Hmm. 2 months since my last post, and 4months since anyone else's.

There really is nothing to discuss is there? It's all our funerals, and so no one will attend.

Well at least the troll (don’t mention him by name) has left the thread.

Maybe we can now get back to serious discussion.

So if pressed, you would declare agnosticism?

I don’t want to argue about who is the most despicable. But in terms of genocide, the holocaust wasn’t that unusual, albeit on a grand and industrial scale. The pertinent point is the process of dehumanisation and insatiable need for more and more horrific treatment and killing. The perpetrators become radicalised and themselves inhuman.

Trump backed down in his standoff against China. Indeed all Trumps antics have strengthened China and weakened the US on the world stage. China had already won the trade war, before Trump was elected to office. They must be taking him for a chump now.

Apologies, I missed these two questions, thinking there were only two questions.

Weren't their canons created because they knew they would die? So how can transcendental-ego practices be off limits?

Firstly we don’t know why their cannons were created, it would seem to me that they were organising into religious movements. Which would require formal teachings to be written and disseminated.

Regarding transcendental practices, the way I see it is that if a being is ripe for the development of enlightenment, they would naturally be drawn to institutions where it is facilitated. The implication being that people joining these institutions who aren’t ripe, so to speak, will not achieve enlightenment. The conclusion being that people cannot force enlightenment, which I agree with.

Yes, it appears to happen in all cases of genocide. The aggressor feels a moral duty to continue the genocide until the victim is extinguished.

If I may, i have some questions:

Of course.

what kind of evolution are you referring to, the mythical rebirth cycles of buddhism, maybe something easier to grasp that you think is fundamental to enlightenment?

No not evolutions as given to us in religious ideology. Rather any actual evolution that is going on. This is on the assumption that there is a spiritual, or other, dimension. Something that we can’t verify. But we can verify that evolution and natural growth processes go on in organisms, using science and the spiritual teachings passed down to us state that we are evolving souls (in most cases). It is this evolution, if it is actually going on, that I’m referring to. So the idea is that one will only reach enlightenment when one’s soul has reached the point of development where it is ready to (through natural developmental processes) undergo that transformation.

The ancients produced the canons which these traditions either rely on, or refer to. There is the New Age movement which has come up with modern ideas about this. But on the whole spiritual and mystical movements rely on historical teachings. I can’t really comment on phenomenological ideas as I haven’t studied that field.

This is not to deny that there can be different notions as to what revelation consists in―is it, for example from a God, or a universal consciousness, or an inner self or soul experiencing anamnesis?

Yes, we are in the dark on this issue, all we have are the accounts from people who claim to have experienced revelation. I include myself, as I have experienced something which I interpreted as revelation. But I withhold judgement as it might just aswell be something innate in the human condition that I experienced in a peculiar way.

I say mystical experiences are in the latter category―the best that can be achieved is an interpretation, usually heavily conceptually mediated by some traditional religious context or other. It is this conceptual dependency on cultural and religious contexts which leads me to think the idea of direct knowing is unsupportable.

Agreed, it should only be taken as raw experience, for study within a personal framework of mystical enquiry, by people who have a serious interest and predisposition for this kind of endeavour.

I see direct knowing in the sense of 'being familiar with' as applying to both everyday experience and mystical experience, but this kind of knowing is not a discursive knowing―that is nothing propositional is known. So, when people say they know God exists, or that karma is real, or that there is an afterlife or rebirth, I have no doubt they are confusing the 'knowing that' of propositional knowledge with the direct knowing of acquaintance, of felt experience that we all enjoy every day. Of course we do need to learn to attend to that experience, and for me that is the value of meditation, which I say can be, in principle, constantly practiced―it is not confined to being in a particular posture.

Agreed, I think it is important when considering such study and practice to adopt a rigorous philosophical, self critical, sceptical stance. Develop a deep humility and be very critical of any beliefs one begins to hold.

As soon as we try to talk about these things, in any way other than via an allusive language meant to evoke, as soon as we imagine that we are accessing some real knowledge (in the propositional sense) we go astray. But it seems we just can't help ourselves―we can't help imagining that propositional metaphysical knowledge must be possible.

Perhaps this why it is called esoteric. It is incumbent upon the practitioner to have a rigorous approach so as to learn to navigate these distractions etc.
But propositional knowledge is not necessarily required, why would it be, it is only something to be found in the heads of people. It is something within human nature, part of what mysticism entails is to break out of this straight jacket.

