The Next Applications of the Intimacy Equation: From Self to Organizations to Nations and Religions to the Wider Field
Part 3 of an Early Draft Essay on Twenty Cross-Platform Applications of the Intimacy Equation
Application Seven of the Intimacy Equation: The Song of Myself
As Walt Whitman famously wrote,
I contain multitudes.[i]
Thus, to be intimate with myself means that I have a shared identity with all of my selves and with all of the parts of myself. Here, we refer to the different parts of my separate self. When I split off parts of myself in a way that blocks my access to them, then I become non-intimate with myself. When I am non-intimate with myself, with my own individuated identity, I become non-intimate with both Self (the wider Field of Existence, Value, and Essence) and others. Because it is through the full unique quality of myself that I connect both to individual others and to the larger Field.
So, my whole must be intimate with my parts. I need some level of shared identity with all of my exiled parts. In what is called parts theory or parts work, which in multiple forms began to significantly emerge over the last few decades, these parts, voices, or sub-personalities might include the protector, the controller, the exiled, the wounded child, the innocent child, the shadow self, the unlived life, the split-off envy and rage, and all other aspects of my whole self. They must experience their shared identity as part of my larger wholeness.
Whenever I split off parts of myself—whenever I don’t actually contain my multitudes—I start to break down. To survive and thrive in any dimension of life, I require shared identity in the context of (relative) otherness with all my parts. Meaning, I become identified with and include all of my distinct voices, parts, and subpersonalities. They are not split off. I contain multitudes, but they are all part of my shared coherent and conscious identity.
Intimacy requires not only that we have shared identity and mutualities of recognition, feeling, value, and purpose with all of our parts, but also that all the parts have the same between each other. The voices, parts, and subpersonalities cannot be split off from each other. Rather, a knowing must be cultivated across all voices and parts, that they all participate in the same larger identity. Between all of the voices, all of the parts, there is a mutuality of recognition and a mutuality of purpose. None of the voices or parts may be allowed to hijack my attention or identity. The voices recognize each other and feel each other and experience themselves as contributing to a shared Field of Value and Purpose.
This allows for two crucial conversations. First, a conversation between the voices. Second, it allows for a conversation between the underlying I and any part of the multitudes the I contains. It is only out of this sense of underlying self-intimacy that all the voices and parts put aside their differences and act together in shared purpose for the sake of the I.
Photography by Kristina Tahel Amelong
Application Eight of the Intimacy Equation: Beyond the Split-Off Parts of Self to the Unrealized Selves
Remember the principle which we will formulate more fully below: The Cosmos is human, and the human is Cosmic.[ii] The means very simply that the Cosmos is coded for humanity, and the human being contains the Cosmos. The human being is Cosmos in person, Cosmos in human form. Indeed, the human being is an emergent incarnation of Cosmos. This is the very definition of the human being that accords with evolutionary and emergence science. Therefore, it follows that another key expression of cosmocentric intimacy involves not only including all of exterior reality in one’s circle of intimate care and concern, but also all of the parts of our interior world. All of our parts are part of Cosmos.
As developmental theory has pointed toward, including the split-off parts of yourself is a leading edge of human emergence.[iii] Thus, cosmocentric consciousness demands the integration of all of the split-off parts of yourself. This includes the body. This includes the split-off shadow parts that have been relegated to the dark corners of our psyche.[iv]
As such, intimacy demands a shared identity in the context of otherness not only with my split-off parts of voices, or even with my dis-owned shadow, but also with all of my unrealized selves. In this application we are referring to two primary groups of selves.
The Four Selves and Unique Self Symphony
First, we refer to what we call in CosmoErotic Humanism the four selves: my separate self, my True Self, my Unique Self, and my Evolutionary Unique Self. We have unpacked these selves in great depth in earlier volumes, in what we refer to in CosmoErotic Humanism as Unique Self Theory.[v] The four selves are not my split-off parts but point instead to the larger Field of my True Nature.
The four selves can be readily summarized as follows:
My separate self is the classical identity of the western self, the skin-encapsulated ego, which experiences the boundary of identity as being the physical body and its personality. In this sense, my separate self is like a lone puzzle piece without any realized awareness of the large puzzle of which it is an indivisible part.
At some point in our personal evolution a deeper self begins to disclose itself, which we refer to as True Self. True Self emerges, in the words of Albert Einstein, from the realization that separateness is an optical delusion of consciousness.[vi] True Self is the realization that the separate self, the skin-encapsulated ego-personality, is not the boundary of human identity but that we rather participate in the seamless Coat of the Universe. In other words, my identity is indivisible not only from the exterior field of reality, from the plankton in the ocean to the topsoil to the biosphere, but we are also inseparable from the Fields of Consciousness and Desire. We all participate in the same Field, thus, the total number of True Selves in the world is One—in the language of quantum physics pioneer Erwin Schrodinger—the “singular of which the plural is unknown.”[vii]. True Self is not a puzzle piece but rather the indivisible wholeness of the puzzle.
Unique Self is the realization that the seamless Coat of the Universe is seamless but not featureless. Unique Self is the higher individuation of Self—the irreducibly unique perspective and quality of intimacy of True Self seeing through my unique eyes and experiencing Reality through my unique story. Unique Self is the irreducibly unique LoveIntelligence, LoveBeauty, and LoveDesire of Reality that lives in me, as me, and through me, that has unique gifts to give and a unique life to live, and that is, in some real sense, needed and honored by All-That-Is. Unique Self is a puzzle piece that completes the puzzle.
But that is not the end of the evolution of identity. Rather, the realization of Unique Self deepens one more stage, and I awaken to the realization that my Unique Self lives and breathes within a larger evolutionary context. Evolutionary Unique Self is the realization that I am personally implicated in the evolutionary process. I am the personal face of the evolutionary impulse. The pulse of becoming that beats my heart is irreducibly unique. The evolutionary impulse is the Field of Desire, which is evolution itself reaching for new futures, drawn forward by its own inherent entelechy—a memory of future value, future wholeness, and future possibility yearning to be realized. Evolutionary Unique Self is the puzzle piece that not only completes the eternal puzzle but rather evolves the entire puzzle itself. Evolutionary Unique Self is the unique expression of the inherent Desire in Cosmos that always generates new possibilities and new wholeness—emergences that are greater than the sum of all the previous parts.
