The promise of VR is that in the near future we will walk the beaches and byways of twice ten thousand planets, a virtual new galaxy to explore whose name will be Imagination.

Nature works by steps. The atoms form molecules, the molecules form bases, the bases direct the formation of amino acids, the amino acids form proteins, and proteins work in cells. The cells make up first of all the simple animals, and then sophisticated ones…. The stable units that compose one level or stratum are the raw material for … the climbing of a ladder from simple to complex by steps, each of which is stable in itself.

According to Indian Philosophy there is Brahman, the absolute truth, which cannot be conceived by the isolation of the individual mind or described by words but can only be realized by completely merging the individual in its infinity. But such a Truth cannot belong to Science. The nature of Truth which we are discussing is an appearance—that is to say, what appears to be true to the human mind and therefore human, and may be called māyā or illusion.

When you don’t need the experience, then you are totally free to enjoy it. As long as you think you need it, you have work to do.

We have failed to discover any aspect of life—whether related to the origin of organisms, to their physical properties, to behavior, to intelligence, or to consciousness—whose explanation appears today to lie beyond the ultimate capabilities of physical science. In the late 1960s we seem justified in the broadest possible application of what may be called the central thesis of physical biology: that a single body of natural laws operating on a single set of material particles completely accounts for the origin and properties of living organisms as well as nonliving aggregations of matter and man-made structures. Accordingly, man is essentially no more than a complex machine.

We can conceive of two sub-categories of MacroMinds: (1) weak MacroMinds, which are collaborative interfaces between two or more individuals, and (2) strong MacroMinds which are intimate interfaces giving rise to a (new) joint entity.

This is the breakthrough of a metaphysical realization that you and the other are one, and that the separateness is only an effect of the temporal forms of sensibility of time and space, and our true reality is in that unity with all life. It is a metaphysical truth that becomes spontaneously realized, because it’s the real truth of your life.

It is a view of the relation of the human heart, mind, and will to universal factors. It is the germ of a new psychology, one which sees the human mind to be as much a part of the universe as is any other part.

The unitary mind is being created. It is, in fact, in existence. The autonomic functions of the human superorganism are already in place. And what do I mean by the autonomic functions? I mean the daily pricing of gold, the computer transactions that characterize the banking system: this is all going on all the time. Machines are talking to machines, moving billions of dollars around, setting the value of currency and precious metals and commodities. I mean, most of this is on automatic. Human operators are only called in when unexpected fluctuations are picked up inside the system. And yet, it’s not clear what is being maximized.

My life may be unknown, monotonous, commonplace, boring, hidden from all men’s eyes … but I shall carry out its duties in the consciousness that I am effectively collaborating in the absolute evolution of Being. Lowly atom though I am, I shall fulfil an imperceptible function as such with a heart as all-embracing as the universe.

The universe is fundamentally a system which creeps up on itself and then says, “Boo!” And then it laughs at itself for jumping. And, you see, every time it does it, it forgets that it did it before, so it never becomes a bore.

Noögenesis rises upwards in us and through us unceasingly. We have pointed to the principal characteristics of that movement: the closer association of the grains of thought; the synthesis of individuals and of nations or races; the need of an autonomous and supreme personal focus to bind elementary personalities together, without deforming them, in an atmosphere of active sympathy. And, once again: all this results from the combined action of two curvatures—the roundness of the earth and the cosmic convergence of mind—in conformity with the law of complexity and consciousness.

It’s an interesting situation to be told that you have a very limited amount of life left, because it composes your mind for you—wonderfully. And you start paying attention, asking the questions.

See, that’s the bad side of the wonderful philosophy that we have a wonderful spark: that there’s a central being in your mind without much structure, and it’s either good or bad, you see.

Evolution runs in the direction of enhanced genetic autonomy, or in other words, enhanced individuality—not referring to the individual organism but to the dynamic process in which generations follow after generations.

For the mind that has gained skill in concentration, Self-enquiry becomes comparatively easy. It is by ceaseless enquiry that the thoughts are destroyed and the Self realised—the plenary Reality in which there is not even the “I”-thought, the experience which is referred to as “Silence”.

Any mind could not exist in relation to the world of experience except through its relationship to other minds.

Ideology is toxic. All ideology. It’s not that there are good ones and bad ones. All ideology is toxic because ideology is a kind of insult to the gift of human free thinking.

Consciousness is an ever-shifting process of abstracting shifting quality from a massive process of essential existence. It emphasizes. And yet, if we forget the background, the result is triviality.

There is the entire universe concentrating in the depths of our being.

The Earth is not a big rock infested with living organisms any more than your skeleton is bones infested with cells. The Earth is geological, yes, but this geological entity grows people. And our existence on the Earth is a symptom of the solar system and its balances as much as the solar system, in turn, is a symptom of our galaxy—and our galaxy, in its turn, is a symptom of the whole company of galaxies. Goodness only knows what that’s in.

The subtle distinctions and individual explanations we pile up in an attempt to retain in philosophy the empirical notion of ‘Body’ are simply patches sewn into a worn-out fabric. The very basis of our speculations about matter is defective. We must understand bodies in some other way than that we have hitherto accepted. The problem is how.

We are beginning to explore: what is humanness ontologically? That’s what people are really talking about when they say, “Can machines think? Will machines think?” They mean: “Is what we have focused in on as the defining factor of our being that sets us apart from all other things something which we could manufacture?” And the answer is probably to some degree: yes. Because much of what is intelligence—or appears superficially to be intelligence—is simply data and retrieval. So that, you know, more and more of the culture is being hardwired into an electronic coral reef that is simply the outermost of each of our own exoskeletons. We all have telephones in our homes. Many of us have computer terminals. These things introduce us to a global skin of information. But as the hardware grows more and more unobtrusive we will more and more come to identify these things with our own ego. We won’t even realize that we’re being charged for thinking about certain questions because we’re actually accessing a database somewhere which is feeding us data. So that the commonality of mind is, I think, going to be—somehow, the triumph of socialism will be the commonality of mind in a capitalist context. That there really will be an ocean of thought that you will swim in and that will be composed of deeper and deeper levels of integrated information.

If, however, we consider the ecosystem as an energy system which manifests itself in the organization of matter, maximum “engagement” in matter (i.e. energy storage) and maximum process intensity (i.e. entropy production) are the criteria for optimal stability. This may explain to some extent why the most differentiated and mature ecosystems occur at high temperatures.