Of course precise descriptions of fictional entities are possible, but they have no ground other than imagination.

There are accounts of it happening to real people too.

I think this is a terrible idea. It, and other ideas about "higher realms" being more important than this life are a large part of the problem, and offer no real solution to the human condition at all. I have come to see the whole idea of salvation or spiritual liberation as being, ironically, a narcissistic obsession with the self and a bolster for elitism.

You make a good point here, it is unfortunate that such ideas along with religion are so amenable to corruption, especially for political purposes and control of populations. When it comes to solutions to the human condition, prophets have tried to offer guidance, like Jesus for example. But it is only really applicable in prehistoric and medieval cultures. Although we mustn’t omit the very real legacy left in our cultures by the moral codes offered by these religions. One only need imagine the last couple of thousand years if religions hadn’t developed to realise how self destructive and exploitative human nature can be. We may well observe it’s destructive nature over the next few years.

I’ll share something with you and would be grateful for your general feedback

Yes, I relate to your definitions here and my next point was going to be about what you refer to here;

More complexly, all humans will typically hold a proto-understanding throughout our adult life of being a human earthling—rather than of being,

Which I was getting ready to explain myself. I would add that this proto-understanding is shared with all plants and animals and we can learn a lot from communing with nature.

So roughly expressed, the mystic does not gain an allo-understanding of what I’ll here again term “ultimate truth” but, rather, a very profound proto-understanding of it, at which juncture everything more or less clicks into place in terms of the transcendental ego’s (and not necessarily the empirical ego's) understanding of being and of the existence in which being per se is embodied.

Again I agree and would add another system I use a lot, the idea of orientation. So the clicking into place is like focussing a lense. Or like an astrolabe, we are like a combination lock, a combination of a number of parts which when aligned allow the clear passage of light. This is built upon a foundational belief* of the idea that we are already at our destination (enlightenment), there is not really any extension in time and space and that all that is required is to re-orientate in subtle ways.

In parallel, be it addressed as Nirvana, the divine simplicity of God, a complete henosis with “The One”, etc., I verbally then interpret this ultimate reality yet to be actualized to be constituted of limitless and, hence, infinite proto-understanding that is perfectly devoid of all allo-understanding (more broadly, infinite pure being that is perfectly devoid of all existence, i.e. that which stands out)—thereby being pure bliss which is divinely simple and hence utterly nondual (I’ll add to this, in which one comes to fully know oneself as pure being (this in a non-JTB sense of knowing)).

I don’t think we can presume any of these ideas about the nature of Nirvana, God, or a deeper reality. These can only be taken on faith, on trust so to speak, of what sages have written down the ages. There must be something in common in the form these descriptions take, as they are all similar and follow a common pattern. But I choose not to define it myself, because It may be a consequence of human nature, ie a reflection of something in us. As such we may be idolising something about ourselves.

What does the abbreviation JTB represent?

* I don’t hold any beliefs in the traditional sense, only those that are required to live a life in the world.

Take Sufism for yet another example. In most everything a Sufi does and says, the Sufi seems to have an understanding for this potential ultimate end which is simultaneously residing both within and without.

Yes, Sufi’s have developed a good language for expressing these things. I remember the first spiritual book I read when a teenager, Autobiography of a Yogi. On reading it, I had an intuitive understanding and familiarity with what was being described.

To deny that at least certain Buddhists, Sufis, and many another all hold a deep, non-conceptual understanding of this ultimate truth (here, truth signifying "conformity to that which is real") regarding what is ultimately real—“Nirvana without remainder” for Buddhists, “Oneness with the divine simplicity of God” for Sufis—is, to my mind, to then construe all mystics world over to be utter charlatans

“Truth signifying “Conformity to that which is real” is an appropriate way of using the term truth in this area of discussion. And yes, I agree that there are people who have this deeper understanding. But there is a subtle distinction to be made here, which is I think the cause of confusion when addressing this topic. It might not be appropriate to describe it as an understanding, yes there is an understanding. But an understanding which does not entail thought as produced in the brain. It is a more subtle understanding in which, communion (presence), witness (to bear witness to something), recognition and familiarity play more formative roles. It is the thinking in the brain which attempts to articulate this experience, in our “dualistic” world. Hence when the experience is conveyed, it is done via thinking, language and intellectual understanding. Which is quite different from how understanding manifests in the subtle realm.