Finally, Evolutionary Unique Self experiences its nature as part of a larger whole, what we refer to in CosmoErotic Humanism as the Unique Self Symphony, in which every Unique Self plays its unique part in the larger symphony. It is, however, not a classical but rather a jazz symphony, in which every player plays not only a unique rendition of previously composed music, but also composes new notes and new movements in the symphony itself.
In other words, our unrealized Self includes our wider identity with the One Field of Consciousness [True Self]. And it includes our full range of unique gifts and capacities. It also includes our unique qualities of personal being and consciousness. And it includes their evolutionary context, my Self as an irreducibly unique incarnation of evolution itself.
Each of these aforementioned dimensions (and often all of them) are generally split off from our consciousness. They are not part of our self-perception. In effect, we have dis-identified from these crucial parts of Self. One of the crucial advances in human consciousness, which generally shows up in conjunction with other dimensions of worldcentric and cosmocentric consciousness, is the inner impulse to become intimate with all of the split-off parts. In becoming intimate with the split-off parts, we do not allow the split-off parts to hijack our identity; rather, they become integrated into our wider identity.
When we achieve intimacy with any of these dimensions of both exterior and interior self, nature and culture, we incorporate that dimension into our wider identity. We experience a mutuality of recognition with the split-off part, and a mutuality of pathos, such that the split-off part is incorporated into our larger purpose.
Three Selves: Past, Present, and Future
A second group of selves, which overlap with the first but deserve their own distinctions, is what we refer to in CosmoErotic Humanism as the three selves: namely, the psychological self, the mystical self, and the evolutionary or future self.
The psychological self is a version of the separate self that is deeply connected to the past. The psychological self mines the past in order to heal its capacity to show up in the present freely and effectively.
The mystical self bypasses the past and instead enters the depths of the present—the now—to realize its own nature.
The evolutionary self hears the call of the future.
Each of these selves is attuned and uniquely identified with either past, present, or future. But each of these selves is often dis-identified with or even largely alienated and disassociated from the other two realms of time.
When the larger Field of Self-Identity is not realized, then the self pathologizes. The self cannot bear the contraction of its truncated identity. This is experienced by the self as a failure of Eros, a loss of aliveness and joy, that causes in its wake a breakdown in ethos. For, as we have pointed towards in other writings on CosmoErotic Humanism, all breakdowns of ethics are proceeded by a failure of Eros. The emptiness caused by the failure of Eros is covered up by what we have called pseudo-eros, which expresses itself in all manner of addiction, acting out, or numbing behaviors. These behaviors themselves, or the cycles they cause, become a breakdown of ethos. To be intimate with self, therefore, requires shared identity with all of these unrealized parts of self, as well as deep intimacy between all of these selves. Just as there can be multiple versions of false self that are split off—a collapse of intimacy—there are also crucial expressions of one’s deeper nature that can be split off—another collapse of intimacy—with similarly devastating results.
With each new application we begin to discern more profoundly the structural truth of the bold yet almost self-evident assertion with which we began: We live in an Intimate Universe. And the Intimate Universe lives in us. From mud to Mozart, from bacteria to Bach, from dendrites to democracy, the structure of Reality is governed by the First Principles and First Values of ever-evolving configurations of Intimacy.
All of these previous stages of evolution,
from quarks to culture—
and through all the evolving levels of culture,
from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric to cosmocentric—
and all of the future potentials.
All of it, in some deep ontological sense, lives in us. We are emergent from, and we are, on some fundamental level, intimate with—we literally share identity with—all of our unrealized selves.
The great Zen master Dōgen pointed to this quality of the interior experience when he said, Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.[viii] [ix]
But, as we have already pointed toward, interior and exterior realities are inter-included and inter-intimated—quite literally inextricably embedded in each other. To see interiors and exteriors all the way up and all the way down the evolutionary chain is the only reasonable view of any self-respecting empiricism that is willing to free itself from the dogmas of reductive materialism.
The same definition of intimacy may be fruitfully applied to understanding organizational development, economic theory and practice, environmental policy, political governance, social policy, and pretty much everything else.
Application Nine of the Intimacy Equation: Companies and Organizations
A company has multiple divisions. Those divisions require shared identity if the company is to succeed. Every organizational consultant knows that organizations, agencies, companies, and departments break down because various sub-factions develop separate identities that not only distinguish themselves but also alienate themselves from each other and from the larger shared identity of the group. Each division develops a kind of hyper-agency that dissociates from the larger shared identity of the whole. A win/lose metric suffuses the subtext of their discourse. The sense of a larger shared identity breaks down.
Consultant Peter Drucker was not wrong when he allegedly said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” But Drucker didn’t have the distinctions required to foster a culture beyond the win/lose metrics. In a word, for a company to succeed, profound intimacy is required between all of its parts. Whether it’s a team or division or committee, each part needs to have an intimate culture of shared identity in the context of relative otherness. There needs to be a shared identity between the parts coupled with mutuality of recognition, the capacity to feel each other, a shared ground of value, and a shared purpose. Each division is ostensibly independent, and yet, from the context of shared identity, there is a mutuality of recognition, pathos, value, and purpose.
Peter Senge from M.I.T. tells a great story at the beginning of his book Presence[x] about how a company developing a new product—in this case a car—almost failed because huge overruns in time destroyed the budget. Although he does not use our language, MIT doctoral student Daniel Kim[xi] was able to reverse this process by fostering a sense of shared identity plus mutuality of recognition, pathos, value, and purpose between the divisions. Before his intervention, each division of engineers of the company[xii] all viewed their identity as independent, with their mission solely being the completion of their particular part of the car. All sorts of structural and motivational interventions were attempted, but they all failed. Kim’s novel intervention of having them create and look together at a “causal loop diagram” or “systems map”[xiii] succeeded beyond all expectations. At the core of his intervention was the generation of a sense of shared identity in the context of otherness, coupled with mutualities of recognition, pathos, value, and purpose between the divisions and teams of engineers. In the words of Daniel Kim, who speaks of it in the language of exterior systems theory:
At one point, there was a palpable shift in the room…All the details were very familiar to them…Now they were actually seeing the systemic pattern that caused this, and they could see that no one individual was to blame. They had created this pattern together…As the implications of the system began to sink in, one of the group members said, ‘My God, look what we’re doing to ourselves.’[xiv]
The book Presence then continues:
The key word in this statement was “we.” Up to this point, there had been someone to blame for every problem… When the ‘theys’ go away and the ‘we’ shows up, people’s awareness and capabilities change. Through many similar moments of awakening, a new attitude gradually developed…that caused significant changes in how people worked together.
