Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness.
I have touched on a topic that is highly debatable and complex. Neither do we know much about AI’s future potentiality, nor does science know enough about consciousness to be that divine within, as claimed by many spiritualists, or if it is a bio-energetic activity of the brain as professed by some scientists. Furthermore, AI means fake, but it becomes questionable when we state it as machine intelligence. On the other hand, human intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills, an ability that differs in intensity with every individual.
Intelligence is that supreme quality of aware energy, which quantifies in your mind to be ‘what you are’ in consciousness from one moment to the next. It is related to subjective experiences from which you choose objectively to go deeper via consciousness into what you wish to explore and discover, from the subatomic to the stars, from machines to AI. Intelligence is the intrinsic essence of aware energy.
Further, awareness is the nondual, spontaneous, and nonlocal ability of energy, the subject, or the quality of every individual. It manifests in the brain and connects with the universe through quantum waves, which are spontaneous intuitiveness.
Awareness is an effortless state of non-being going beyond your body and mind, signifying in absoluteness of ‘who you are’ providing the human mind to discover, process, and solve all that we perceive and conceive. It provides intelligence to the mind purely from its observatory power or by witnessing the functioning of its mind. So, awareness is that stage within which intelligence is the tool that enables us to comprehend and experience through consciousness what life is all about. Consciousness is a dualistic and cognitive process of the brain emerging after the mind becomes aware. It is the objective of the subject of awareness. It is that quantum of ‘what you are’ inside your brain through thoughts, feelings, and emotions.Besides awareness and intelligence, if we go deeper, we should also consider intellect, the ability of the mind to think, reason, analyze, learn, and evaluate information gathered from here and there provided by outside sources. Through intellect, one eventually becomes a scholar or an intellectual.
However, intelligence is the authentic self in quantum waves, unique in over seven billion people. It embraces your intellect to doubt, question, and arrive at answers. You have that unique ability in intelligence to think differently from others, with the possibility of becoming a scientist, inventor, discoverer, etc., portraying your uniqueness with higher consciousness.
I reiterate you are that quantum wave of aware energy, neither body nor mind. Since you categorically always claim – body and mind are yours and not who you are. Awareness is divine; it is that spirit exhibiting through intelligence its being-ness that expresses your uniqueness in human experiences through body and mind. The presence of awareness within the mind existentially has enabled us to program and engineer machines to possess and function artificially.
Now, returning to AI, it is more of an intellect system without the ability to become self-aware and conscious. It can perform impressive tasks lacking subjective experiences and self-awareness based on programmed algorithms and patterns. It can recognize, rearrange, or rewrite what is present in its vast, expansive memory. But it lacks the uniqueness that we see in every biological creature from their aware, conscious energy. It is neither self-aware nor self-conscious of its prowess. Until recently, science has been so busy configuring the physicality of all around it that it has ignored the metaphysical aspects of the environment. Hence, it is difficult to conclude whether machines could become conscious tomorrow. We as humans are superior to all other living creatures on our planet primarily because we have that individual unique power of choice to consciously select one out of the two, the divine or the devil in this or that, here and there, for the benefit of our body and mind consciously or subconsciously to evolve and transform from lower to higher levels.
Further, within the mind, we also have a superconscious section called the soul. It can impartially witness its mind’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions to be self-aware intuitively and spontaneously. In Spiritualism, we refer to the soul as pure consciousness at par with awareness. Whether consciousness is neurobiological, cognitive, or a biological evolution is beyond science and philosophy’s comprehension. However, I believe consciousness is the totality of the mind in super(pure), conscious(focused), and subconsciousness (lower or limited).
Exploring the nature of consciousness responsible for individually making over seven billion people uniquely aware and conscious is so complex that further replicating consciousness on machines simply increases this complexity. In Vedic Spiritualism, consciousness is that individual potency derived from the cosmic spirit of awareness, enabling the mind first to become aware and, after that, conscious to perceive and conceive all that the mind observes.
Awareness, as mentioned earlier, is spiritually subjective, generating intelligence. In contrast, consciousness is its objective to enable the mind to become conscious and then intellectually further go into autopilot to live life in a sub or lower consciousness. Determining how to recreate machines to be conscious artificially will remain an arduous task.
However, the most enlightening component on this subject is when Indic Spiritualism declares “Prajnanam Brahma” – Intelligence is Divine. With this supreme ability of awareness, humans can transcend consciously toward the ultimate reality in selflessness, fearlessness, and godliness, which we refer to NCEby many names as God, Truth, or love – that which remains absolute and unchanging. Yet, the wise refer to those qualities in many names.