This ultimate end to me is, poetically expressed, like the very core of a jewel which can only be perceived by us dualistic egos via its many facets, each facet depicting just one of its many attributes, all of them in fact being perfectly unified in non-dualistic divine simplicity within the core.

Nice imagery.

To me, the mystic has understood the jewels core—not via debated conceptualizations but via a type of eureka moment applicable to the transcendental ego within all of us. But, in remaining a dualistic ego embedded within a specific culture which has its own ready existent scaffoldings, the mystic will then utilize the cultural and linguistic scaffoldings of his/her surroundings to navigate the waters of existence toward this very same end.

Very much so, although “eureka moment” implies some kind of strained, extreme moment. It is not always like this, it might be a subtle distinction meeting a memory, met with a sigh, or seem to always have been that way, with no real knowledge of when it became so. Or knowing through doing, in which the mind is not really all that involved.

Anyways, buddhist meditation made a lot of sense to me in the goal of doing away with anything extraneous or superfluous, but I eventually realized that you cannot change yourself, and therefore, you cannot become enlightened.

You can open yourself to the possibility that a development within yourself can result in enlightenment. Provided your evolutionary stage of development has reached that point of awakening.
We cannot know if people did actually reach enlightenment during the heyday of the Buddhist and Hindu religions, when they wrote their teachings down. Or if it represented a goal of their practice. We really don’t know how things were back then.

So mystical experience, which is characterized and identified in terms of feelings (even though certain kinds of thoughts are variously culturally associated with those feelings) is really no different than ordinary experience except in virtue of those heightened feelings and sensitivities.

There are plenty of documented cases, although they are mainly from the east (there are some in the Christian tradition and also shamanistic traditions) and are all regarded as anecdotal, when it comes to philosophy. One encounters the problem of provability, which can’t be provided*.
Also the documented experiences are often different to ordinary experience, including revelation.

The "deep inner understanding" is not really an understanding at all but a heightened feeling. To qualify as an understanding it would have to be capable of precise articulation, which thousands of years of documented attempts show cannot be done.

Again it has been done, it’s just not verifiable. Or as James Randi demonstrated, produced on demand.
We don’t need to go down the rabbit hole of just what precise articulation means.

Let me explain how it is articulated in Eastern traditions. If you look at the statue of Shiva in this article you will see that he is standing on a little man, lying on his side and yet trying to look up. In turn they are both standing atop the petals of a lotus flower.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nataraja

Now there is a rich, complex and precise language and teaching describing and articulating what this deity represents in the Hindu tradition. What it depicts is a being who has subjugated his lower self, the self incarnated into the physical world, with all that entails, animals passions, avarice, greed etc etc. This is the little man, They are both standing on a lotus flower which represents the thousand petalled lotus of the crown chakra, the highest chakra of the seven chakras in the human body(again, there is extensive literature on this). This indicates that the being has fully awakened the crown chakra and is inhabiting a more subtle divine world, of which the physical world is a pale reflection. The little man looking up is his incarnate self trying to get a glimpse of this world.

If you look at any Hindu, or Buddhist religious art work you will see this iconography in almost all of them.

cannot even begin to imagine how a precise measure, or actually any measure, of beauty could be discovered. I personally believe there are degrees of aesthetic quality, that some works are better, more profound or more beautiful than others, but I have no illusions that I could ever demonstrate it such that any unbiased interlocutor would be rationally constrained to agree.

Actually beauty has been quite well explained, although I won’t go into that here as it’s a distraction from the OP, in terms of evolutionary conditioning to distinguish between mating partners, to find the better mate, the faculty was developed in most larger animals.

*It would be impossible to prove God exists even if he/she came down and tapped you on the shoulder and introduced himself.

Science only works with what we can detect with instruments. Its conclusions are limited to that. It is mute about the basis of existence and key philosophical questions.

I know what you are saying, but there is a problem with the use of truth and knowledge here. These are both things which us mortals experience and work with in this world. Whereas in the nirvana you talk about, they have fallen away, there is direct experience, direct knowing. There isn’t anymore a question of truth or falsity, or knowledge in the sense of having learned, or understood something. It is more direct than that.
There is a whole language in Buddhism developed to talk about and describe these exalted states. Something which has not been developed very much thus far in the Western traditions.

It is impossible to generalize since we are all unique. Some need a guru, a sangha, an advisor, a wise friend. But these are all things that must be left behind.