This new intimacy engendered new and more creative conversations, which allowed for the project to be completed weeks in advance of the deadline.
Our good friend and former board chair of the Center John Mackey shared with us a parallel story from the first year of the company he founded, Whole Foods.
There was a flood at the store some six months after the first store opened, which destroyed the stock and much of the store. John had leveraged all of his assets and had no way of repairing and resupplying the store. He thought that the company was finished. To his great surprise, when he arrived at the flooded store the next morning, there were loads of people—customers, suppliers, and local community folks—repairing and re-supplying the store. Whole Foods survived and ultimately thrived because there was a sense of intimacy between Whole Foods and all of its stakeholders, including the customers, employees, as well as the suppliers and the community itself. This sense of intimacy generated a shared identity. The stakeholders all participated in this shared identity, recognizing and feeling each other, participating in a shared Field of Value and Purpose. Without this intimacy, as John relates it, Whole Foods would have closed after six months of operations.
Application Ten of the Intimacy Equation: Nations and Religions of the World and the New Politics of Intimacy
All the nations and religions in the world are made up of human beings. At the level of worldcentric intimacy, there is a shared identity and mutuality of recognition, pathos, and purpose between all human beings. We are part of one human family. But there is context of otherness both at the personal and the collective level.
At the collective level, we don’t want to obliterate individual religions or nations. Healthy individuated nation states and religions realize their larger shared identity with every other nation state or religion in the context of otherness. All nations and religions are Unique Selves, who can join together to play their unique instruments in the Unique Self Symphony. In the symphony, each person, and each collective, plays a different instrument—the context of otherness—but every person, and collective, is also playing shared music—the context of shared identity.
As we move to reconfigure politics through these new narratives, we do not seek a homogenized globalism. That would paradoxically open the door to totalitarianism. Rather, we need global federations constituted by strong individuated nation states and religions.
Worldcentric intimacy must not efface healthy ethnocentric intimacy. Between nations we need shared identity in the context of relative otherness, where we not only have mutuality of recognition but also mutuality of pathos, where we can actually feel each other and participate in a shared Field of Value. This then generates a new coherence, out of which arises mutuality of purpose.
Application Eleven of the Intimacy Equation: Complicated Versus Complex Systems
In our other writings, we deployed Snowden and Taleb’s distinction between a complicated and a complex system.[xv]
A complex system is one that is antifragile and resilient. It regenerates, takes care of its waste, and is mostly a circular closed loop.[xvi] The Brazilian rainforest is an example of a complex system.
A complicated system is fragile: It does not regenerate or take care of its own waste. It is generally a linear, open-loop system. An expensive car is an example of this.
We added to that distinction a key element. We understand a complex system to be one where there is inherent allurement between the parts, while in a complicated system there is no allurement. A more precise way, however, to distinguish them is in terms of intimacy: A complicated system is non-intimate. There is no genuine shared identity between the parts. Hence, there is no genuine mutuality of recognition, pathos, value, or purpose.
The failure of intimacy in a complicated system generates incoherence, which devolves on a global scale into global action confusion and global action paralysis. A complex system is one in which there is shared identity in the context of otherness between the parts coupled with mutuality of recognition, pathos, value, and therefore purpose.
All of the breakdowns in modern society, which are sourced in
fractional reserve banking,
the linear materials economy,
extraction-model-driven exponential growth,
rivalrous conflict governed by win/lose metrics,
World Bank and International Monetary Fund policy failures,
and more,
are both explicable and correctable through this definition.
Application Twelve of the Intimacy Equation: Intimate Relations as Sexing
Let’s now turn to sexing, which models Eros but, as we have elaborated at length in other writings,[xvii] in no way exhausts Eros. Indeed, the first eleven applications of the intimacy equation, which we have just discussed, are also all expressions of Eros. The core movement of sexing is from separate self to shared identity. For a short moment in sexing, we become part of a throbbing, ecstatic, larger, and wider identity. We become a larger One. We see each other with new eyes. We participate in the same pulsation. Loneliness abates for a moment as we merge together in the Oh God of the larger One.
But there is still a context of relative otherness. We are part of the same Field, but we don’t lose our distinct uniqueness. Thus, we actually cry out in the moment of orgiastic exultation, not only Yes and Oh God but also the name of our beloved. We scream the Name of God in each other’s name, as we realize in our bodies that both our own name and the name of the beloved participate in the Name of God. This is the ultimate mutuality of recognition.
We feel each other in the most quivering, exquisite sense. In those moments, we participate in the same Field of Value. The goodness and aliveness of Reality expressed in the mutual gifting of radical depth and pleasure are the values that animate the Field of Eros, which is the context for all sexing that sates beyond the ephemeral moment. Giving is receiving, and receiving is giving. In all the other arenas of existence, you are either giving, or you are receiving. In sexing, that binary split breaks down in the intimate gnosis of shared identity.
The separation has broken down into union but not into fusion. From this mutuality of value, which becomes our shared carnal gnosis, the beloved cultivates the capacity to find their mutuality of purpose.
Application Thirteen of the Intimacy Equation: Attachment Theory
As noted above, exhaustively demonstrating how intimacy, a First Value and First Principle of Reality, shows up as the implicit premise of myriad diverse disciplines and dimensions of Reality across space and time is the crucial focus of a separate volume. But for now, let’s allude briefly to just one example of the foundational nature of intimacy as an implicit premise of a major field of study. All of the modern theorizing around attachment theory is premised on the centrality of our early intimacies, their shape and character, in shaping the entire trajectory of our lives. But, like Chuck Noland in Cast Away, our sacred text of culture, a baby can have all of their survival needs met and yet be crushed with devastating implications for the rest of their life. Those implications include but are not limited to substantially increased incidences of depression, addiction, and suicide—if the quality and depth of earlier intimacies was deficient.[xviii]
This centrality of intimacy in the motivational architecture of Cosmos, which appears in modern attachment theory, expresses itself in the deepest realization of the interior sciences in myriad ancient traditions. Reality is a Love Story. We live in an Intimate Universe. And a plethora of attachment studies tells us that the baby, upon being born into this Universe, needs to feel that intimacy in order to feel welcome in the Universe and live a good life.
