The Place of Quarantine – Universal Principle

“It means: individual lives are not just interdependent – one depends on the other and on all of them together. This dependence has the most reliable basis…” – THE PLACE OF QUARANTINE

“It means the following,” Nestor somewhat comically waved his hands. “It means: individual lives are not just interdependent – one depends on the other and on all of them together. This dependence has the most reliable basis. The cloud of B Objects is a self-organized system that does not develop randomly but in accordance with a global principle. This fact does not allow us to predict each individual fate. But it does confirm: none of the collisions and intersections of our lives are governed by chance. This is the true basis of causality. This is, if you like, the mathematical root of karma…”

The Place of Quarantine – Conscions

“Everyone, probably, has moments when they feel the Universe itself is tirelessly caring for the integrity of their unique ‘I’…” – THE PLACE OF QUARANTINE

Tina’s voice and her words resonate in my ears. As if I’m living through that night again, sound after sound, touch after touch, and it is with some reluctance that I open my eyes – here on Quarantine, in the soft armchair of my bedroom. I open them and stare into space for a long time – remembering how in Bangkok, once the theory was finished, and the last equal sign was down in my long-suffering notebook, I went out into the city and wandered around it for hours in unrestrained euphoria.

The Place of Quarantine – Dimensions

“I could sense her lack of indifference – it was so valuable, so rare!…” – THE PLACE OF QUARANTINE

It was these words that caused something to shift in my mind. I suddenly interrupted her, “Wait, wait” – and turned away, trying to apprehend this microscopic change. Tina looked at me with some alarm; I grinned to calm her, then nodded and said, “I understand you perfectly, better than you think – and, by the way… Please think hard, don’t rush, this is serious: How would you describe the place where this ‘someone’ of yours is located? How would you label this place – or perhaps you might be able to just show it to me?”

The Place of Quarantine – Face of Thought

“This was a portrait of the dynamics of the mind, the crown of evolution. I gave it a name – the ‘face of thought’…” – THE PLACE OF QUARANTINE

So, the concept of deterministic chaos put everything in its place. The main principle of the dynamics of the brain was now completely clear. I knew, I felt: a thought, a memory is a “strange” attractor and it cannot be otherwise. And of course, I wanted to look at the thought-attractor eye to eye. I set out to re-create it on paper or on the monitor screen – to get a phase portrait of the process underlying intelligent life.

The Place of Quarantine – Tina’s Symptom

“It was an echo of something vitally important – and she was afraid her life would not be long enough to uncover the essence of it…” – THE PLACE OF QUARANTINE

She looked at me intently. I nodded, seriously, without the slightest hint of a smile. “There’s no other way of putting it,” she repeated, “and there’s no need to. It doesn’t have a precise name anyway, even if I were to go through every dictionary and phrasebook. I cannot even explain it clearly to myself – although, of course, I’ve become used to it and stopped considering it a disease, a sickness. Now I just call it a symptom – it’s a step forward; a difficult one. It’s a positive step – because a symptom is not necessarily related to an illness…”

The Place of Quarantine – From Thought To Consciousness

“Through them – through the quanta of dipole waves – the human brain was interacting with some unknown field!…” – THE PLACE OF QUARANTINE

Once again, the components of the most complicated puzzle had been put in place, set into their grooves and perfectly attached to each other. So many things were clarified at once, in a single stroke! The essence of my model, its quantum nature, had manifested itself in all its might.

The Place of Quarantine – From Memory To Thought

“And then the brain ‘swirled in,’ as if through a funnel, into the required area of the phase space, obeying the laws of chaos, which was not chaos but the highest order…” – THE PLACE OF QUARANTINE

We stayed up very late. I barely asked any questions and made no notes; I just listened. The next morning, I realized that I remembered and understood everything.

The Place of Quarantine – Buddha

“Somewhere, in all of this, the essence of Siam was concealed, along with the essence of this city wearing its mask, pretending to be something it wasn’t…” – THE PLACE OF QUARANTINE

It was Saturday; in the morning, Nok took him to a Buddhist temple. Having given the monks food offerings, they spent two hours at a meditation ceremony. The process entranced Brevich with its steady, unhurried rhythm. Thais – young and old alike – came in, took off their shoes, sat on a wooden platform and closed their eyes. Cameras stood on three sides – concentrated, serene faces floated across large screens.

The Place of Quarantine – Human Memory 2

“Neurons play a part in memorization but only by acting together with something else…” – THE PLACE OF QUARANTINE

My colleague, in his article published long ago, had only outlined the basic principles. Memory, he wrote, is formed by two related mechanisms, not just one based solely on neural cells. Neurons enter into the game first: responding to external stimuli, they begin to “fire” electrical impulses. But their role is auxiliary – through their activity, they only help other participants living in the microworld.

The Place of Quarantine – True Consciousness

“My consciousness was awakened, brought to life by very real fields and particles…” – THE PLACE OF QUARANTINE

The seafront is gradually filling up with people. Today we went out early, among the first to do so. I continue my story, “For no reason, I started shivering and broke into a cold sweat. Then my head began to spin and my temperature rose. My mother put me to bed with a moist towel on my forehead. Everyone thought I’d become sick – with flu or something worse – but they were worrying in vain. There was nothing wrong with my health. What had happened to me was what the majority of my contemporaries experienced sooner or later. What you and everyone else here in Quarantine went through as well. I attained consciousness – true consciousness. I detached myself as a form of living matter from all other species, genera and families – in the broadest sense, far beyond the bounds of recognized taxonomies. To borrow a popular term, I became a human being!