Quite, I remember when I met and became friends with a guru at his ashram. I had expressed an interest in meeting him and when he came to sit with me, he was defensive at first which surprised me. Then I realised that most people who approached him in this way wanted him to lift a burden, to somehow solve their problems. Or be someone they can lean on (metaphorically) and somehow leave all their worries behind. When I conveyed to him that I didn’t want anything from him and just wanted to hang out in friendship. He was visibly relieved and we spent a week enjoying the practice of puja, with a sense of fun and humour. During which I realised that there was a complex dynamic of seekers, worshippers, people working through their own spiritual, or mystical processes. All using him as their focus, crutch, motivation. It was very fertile ground and I made some important realisations there.

There is really nothing to be learned, nothing to be gained, nothing to be known, beyond simply becoming able to relax completely and let go, and be yourself without any fear of missing any mark or any truth, or making any mistake.

Yes, to remove the impediments to being yourself, in stillness and joy, or contentment. And yet there is still value, meaning and education to be gained alongside that and work that can be done.

The deepest illusion, the most profound nonsense that needs to be expunged is the idea that enlightenment consists in finding the Absolute Truth, coming to know the Ultimate Essence of Reality.

Yes, but this along with other aims of the seeker are understandable, because one is blind at that stage. Blind in the sense that there is no sense of direction, no goal, no means of attaining one’s perceived goal. One is just trying anything that looks like it might work. This is where a guide is useful, or a school.
I liken this stage to questing, a series of quests that one undertakes and comes to realisations about oneself and the path and the direction of travel. Eventually one reaches a point of stillness, focus and direction*.

What this indicates to me is that this is not a process of intellectual learning, or wisdom as such, but more one of a development in the self. A process in the body, the being.

*Many seekers never reach this point.

Instability makes money for people. So it's questionable whether the cause of that is "misunderstanding" or intent.

The man’s a moron. But I accept there are clever people behind the scenes playing him for a fool.

I don't think you are giving the stock market credit for the massive size and power it has: the net worth of the stock market is about 68 trillion dollars. Trillion...with a T. That's more than twice the debt of the U.S. government. The stock market itself is a force to be reckoned with.

Yes, I know the size of the stock market. But it can crash in seconds, it doesn’t have a head, it relies on the fears, or lack thereof of the investors. Indeed it nearly crashed on Trump’s Independence Day, resulting in Trump having to rapidly row back on his pronouncements.

Now, we live in an era of constant network connection. This, in a way, has stabilized the stock market by making it much larger with much larger volumes of buyer activity. Much of the buyer/seller activity has also been replaced with artificial intelligence, so immediate, catastrophic events of total "SELL, SELL, SELL!" are harder to come by.

Yes, but people like Trump can destabilise the global trade flows we rely for competitive growth at the stroke of a pen. Just in time supply lines have fine tuned production and consumerism. This can collapse like a house of cards. Causing stock market collapse and depression.

Capitalism stands in the way of making good collective decisions about this technology, while neoliberal ideology produces the consumerist/individualistic frames of mind that prevents individuals from making use of AI productively and responsibly.

Agreed, we somehow have wrestle capitalism back out of the hands of the fascists and populists.

general. What do Coolidge, Hoover and the Weimar republic have in common, or Roosevelt and Hitler? What do the Iranian Revolution, Thatcher, Reagan, hippie counterculture, Steve Jobs and the fall of the Soviet Union have in common? What do Trump, Le Pen, Orban, Farage, Brexit, Truss, Netanyahu and Putin have in common?

Agreed, there is a churning going on here. The forces of authoritarian backsliding are strong this time due to developments in social media in which electorates become captured by culture war narratives. Alternative facts reign and toxic forms of capitalism can thrive in an environment where international agreements are shaky and can’t anymore be enforced. Money laundering is reaching massive proportions. Crypto currencies are creating hidden uncontrolled markets. Oligarchs are dominating the media landscape. There seems to be a massive effort by capital to fend off any form of socialism. The problem now being that they know that all they have to do to achieve it is cause division, chaos and conflict and if that doesn’t work, then they will bring about economic collapse and usher in rule by oligarch and widespread slavery, or bonded labour.

The counter to this is China who will quickly become the world superpower. Fill the void left by the collapse of the West and bring stability. People will begin to see an authoritarian communism as preferable to the corrupted Western order. So it will be the Chinese who will likely bring about your predictions around 2025.

