I really wants to do that. You know, again, it’s not a black or white issue. But you know, of course, they’re trying to develop economically, it’s all of that. But it all has to be done within the right context again.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Here we go. There’s a quote from the Gita. Verse, chapter four, verse seven, and eight, Lord Krishna says, Whenever Dharma, the power, which sustains evolution is, excuse me, is in decay and a Dharma flourishes, then I create myself to protect the righteous and destroy the wicked, I established Dharma firmly, I take birth, age after age. And the way I would interpret this in light of this conversation is not that the blue guy is going to come back and walk around, but that there, there will be and is actually already an upsurge of spiritual substance that quote, This fellow from your book that I quoted earlier, spiritual presence in the world, that is reaching epidemic proportions are in perhaps even a tipping point just as much as climate change is reaching a tipping point, and that it’s nature’s response to counterbalance a dire situation. And that, again, speaks to the fact that this is not a mechanistic universe. It’s an it’s an intelligent one.
Menas Kafatos: Right. Right. Okay, sounds good. Good. Sounds good. I think those are good ways to good horses through and let me make it. Thank you.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Let me make a few concluding remarks. General nature. So I’ve been speaking with Manos Ka’bah toes, I hope I pronounced that right. And I’m sure I’m getting close. And this is part of an ongoing series of interviews. There are 220, something of them now and they can all be [email protected] Bat gap. You’ll find their Alphabetical Index, a chronological index, a discussion group about each interview. button to click if you’d like to donate a place to sign up to be notified by email each time a new interview is posted a bunch of other things. So visit that. And if you’d like to see him and us, he’ll hear him speak. He’ll be at the Science non duality conference in San Jose in the fall. You’re going again, right? Yes, and I’ll be there as well. One big happy reunion. So a lot of fun. So thanks for listening or watching. Thank you. Yeah. And we’ll see you all next week. Oh, one other thing that’s on the site, which I forgot to mention. There’s a there’s a link to click to subscribe to this as an audio podcast if you’d like to just listen and not see our pretty faces. All right, thanks. Thank you. Bye bye. Thank you.