Of
Candida Morvillo
The physicist, inventor and entrepreneur: «One night, while I was waiting to go back to sleep, I felt a large beam of white, sparkling, living light emanating from my heart»
We are re-proposing Candida Morvillo’s interview with Federico Faggin, published on 8 August, one of the most appreciated by our readers in 2025.
Of him, Bill Gates said: «Without Federico Faggin, Silicon Valley would not be called that and would be a simple “valley”». Comment by Faggin, as we sit in the living room of his house in Vicenza where nothing is high tech, not even the fan: «I remember him as a twenty-year-old, Bill Gates. He had just started Microsoft. It was peppery…”.
This vigorous eighty-three-year-old in a short-sleeved checked shirt is responsible for the invention of the microchip, which with silicon has allowed the miniaturization of billions of devices, inaugurating the digital age and baptizing the valley that was its cradle and where he lived since 1968. And it was he who co-invented touch pads and touch screens. He remembers: «We created the touch screen when there was nothing to apply it to, then the first smartphones came out and I presented it to mobile phone manufacturers, but for five or six years no one wanted it. Then, I met Steve Jobs, who understood. He was more imaginative. Except he asked for the exclusive and I didn’t give it to him. So, he developed the touch screen himself and, when it came out, I was very happy, because it had opened the market and we could sell ours to everyone else.”
And how many touch screens have you sold?
«But millions and millions a month! But I had already started my research on quantum physics and consciousness and, in 2009, I left the business, then creating a foundation with my wife Elvia to dedicate myself entirely to this.”
Am I exaggerating too much if I say that there is a risk of proving the existence of God through quantum physics?
“I would avoid the word God… Each religion defines God differently.”
It all comes from what she calls “awakening”. What is “awakening”?
«In 1990, I was on holiday, I woke up around midnight and, while I was waiting to go back to sleep, I felt a charge of love-energy emanating from my heart that I had never felt before. It was a broad beam of white, shimmering, living light. Suddenly, that light exploded and filled the room to embrace the entire universe. I felt that this was the “substance” of which everything that exists is made. And I felt, with enormous surprise, that that substance, that light, that love was me. Not only that, but that we are all this love, if we open ourselves to the possibility of experiencing it.”
Didn’t you suspect a hallucination?
«It was too true to be, but there I understood that knowledge must pass through experience. If someone had told me the same experience before, I wouldn’t have understood it. It’s like explaining the flavor of a fruit to someone who has never tasted it. Today, however, after thirty years of spiritual research, every day, I know someone who has experienced “the awakening”.
And am I oversimplifying it if I say that, at the basis of your theory, consciousness comes first and then the body? That thought is born first and then matter?
«I wasn’t the first to say it, but the step forward was understanding how quantum physics can be explained starting from the existence of consciousness and free will. When we explain what we feel, we use words, gestures, but it is not possible for us to transfer everything. Likewise, the quantum state of a field is private and is only partially knowable. Therefore, we are a quantum field and consciousness is a quantum phenomenon because it has all the characteristics of the pure quantum state: it is well defined, it is private and knowable only by the system that is in that state. This exactly reflects the phenomenology of our inner experience. And stating that we are a quantum field allows us to understand another thing for which physicists have not found a reason: the collapse of the wave function.”
I warn you that you have a degree in Physics, I don’t.
«I’m talking about the fact that quantum physics can give us the probabilities of what will manifest itself, but it will never tell us what will manifest itself. The final outcome, for physicists, is random and no one knows why. Instead, with this theory, the impossibility of prediction is explained by saying that a quantum field, being conscious, is equipped with free will. This conclusion, which I arrived at collaborating with Professor Giacomo Mauro D’Ariano, is very plausible, but it will take time for it to be accepted: many physicists do not consider consciousness and free will part of Physics.”
She theorizes that everything that exists is created by One. Who is “One”?
«The universe. That of Physics is dynamic and holistic, that is, it changes continuously and is not made up of separable parts, however, I also add that “One wants to know oneself” and therefore I introduce free will and consciousness, because, to want to know oneself, one must be conscious.”