As we have already seen, intimacy means a sense of shared identity in the context of relative otherness between mother and child, coupled with mutualities of recognition, pathos, value, and purpose. The shared value and purpose, of course, is the exchange of aliveness and contact between baby and mother that assures the full life of both.
Attachment dynamics are, as the literature indicates, not limited to human beings. For example, ducks are not mammals but possess a lizard-like brain. And yet, they have highly developed attachment dynamics.
The core to attachment theory across domains is indeed intimacy and its essential definition as shared identity in the context of otherness. This begins in embryology, shows up strongly in developmental psychology, in the intimacy behind the right and left hemispheres of the brain, and much more. There is first, differentiation, or the context of otherness: the establishment of uniqueness, which then leads to superordinate integration, to higher embraces and unions between distinct parts or stages. This includes the assertion of more autonomy, which then leads to a higher-order intimacy of shared identity.
Application Fourteen of the Intimacy Equation: Personal Identity with the Wider Field in the Intimate Universe
In some of the earlier applications, we looked at the First Principle and First Value of Intimacy from the human perspective, particularly from the perspective of human interiority. Specifically, we looked at interpersonal and intra-personal intimacy. Below, we will look briefly at intercommunal and intra-communal human intimacies. But neither the intimacy equation nor the Intimate Universe itself is limited to the human experience of personal and communal shared identity. Zen Master Dōgen was not wrong when he described enlightenment as intimacy with all things.
From a surface perspective, thinking superficially, I might say, I’m not that tree or that bush. But actually, I would literally not exist without those trees and bushes. I could not breathe. Without them, there would be no atmosphere that facilitates photosynthesis. Without the trees and plants, I simply do not exist in any meaningful way. But my shared identity is not only with plants. I cannot meaningfully exist without the coral reefs, without the microbiome of the soil, without key forms of insects and birds, without the key elements like hydrogen and intimately cohered molecules that create new emergents that together constitute my fundamental biological identity. When I formulate me statements—statements of identity—that do not include the nature of my breath, and the trees with whom I inter-breathe, and all of the elements of Reality with whom I inter-exist—inter-be and inter-become—then I am simply not thinking clearly about the facts of my identity.
Reach back for a moment into the time of the formative years of our planet, in which your whole identity was created. The Earth was filled with carbon dioxide and very little oxygen. Only single-celled life could be sustained. There was no multicellular life at all, and certainly no possibility of human life. There was, however, one organism with a unique configuration of intimate coherence between subatomic particles—molecules called cyanobacteria. This unique configuration of intimacy was able to draw energy from the Sun and uniquely transform carbon dioxide into oxygen. This is the beginning of photosynthesis. The process was gradual but steady, breath after breath, until these bacteria suffused the Earth, giving rise to what we call the ozone layer; and the new atmosphere of Earth came into being.
From this new atmosphere, step by step, multicellular life was born. And after that, the Cambrian explosion generated a gorgeous new expression of life in the seas, and the first plants took root on land. We are in intimate relationship—with genuine levels of shared identity and ever-growing mutualities of recognition, pathos, value, and purpose—with cyanobacteria and their descendants, without whom we cannot breathe.
Intimacy with all things means shared identity with all things. The statement I am no longer makes any factual sense in the standard way. I am because we are. Everything is the context for anything existing at all.
However, the individual does not disappear. Shared identity always occurs in the context of otherness. The First Value and First Principle of Intimacy lives as part of a larger constellation of First Values and First Principles, including that of uniqueness. So, Reality is seamless but not featureless. There is always distinction—uniqueness—in the context of the larger Field of Union. There is never intimate fusion; rather, there is intimate communion. And there can be no communion without plurality. The notion of what we are calling non-intimate existence was correctly described by Einstein as an optical delusion of consciousness.
We cannot think of anything or anyone that does not exist in the context of everything and everyone. But there are always boundaries. And boundaries are Real. Uniqueness is Real and cannot be collapsed into union without remainder. But all boundaries are soft boundaries. That is precisely the definition of intimacy that we have expressed in the intimacy equation—shared identity in the context of otherness. Relative otherness. All persons and all things are irreducibly distinct and unique—in the context of larger communion.
The sense of living in the Intimate Universe and the Intimate Universe living in us runs deeper than inter- and intra-human shared interior identities.
The First Principle and First Value of Intimacy, as expressed in the intimacy equation, also shows up powerfully in our relationship to the non-human world. Not only do I yearn for shared identity with other human beings, and not only is the fact of that shared identity the fact of my personal identity. I also share an identity—I share intimacy—with a much wider swath of Reality. I share some level of intimacy with the entire biosphere. This is the exterior sense of shared identity with a larger Field, the sense of being part of an interconnected system with the Whole of Reality—that is, the exterior expression of the True Self Realization that we noted above.
Intimacy: Shared Identity With All Things
All things are constantly exchanging information at every level of Reality—interiors and exteriors all the way up and all the way down. This level of intimacy that informs Reality is coded in language. Significantly, in the original Hebrew, the new information of the sciences is already implicitly encoded. According to the interior sciences of Hebrew wisdom, language is what we might term the interior DNA of Reality. The word thing in Hebrew captures this sense. In its superficial, unthinking expression, it implies a discreet, self-enclosed unit. But in reality, there are no things. The Hebrew word for thing is davar, which also means word. The thing is a word, a building block in the larger intimate conversation of communion. Davar might be translated as things that speak.
Try and think of anything that has an independent identity. We cannot. A word that refers to the quality of intimacy, as we have defined it, in the world of davar—the world of things that speak—might be synergy. Synergy points to the structural quality of intimacy that is creative. Synergies create more than the sum of the parts.
Therefore, when Dōgen says, Enlightenment is intimacy with all things, and Hebrew wisdom speaks of davar, they point to a core truth of the interior sciences, without being able to validate it with the tools of modern exterior science. They both point towards the fact of our larger shared identity—directly emergent from the knowing that everything is fundamentally, intimately, interconnected.
Indeed, the interior of interconnectivity is intimacy. No part is apart from the larger Intimate Wholeness. We share with all of Reality a web of value—mathematical value, physical value, and interior value—the Eros of existence that yearns for ever-deeper contact, and ever-greater wholeness, generating in its wake ever-more diversity and depth of life. That is the structure of the Intimate Universe. All parts are inextricable with the Whole, even as the Whole lives in the parts—in multiple forms.
