Virtually unprecedented research resources are being committed to the construction of an experimental nuclear fusion reactor (ITER) by an intergovernmental coalition of countries as a key step in the resolution of the foreseeable energy challenges of the planet. The Cognitive Fusion Reactor (ITER-8) initiative:

• is complementary to this project and quite distinct, although it is designed to benefit symbiotically from the creative challenges and breakthroughs in research on controlled nuclear fusion.
• is focused on the challenge of engendering psycho-cultural energy, notably as a response to the increasing popular apathy with regard to major social projects.
• is seen as vital to sustaining the creativity, excitement, collective purpose and fun without which unlimited supplies of conventional energy are effectively meaningless to any higher quality of life.
• is a coherent act of will, creativity and imagination designed to serve as an attractor for those who can engage in its processes and disciplines or benefit therefrom.
• has sympathies with the innovative culture of the best of western research and design environments (as exemplified by Silcon Valley and the Media Lab).

This initiative is consistent with the need to explore subtler and more dynamic approaches to organization, beyond the unfocused "vision" of "networking" or "knowledge management". The issues are articulated in Consciously Self-reflexive Global Initiatives: Renaissance zones, complex adaptive systems, and third order organizations. The initiative is complementary to three others -- each accessible via the logo above -- mutually counter-balancing echoes of a central process in the moment and beyond time. Together these form an emerging, overarching union of interweaving processes: a potential "pattern that connects". The challenge to comprehension is discussed elsewhere (Dynamic Reframing of "Union": implications for the coherence of knowledge, social organization and personal identity).

These issues are further clarified in a table interrelating the four initiatives (In Quest of "Meta-Union"?). The nature of any union of significance is therefore not predefined by any form of understanding but is progressively and continually (re)discovered in time. Indeed, since "yoga" signifies "union" (in Sanskrit), the corollary may be that the challenge of any "union" of significance implies some form of "yoga".

Frequently asked questions about this initiative are addressed in a FAQ. The web address of this site (www.un-iter8.org) also offers a caution against overly hasty assumptions -- as discussed separately.