And you also say that we are “units of consciousness”, parts of “One” with its own properties: it seems like the story of God who makes us in his image and likeness.
“Exact”.
A «One» of pure light and spirit, which generates energy and matter to be able to experiment in different situations and evolve?
“This”.
What intuition guided you?
«Already in that first awakening experience, it struck me that I was both the observer and the observed. This was crazy, because it was like there was no separation between me and the world. There, I understood that reality is holographic, that is, it is made of parts-wholes: each field contains the essence of the whole, we exist as part of a whole. It’s not easy to say more than that.”
In your books, you describe the body as directed by a consciousness that is elsewhere, a sort of soul that precedes it and survives it. Have you ever experienced in that dimension?
«Once, I experienced my consciousness everywhere: it was inside the body, but also outside. I looked out the window and my consciousness was also in the meadow, in the trees, in the building in front of me, in the sky. I heard that they are a field that exists everywhere. This experience was different from the other one I told you about. This time, I was no longer in the room I was physically in, but I was inside what I saw.”
Other experiences?
«In another, my consciousness actually left the body, I was like the one looking down from above. Except I got a little scared and got sucked right in. I have had some experiences with Holotropic Breathwork, a breathing technique. I have never used drugs. Many practice Artificial spirituality, but an experience that does not come in response to questions is not reliable. The starting point is: One wants to know oneself.”
If consciousness survives the body, where does it go when the body dies?
«A field, once created, exists forever, but scientism doesn’t want to hear about reincarnation. However, there are many studies on children who remember past lives and know strange languages they have never heard. Children are closer to deeper realities. I myself, at three or four years old, said: “When I was growing up and blah blah blah…”, I told things that I had memory of and that I couldn’t have known. Naturally, I was silenced. Consider that I was actually born in the agricultural era: there was war, bombs, we were displaced in the countryside, it was a community that only spoke the Venetian dialect.”
How much skepticism are you encountering towards your theory?
“So far, I haven’t heard much criticism, but I imagine they are preparing well to attack me later.”
As an inventor he was nominated for the Nobel, does he give himself hope as a quantum physicist?
“They give you the Nobel when the theory has been proven and I have started a project that aims to demonstrate it over the next ten years.”
What experiments are you doing?
«Various. One aims to demonstrate that plants are conscious. Today, most are convinced that they are not because they don’t have a brain.”
Should we fear artificial intelligence?
«I believe that my theory is crucial to avoid getting bitten: if we don’t understand that we are more than artificial intelligence, we will be swallowed up by it. True creativity comes from us, but there is a movement to make us believe that artificial intelligence is better than us.”
And it’s not? He can do more things than us and faster.
«He doesn’t have a conscience and he never will. But used intelligently it is useful. If you are not competent and you rely on AI, you accept bullshit, because AI makes many mistakes and you need to know how to catch them. The risk is that those who are richer in intelligence become more intelligent with AI, while those who are poor in intelligence become poorer. And this is very serious because there are more poor than rich and therefore democracy is also in danger. In fact, the powerful want to control artificial intelligence to sell more and to manipulate people. The manipulation is subtle, increasingly insidious. Look at scientism: it pushes to convince us that reality is made only of matter and everything else follows it. And so, for example, we end up glorifying competition. In the vision that I propose, however, there is only cooperation, because we are entire parts of One and One is not competitive, it is cooperative. Instead, we have accepted the principle of survival of the fittest, the fittest.”
From the first signs, how are we using AI?
“The first evidence is that kids let AI do their homework, but if one uses it like a slacker, one condemns oneself to irrelevance and, over time, one can do without it.”
What do you think of Elon Musk?
“I prefer to stay out of the debate.”
In his latest book, «Oltre l’invisibile», published by Mondadori, he writes that he hopes that this is the era of humanity’s spiritual awakening and foresees a new Renaissance. Right now, with robots, artificial intelligence, so many wars?
«Perhaps precisely because of what we live, I see more and more people willing to accept that we are more than ourselves. In fact, one of my videos on YouTube in which I explain that — like drones — we are bodies directed by a consciousness that is elsewhere has received more than two million views in five months. Ten years ago, he would have made perhaps ten thousand.”
December 29, 2025
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