Application Fifteen of the Intimacy Equation: The Intimate Universe Lives in Us
Earlier, we expressed the First Principle and First Value of Intimacy in four short sentences:
We live in an Intimate Universe.
The Intimate Universe lives in us.
Reality is evolution.
Reality is the evolution of intimacy.
These four simple sentences articulate intimacy and its evolution as First Principles and First Values of Cosmos. In this application, we come to the heart of the matter, and the heart of all matter. We first recognize the structural truth of the Intimate Universe. We then realize—quite literally—that which lies in the expression of the second sentence: The Intimate Universe lives in us.
The Structure of the Intimate Universe
On the subatomic level, three quarks come together to form a proton, and in a different configuration of intimacy, three quarks form a neutron. The quarks do not lose their identity, and yet they manifest a new shared identity as a proton or neutron. The quarks recognize each other uniquely: mutuality of recognition. The quarks feel each other; they are allured to each other: mutuality of pathos. The quarks share a Field of Value, even as they have a new shared function and purpose as proton or neutron: mutuality of purpose. The proton, or neutron, is a new configuration of quarked intimacy: three quarks expressing a new shared identity in the context of relative otherness. The quarks do not lose their own identity, or otherness—they can still be identified—but their otherness exists is in the context of their larger sameness, as waves of energy.
This process repeats itself across all domains. A unique proton, neutron, and electron are allured together to form an atom. They create a new shared identity as an atom. They recognize each other (mutuality of recognition, they feel each other and are allured to each other (mutuality of pathos), and they share a new function as an atom (mutuality of purpose). And yet, they do not lose their original identity as proton, neutron, or electron, which is the context of otherness in the equation.
As we evolve to the world of life, we experience a progressive deepening of intimacies. For example, a protein molecule is, at its core, a particular sequence of amino acids in particular configurations of intimate coherence. In effect, a protein molecule is a unique configuration of intimacy. Amino acids themselves are configurations of intimacy. Formally, we say that amino acids are organic compounds that contain different functional groups. But what this means is that amino acids are quite literally a shared identity of different elements (usually carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen) arranged in intimate coherence, which we are calling unique configurations of intimacy. These configurations generate a shared identity as that particular amino acid within the context of otherness (it is within the context of otherness because, for example, the amino or carboxyl groups and their elements still retain their own identity). The parts of the new intimate configuration, which is the structure of the amino acid, recognize each other (mutuality of recognition), feel each other (mutuality of pathos), share information codes or what could be described as meaning or value codes that desire ever-more life (mutuality of value), and have a new shared function (mutuality of purpose).
This does not mean that they are conscious in a human sense. We know that one of the plotlines of Reality is the evolution of complexity (i.e., exteriors), which is also the evolution of consciousness, creativity, uniqueness, and love. So of course, there is an evolution in consciousness from atoms to amoeba to astrophysicists or avatars. But, as Reality is interiors and exteriors all the way up and all the way down the evolutionary chain—what we have called pan-interiority—we can thus claim, along with physicist Freeman Dyson and many others, that the elementary particles of Reality possess some modicum of proto-consciousness. Even as that consciousness and complexity evolves through every distinct stage of matter, life, and the depths of the human self-reflective mind.
This First Principle of Intimacy continues from quarks to cells, through ever-more evolved configurations of intimacy, from multicellular life all the way up the evolutionary chain to plants, amphibians, the neural net and neural cord, early animals, mammals, later mammals, hominids, and ultimately to profoundly self-reflective humans walking upright on the Savannah.[xix]
The Intimate Universe Lives in Us
This same definition of intimacy applies at the human level of being. But the human being is also constituted by the unimaginably vast and complex set of subatomic, atomic, molecular, cellular, and organic configurations of intimate coherence, all constituted by shared identity, and mutualities of recognition, pathos, value, and purpose. All of those are constituted by configurations of intimacy, and all of those configurations of intimacy come together to form a wider and larger configuration of intimate coherence that we call Jack or Lily.
All of these aforementioned configurations of intimate coherence come together in a new shared identity—Lily. The Intimate Universe lives in Lily.
The sentences with which we began now become virtually self-evident: We live in an Intimate Universe. The Intimate Universe lives in us.
Lily lives in a world whose structure is intimacy and whose trajectory is the progressive deepening of intimacies. All of the previous configurations of intimacy, from quarks to subatomic particles, to atoms, molecules, etc., all the way down and all the way up the evolutionary chain, live in Lily. More intimate knowing of the atoms themselves however expands our intimacy with the larger Cosmos.
Science expands and deepens our felt intimacy with Cosmos. Science tells us an astonishing new truth. The atoms that are the building blocks for all life on Earth, including our own human bodies, are sourced in the stars. It is the stars that cook the lighter elements into the heavier elements that now make up all of life. The intimate resonances of stars live in atoms, whose intimate configurations live in us. And in that we realize that not only do we live in an Intimate Universe, but the Intimate Universe lives in us. In that, we become aware that we are stardust, as Joni Mitchell sang, we become evolution conscious of itself—an entirely new quality of intimacy. We realized a literal shared identity with all of our evolutionary history, with all Cosmos and all Cosmic Value.
We realized that the Intimate Universe, and its pulsing Eros and allurements, lives in the quarks, subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, and cells that constitute our embodied existence.
Application Sixteen of the Intimacy Equation: Holons
Arthur Koestler captured this intimate structural dimension of Reality when he wrote that the structural reality of Cosmos, its most essential monad, is not atoms or ideas but holons. Both atoms and ideas, along with everything else, are holons, by which Koestler meant part/wholes, and whole/parts. Reality is made up of part/wholes and whole/parts, all the way up and all the way down the evolutionary chain. Every part (say a quark) can be part of a larger whole (three quarks together which, depending on how they are configured, form either a neutron or proton). A proton can be part of a larger whole, an atom. An atom can be part of a larger whole, a molecule. And so it goes on. And even subatomic particles that are not part of an atom, or atoms that are not part of a molecule, and so forth, are not separate entities. They are expressions of the whole quantum field. And, as the effect of quantum entanglement tells us, two subatomic particles that were ever connected remain entangled forever, no matter how far apart they have moved. Nothing exists apart and alone. Everything and everyone is both a whole unto themselves and an essential part of a larger whole.
Waves and particles, molecules and cells, letters and words, microbiota, plants, animals, and humans—indeed, everything and everyone—is both a whole and part of a wider, deeper whole.
Letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs.