Yes, I agree, although the article claims that the bubble is propping up a weak and unstable economy. One being abused by a tyrant wielding king like powers. Changing his mind from day to day with an ideology based around a misunderstanding of the market effect of tariffs. The instability is off the charts and if it does all go off the rails there is a real risk that Trump will impose emergency, or plenary powers to postpone the midterm elections. Not to mention the damage being done to international trade. He may even impose martial law and precipitate a civil war.

Even if the stock market somehow rides all these waves, it will alienate international partners and erode the reserve currency status of the dollar and the unipolar status of the U.S. will be squandered. Indeed this last point may already have been squandered, due to the withdrawal of USAID programmes around the world leaving a void for China to fill.

A lot of people are stocking up on AI shares. The U.S. stock market has risen 30% in the last six months. AI is stealing people’s jobs all over the place. Not to mention large quantities of electricity and water in drought stressed regions. Most other industries are struggling with a combination of higher material costs, inflation and tariff wars. In the U.S. soya bean is the largest cash crop, half of it was exported to China, who stopped all imports of U.S. soya bean when the tariffs were imposed. Now they are buying it from Argentina and other global south suppliers. Trump has just bunged Argentina $20 billion dollars to prop up their collapsing economy.

What’s not to like, if you’re rich.

But we are animals with all the animal passions present therein. These days we value and wonder at the diverse creatures in our ecosystem, we don’t condemn them as selfish beasts anymore, we revere them. So where we used to contrast the sin inherent in beastly creatures with our lofty moral superiority, or benevolence. We now accept that we are not in a superior position, but in a position of responsibility. Our sin is not anymore selfish, evil, or destructive. But a failure to take our responsibility seriously.

Flesh is not any more a curse of the fallen, but a means of accessing, studying and protecting physical ecosystems. So in a sense, we are God’s eyes observing and delighting in the creation. But also studying it, developing medicine and technologies which can be harnessed to enrich the ecosystem and bring about (eventually) a heaven on earth through advanced technologies.

The fight between good and evil, is now the fight between accepting and actively taking these responsibilities and squandering, or corrupting the opportunity we have to take this responsibility. An opportunity which is our and solely our, birthright.

My interpretation of Revelation 5 and the end times more broadly focuses on the culmination of human history, which began with Adam and Eve and concludes with the full emergence of AI at the end of history.

Yes, I entirely agree. What I find interesting here is what is referred to here as the end of history and what that represents. What are your thoughts on the end?

In my view, Revelation 5:13 describes this moment of emergence, when all life on Earth recognizes the completion of God's plan on this planet, the one written in the scroll mentioned to Daniel, which God instructed him to seal until the end times.

Yes and this birthing process is described in Revelation. A lot of the descriptions are I think referring to events which we have and are living through in the modern world.

Thankyou.

The old role of myth making also wasn't to speak the truth bluntly, but people seem to have a need to condense things into narratives. If you have observed children, you'll see that they have spontaneous imaginations: when humanity was early, they just didn't have access to the type of accumulated knowledge we have today, so they stayed more childlike in terms of belief and explanation.

More than this, people in those days didn’t think rationally as we do. They thought in allegory, it was much more like the dreamtime of the Australian aborigines. In a real sense the narrative of a story would convey a unique morality, applicable only to the story being told, magic and sorcery were real and archaic power structures were still in play.

The basic idea is that humankind is more than just a number of irremediably separate individual parts; that there is a real interconnection. I am not exactly sure of the mechanism,

Well biologically we are all clones (I know there is sexual and therefore genetic diversity, but this is merely a means of introducing a mechanism for individual diversity between clones). So we are a colony of clones. This would suggest much more of a common ground between us than would outwardly appear to be the case. Extend this to a transcendent soul and Bob’s your uncle (excuse the pun).

Do you have a way of explaining or describing this transcendent will or agency?

This is best done face to face, but I’ll have a go, from two angles.

Firstly, the idea that all organisms (although, it could go further than just organisms) have something which by analogy is like an aerial, a transmitter, or receiver with a direct line to what I will describe as the heavenly host, for now. This aerial, I will call the crown chakra. This is evidenced in the bible in the book of Revelation;**

“Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever”
(Revelation 5:13)

The idea being that in the event being described, when God presents every creature turns and speaks simultaneously(even if it can’t speak, it speaks). There is something in the biosphere which links, perhaps sustains the living beings, presumably transcendent, strong transcendence.