Quarks, protons, atoms, molecules, macromolecules, single cells, and multicellular organisms.
All of Reality is constituted by these threads of whole/parts and part/wholes. And the entire meshwork of Reality is a vast intimate Field of part/wholes and whole/parts. The proton is a whole that consists of quarks and that can be part of an atom. The atom is a whole consisting of subatomic particles (protons, neutrons, and electrons) that can be part of a molecule. The molecule is a whole consisting of atoms that can be part of a complex molecule. And so it goes on.
And as we briefly alluded to above and will see more deeply in the next application, the entire Field is connected as well. Nothing, and no one, exists independently of anything, or anyone, else. Everything is interconnected—intimate—with everything else. From the perspective of both the interior and exterior sciences, we quite literally have no reality independent from everything and everyone else. The illusion of being only a self-sustaining whole, but not part of a larger Whole, is the definition of alienation and disassociation. It is a failure to realize the nature of the Intimate Universe, and the nature of Self as a part of the Intimate Universe and an expression of the Intimate Universe. We live in the Intimate Universe, and the Intimate Universe lives in us.
On the human level, the deeper our self-sense goes, the lonelier we become. Loneliness is transcended only when we realize the felt sense and depth of our interconnection—whose interior is intimacy—with each other and with the larger Field. To be lonely—non-intimate—is therefore a violation of the core good that is our own—that is Reality’s—True Nature.
Application Seventeen of the Intimacy Equation: The Intimate Universe Lives in Us: A Deeper Cut—The Nonlocal Universe
The depth of truth in our core two sentences expressing the First Principles and First Value of Intimacy, which we have been pointing towards in the paragraphs above—We live in an Intimate Universe, and the Intimate Universe lives in us—took yet another leap inward with advent of quantum physics. In quantum reality, a reality that quite literally lives in us, the consciousness of the depth of intimacy with all of Cosmos immeasurably deepens. This is the discovery of the nonlocal Universe—or said simply, the realization that all of the Universe is intimate with all of the rest of the Universe, and that this very intimacy resides in us as we reside in it.
Henry Stapp, one of the great figures of quantum mechanics, who worked closely with Wolfgang Pauli, later Werner Heisenberg, and then with John Archibald Wheeler, understood that quantum theory and its notions of what we are calling the Intimate Universe collapses the sharp distinction between exteriors and interiors. Stapp understood that interior and exteriors were fully enmeshed in the Universe.[xx] He wrote particularly about the disclosure of quantum entanglement—the nonlocal Universe—at the very Heart of Reality, as about the “most profound discovery in all of science.”[xxi]
In effect, the discovery of the nonlocal Universe, what mathematical physicist Menas Kafatos called “a new fact of nature,”[xxii] is quite literally a quantum deepening of our core sentences: We live in an Intimate Universe, and the Intimate Universe lives in us. Let’s very briefly get a sense of the potential implications of quantum entanglement.
There is a famous debate, at least to those who study quantum physics, between Albert Einstein and Niel Bohr. Bohr was the innovator of what has become the standard Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. To somewhat simplify matters, we might say that Einstein was arguing for the capacity of physics to ultimately access complete knowledge about the workings of the invisible structure of the material world. Bohr took strong exception to this, based on what he thought to be the new information yielded by the new physics. This included the famous recognition of quantum mechanics: that an electron can be treated as a wave before measurement and a particle after measurement. And of course, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle that disallows the absolute knowledge of an electron’s position and momentum at the same time, coupled with the famous collapse of the quantum wave at the moment of observation, depicts a world in which the absolute certainty that Einstein thought possible is, in fact, impossible. Bohr’s point was that uncertainty was part of the value structure of Cosmos, and not a function of missing information in physics.[xxiii]
For Einstein, a definitive proof that Bohr was wrong came from the fact that if he was right—according to his mathematics and physics—it would mean that two particles, once they have interacted, would continue to feel each other intimately and evince demonstrable internal correlations, irrespective of their distance in space and time. This kind of spooky action at a distance (as Einstein put it) was a priori rejected by him. It flew in the face of his intuition about Cosmos and against his mathematics of relativity—which stated that particles cannot move faster than the speed of light.
This issue remained in question until it was definitively resolved by mathematician physicist John Bell in 1964. Physics understood Bell’s Theorem to demonstrate exactly what Einstein thought was impossible: spooky action at a distance.[xxiv] This new fact of Cosmos came to be called by physicists, quantum entanglement or the nonlocal Universe. Nonlocal, as we introduced it above, simply means that everything is intimate with everything else. But more deeply, it means that everything is part of a larger shared interior identity.
This is much more dramatic than the classical astrophysical recognition that we are composed of stardust, as Carl Sagan spoke of. The intimacy implicit in quantum mechanics speaks deeply to our definition of intimacy:
Intimacy = shared identity x mutuality of recognition x mutuality of pathos x mutuality of value x mutuality of purpose.
Quantum physicist Menas Kafatos and historian of science Robert Nadeau write:
The recent experiments by Nicolus Gisin and his team at the University of Geneva provided … dramatic evidence that nonlocality is a fact of nature. …
All particles in the history of the cosmos have interacted with other particles in the manner revealed by … experiments … from the big bang to the present. Even the atoms in our bodies are made up of particles that were once in close proximity to the cosmic fireball, and other particles that interacted at that time in a single quantum state can be found in the most distant star. Also consider, as the physicist N. David Mermin has shown, that quantum entanglement grows exponentially with the number of particles involved in the original quantum state and that there is no theoretical limit on the number of these entangled particles. If this is the case, the universe on a very basic level could be a vast web of particles, which remain in contact with one another over any distance in “no time” in the absence of the transfer of energy or information.
This suggests, however strange or bizarre it might seem, that all of physical reality is a single quantum system that responds together to further interactions.… Thus nonlocality, or non-separability, in these experiments could translate into the much grander notion of nonlocality, or non-separability, as the factual condition in the entire universe.[xxv]
Unabashed in their writing, Kafatos and Nadeau assert the philosophical implications of quantum reality enacting what we are calling the New Story, particularly in healing the divide between exteriors (which are considered real) and interiors (which are not). In our words, we might say that the interior of interconnectivity is intimacy. In this view, the nonlocal Universe in quantum theory simply discloses that everything is intimate with everything else, and that this intimacy is both the structure of the world we live in, even as it—the intimacy of Cosmos itself—lives inside of us.
Indeed, as several key NASA scientists have pointed out, relational quantum mechanics coupled with many readings of relativity, suggest that there is no existence in Reality whatsoever outside of the context of relationship.[xxvi] This gives an entirely new meaning to our assertion that Lily lives in an Intimate Universe, and that the Intimate Universe lives in Lily.
And by intimacy we mean, some level of shared identity x mutuality of recognition x plus mutuality of pathos x mutuality of value x mutuality of purpose or function, all of which are in abundance in the nonlocal Universe. We begin to realize that, on some level, we quite literally share identity with all of Reality, and Reality resides in us. But this is more than the shared physical identity with the carbon that quite literally lives in us. Quantum reality is far more wondrous.
Quantum theory discloses our participation in what might be accurately called the One Field or One Heart of Reality, connected not through signal transmission in Newtonian spacetime, but rather the ontology of a Cosmos, where everything is already part of a shared intimate identity, where mutualities of recognition, pathos, and ultimate purpose are the interior givens of Reality itself. The implications of this new realization of the Intimate Universe are not the subject of non-sensical spiritualist speculation, but rather the natural state of Cosmos.[xxvii]
Scroll down for the endnotes…
This is the third part of an early draft essay by Dr. Marc Gafni. It is part of a forthcoming six-volume book series, The Universe: A Love Story, by Dr. Marc Gafni with Dr. Zachary Stein & Barbara Marx Hubbard. The essay was edited and prepared for publication by Kerstin Tuschik. We welcome substantive feedback as we prepare a more advanced version of this essay.
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First Values & First Principles
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First Values & First Principles
Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come
by David J. Temple
AS THE META-CRISIS DEEPENS, THE FATE OF CIVILIZATION AND HUMANITY HANGS IN THE BALANCE.
First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture.
Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next.
“The position argued for in this book is of vital importance . . . it needs urgently to be read.”
IAIN McGILCHRIST, author of The Master and His Emissary
David J. Temple is a pseudonym created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, a leading international think tank whose mission is to address existential risk by articulating a shared universal Story of Value for global intimacy and global coordination. The Center focuses its work on a world philosophy, CosmoErotic Humanism, as the ground for a global vision of value, economics, politics, and spiritual coherence. The two primary authors behind David J. Temple are Marc Gafni and Zak Stein. For different projects, specific writers will be named as part of the collaboration. In this volume, Ken Wilber joins Dr. Gafni and Dr. Stein.
Endnotes
[i] Walt Whitman: Song of Myself, Part 51, from his collection Leaves of Grass, 1855.
[ii] This is an expansion of what we have said earlier: We live in an Intimate Universe, and the Intimate Universe lives in us. We are the Intimate Universe in person.
[iii] For a popular but insightful view of this dimension of developmental thought see Meeting the Shadow: The hidden power of the dark side of human nature, by C. Zweig & J Abrams (Eds.), 1991, TarcherPerigee, and see Romancing the shadow: A guide to soul work for a vital, authentic life, by C. Zweig & S. Wolf, 2009, Wellspring/Ballantine. For an implicit appreciation and critique of Zweig’s work, which advanced the shadow conversation, see Your Unique Self, The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment, by M. Gafni, Integral Publishers, where there is a sixty-page section (pp. 227-286) devoted to “Shadow Integration and Unique Self,” Chapter Seventeen, “The Ten Principles of Unique Self Shadow Work,” Chapter Eighteen, and “Shadow and Unique Self Reloaded: The Alchemy of Love,” Chapter Nineteen, contained in Part Four.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] On the five selves, which also include what we have called the false self, see Your Unique Self, The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment, by M. Gafni, 2012, with Introduction and Afterword by Ken Wilber, Integral Publishers. On the false self, see also the online course “Awakening Your Unique Self,” by M. Gafni, https://ciwprograms.com/courses/awakening-your-unique-self-with-marc-gafni/, and the paper, “Identifying & Transforming Your False Self,” by M. Gafni, https://www.marcgafni.com/identifying-transforming-your-false-self/.
[vi] Einstein in a letter in 1950 to Robert S. Marcus. See https://www.thymindoman.com/einsteins-misquote-on-the-illusion-of-feeling-separate-from-the-whole/ (retrieved January 2024). In Einstein’s own translation: “A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.”
[vii] See Ervin Schrödinger, What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell, Cambridge University Press (1944).
[viii] See Dōgen and Kazuaki Tanahashi (editor). 2000. Enlightenment Unfolds the Essential Teachings of Zen Master Dogen. 1. ed. Boston: Shambhala, see especially the section entitled “Intimate Language.”
The great thirteenth-century Japanese Zen master Dōgen Zenji refers to this state of mind succinctly and beautifully: “One who studies Buddha’s Way studies self. One who studies self forgets self. One who forgets self is enlightened by all phenomena. One who is enlightened by all phenomena lets body and mind be cast away (身心脱落), in self and others.” See the accompanying endnote for an exchange between our friend and colleague Zen Buddhist teacher Soryu and one of his students, Meng, who is an excellent translator. They are discussing precisely the passage, which we have cited above from Dōgen as Enlightenment—self-realization—is intimacy with all things.
[ix] Below is an exchange between our friend and colleague Zen Buddhist teacher Soryu and one of his students, Meng, who is an excellent translator. They are discussing precisely the passage, which we have cited above from Dōgen as Enlightenment—self-realization—is intimacy with all things.
[Soryu:] Shōbōgenzō (正法眼藏). My translation. Quoting Dōgen partly because it’s so beautiful and appropriate, and partly because I don’t know of anything better in the Nikayas.
[Meng:] I tried putting the Dōgen quote somewhere else, but I got stuck trying to properly re-translate 为万法所证也. The most literal translation is “[he] is certified [and/or witnessed] by ten thousand dharmas,” but I didn’t feel I could capture the true meaning of it.
[Soryu:] Good work. I think the best translation is “to forget the self is to directly know all things.”
[Meng:] It’s a valid interpretation based on practice, but it’s also open to attack, because the original Chinese is 为万法所证 (“being certified/witnessed BY 10,000 dharmas”), not 所证万法 (“witnessing/certifying 10,000 dharmas”). That’s why I originally translated it to “enlightened by all phenomena,” but I’m not happy with it as well, partly because it almost required me to interpret 证 (witness/certify) as short for 见证罗汉果 (“witnessing the fruits of arahanti,” or enlightenment). Feels a bit of a stretch.
Emergent from this conversation, Soryu suggested to me (Marc) and Zachary Stein the following translation of the Dōgen passage:
To study the Buddha’s path is to study the self.
To study the self is to forget the self.
To forget the self is to be confirmed by all things.
To be confirmed by all things is to drop the body and mind of self and others.
We are translating confirmed by all things as intimacy with all things and identifying the forgetting the self as being a term for enlightenment, hence our statement in CosmoErotic Humanism that we attribute to Dōgen: “Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.”
[x] Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers, Presence, 2004, New York: Doubleday/Currency.
[xi] According to the book Presence, Chapter 3, pp.43-45, footnote 3: “This project is described in detail in a ‘learning history.’ See G. Roth and A. Kleiner, Car Launch, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.”
[xii] These engineers worked in different teams, for example, the team that worked on the body of the car, teams that worked on different parts of the cars’ body, teams that worked on the engine, and teams working on different parts of the engine.
[xiii] See Peter Senge, et al., The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, New York; Doubleday/Currency, 1994, pp. 84-190.
[xiv] Quoted from Presence, Chapter 3, pp.44-45.
[xv] See, for example, Nassim Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Vol. 2. Random house, 2007. See also Nassim Taleb, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder, Penguin, 2013. See also, “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making” by David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone in Harvard Business Review, November 2007. See also Kurtz, Cynthia F., Snowden, David J. (2003), “The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world” (PDF). IBM Systems Journal.
[xvi] This is, however, not to say that we demonize the linear dimension. There is a linear dimension in complex systems as well, a dimension of moving towards not growth in a win/lose metrics but towards the next level of transformation and emergence. We might say that the circle evolves into a spiral by integrating that linear dimension.
[xvii] See A Return to Eros: The Radical Experience of Being Fully Alive, by M. Gafni and K. Kincaid, 2017, BenBella Books.
[xviii] For an excellent and comprehensive discussion of attachment theory, see Attachment disturbances in adults: Treatment for comprehensive repair, by D. P. Brown and D. S. Elliott, 2016, WW Norton & Company.
[xix] This sentence requires an extensively footnoted book, and indeed, such a book is in preparation.
[xx] See Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer, by H. P. Stapp, 2011, Springer Science & Business Media. See also Quantum Theory and Free Will: How Mental Intentions Translate into Bodily Actions, by H. P. Stapp, 2017, Springer.
[xxi] See “Quantum physics and the physicist’s view of nature: philosophical implications of Bell’s Theorem,” by H. P. Stapp, 1988, The world view of contemporary physics (p. 40), SUNY Press Albany, NY. Ad loc. Kripal, 2019, p. 101, fn. 17. The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge, (p. 101), by J.J. Kripal, 2019, Bellevue Literary Press.
We are, of course, aware that Stapp’s work has drawn criticism from scientists such as David Bourget and Danko Georgiev. Recent papers and a book by Georgiev criticize Stapp’s model. See Bourget, D. (2004). “Quantum Leaps in Philosophy of Mind: A Critique of Stapp's Theory.” Journal of Consciousness Studies. 11 (12): 17–42. See also Georgiev, D. (2012). “Mind efforts, quantum Zeno effect and environmental decoherence.” NeuroQuantology. 10 (3): 374–388. See also, Georgiev, D. (2015). “Monte Carlo simulation of quantum Zeno effect in the brain.” International Journal of Modern Physics B. 29 (7). See also, Georgiev, Danko D. (2017). Quantum Information and Consciousness: A Gentle Introduction. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Stapp has responded to Bourget and Georgiev claiming that the allegations of errors are incorrect. See Stapp, H. (2004). “Quantum Leaps in Philosophy of Mind: Reply to Bourget's Critique.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 11 (12): 43-49. See also, Stapp, H. (2012). “Reply to a Critic: Mind Efforts, Quantum Zeno Effect and Environmental Decoherence.” NeuroQuantology 10 (4): 601-605.
[xxii] Kafatos, M., Nadeau, R. (2000). Confronting a New Fact of Nature: Bell’s Theorem and the Aspect and Gisin Experiments. In: The Conscious Universe. Springer, New York, NY.
[xxiii] On this view of Uncertainty as a Cosmic Value in quantum mechanics and in mysticism, I (Marc) wrote a book some thirty years ago. See Uncertainty, (p. 199-204), by M. Gafni, 2000, Tel Aviv: Modan Publishing House.
[xxiv] “A common misconception about entanglement is that the particles are communicating with each other faster than the speed of light, which would go against Einstein's special theory of relativity. Experiments have shown that this is not true, nor can quantum physics be used to send faster-than-light communications. … ‘It may be tempting to think that the particles are somehow communicating with each other across these great distances, but that is not the case,’ says Thomas Vidick, a professor of computing and mathematical sciences at Caltech. ‘There can be correlation without communication,’ and the particles ‘can be thought of as one object.’” Quoted from “What Is Entanglement and Why Is It Important?” Caltech Science Exchange, https://scienceexchange.caltech.edu/topics/quantum-science-explained/entanglement.
[xxv] See The Non-Local Universe: The New Physics and Matters of the Mind, (p. 81), by R. Nadeau and M. Kafatos, 2001, Oxford University Press.
[xxvi] Relational quantum mechanics, developed by theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, is, in essence, quite similar to the Copenhagen interpretation. The difference is, however, that, in the Copenhagen interpretation, the wave function collapses only when a quantum system interacts with a macroscopic apparatus. In relational quantum mechanics, however, any interaction, be it micro- or macroscopic, causes the wave function to break collapse. See, for example, Rovelli, C. (1996), “Relational quantum mechanics,” International Journal of Theoretical Physics, 35: 1637–1678.
[xxvii] Indeed, the likes of Kafatos and Nadeau, in their excellent Non-Local Universe, or the likes of Alexander Wendt (2015) in his excellent work Quantum Mind and Social Science directly apply the implication of the nonlocal Universe to the series of existential and catastrophic risk that we face at this juncture. We will refer again to Wendt’s work below. We are indebted to Sean Esbjörn-Hargens for pointing us towards his work and sharing his view of Wendt’s significance and to Sally Kempton for pointing us towards Menas Kafatos’s work. See The Conscious Universe: Part and Whole in Modern Physical Theory, by M. Kafatos, & R. Nadeau, 2012, Springer Science & Business Media.