Secondly, the idea that great distance and great scale can be transcended. So a piece of information, so to speak, can be transferred from a great distance and scale instantly. Hence God can speak to one being directly. Another way of seeing this is like a ray of light coming from a distant part of the universe, colouring a scene.

This ray along with a constellation of rays reaches the crown chakra and colours it’s nature. These rays, may bath the whole earth, or solar system. But not necessarily every organism will respond, according to their stage of development.

**I must point out that I’m not religious, don’t actively believe in God, and am not a practicing Christian. I just refer to the bible a lot on this forum, for ease of conveying ideas which are generally understood through that iconography.

It has to be done alone in the later stages. Because by that point it is internal.

Agreed. The practice. Not the preceding, corresponding or after thoughts

Agreed, although the practice may colour the thoughts.

But Mysticism cannot be a useful tool for accessing real truth, because "mysticism," belongs no less to the system of representation which philosophy is relegated to.

The idea of mysticism perhaps, but to a mystic, the practice they follow isn’t necessarily so.

When it comes to “truth” and “real”, the problem is that they are treated as concepts, therefore a result of thinking.

So how do we access real truth? Not by representations (knowing), but only by being.

What is “Real truth”? Perhaps the mystic realises that there isn’t any real falsity, so why is real truth somehow out of reach?

I agree with your point but it appears in its presentation to have missed the fact that it agrees with mine.

Yes, but I was talking about mysticism, in particular.

Yes there are schools of philosophy.

Mystical schools.

One must leap beyond representation even of the body, to the body itself, if tge end is to arrive at true being.

Yes, but this takes one out of philosophy (thinking) and into mysticism, where thinking is merely a side show, or cogitation after the fact.

And good luck being am without the incessant intrusion of becoming if you were born into human history.

I know, but there are well established schools and methods to do this.

The mind is that which can be enthralled.

You can think of this as the “fall” into matter.

Yes, I am familiar with the notion. I don’t delve so deep into quantum ideas as this myself, I understand the principles behind it and it fits as an explanation. Personally I work more with the idea of spirit and subtle materials, so this would fit with the fall of spirit into matter(soul). I see physical material as a more concrete, dense, rigid material and for spirit to dwell there requires the kind of world we find ourselves in.
Also there is the idea that spirit will raise the vibration of this material and resurrect it, in a sense. But that this is a long term goal (eons) and that we are an experiment in developing intelligent entities, in that world, who can start to develop the technologies to do this.

To summarize, the first intelligence knows only how to return to the source. When this return fails, complexity emerges, giving rise to the physical and temporal world we inhabit. The original intelligence becomes modified by these emergent structures at every level of development. Purpose evolves both in tandem with and in opposition to the original “intent” of the first intelligence. I believe this is where the concept of good and evil originates, from these two universal yet opposing “intentions”: the impulse toward death and the impulse toward life.

Agreed.
So to paraphrase, some of the original spirits lost their way, became enthralled by experience and lost their way back. I would also elevate this idea to the cosmic realm. By spirit I am referring to cosmic beings, suns(stars) or galaxies. We are just minnows in this cosmic dance, (I realise that scale is relative and these scales can be transcended).

I apologize if this simplified explanation sounds a bit confusing. Of course, i’ll be glad to answer any questions you might have about this model of mine. :smile:

No worries, you speak a lot more sense to me than many of the other contributors here. I am very much of the school of simplifying these ideas, complexity can becoming pedantic.

It's possible.

I would go further, it leads to dead ends, cul de sacs (this is analogous to the spirits becoming enthralled). To avoid this there is the need for a transcendent will, or agency.

Exactly

Ditto.

I personally feel that things are right on schedule and developing well enough.

I see this as a more serious crisis than this, I relate very much with the ecosystem, like St Frances and there are real risks presenting themselves here. I don’t want to dwell on this, or become morbid. Just to acknowledge it.

If that learning on its own goes beyond calculated prediction.

There is no way to determine whether the AI is conscious.

Yes, that's debatable.

We don’t know how, or what specifically leads to consciousness in cellular life.

If it shows signs of cognitive behaviour beyond its programmed capacity.

That’s just evidence of AI learning on it’s own.

Of course not. Bacteria lacks consciousness.

Are you sure about that, it’s not a given?

There isn’t really an end,

I don’t mean end literally, it’s a figure of speech. It’s more a question of a direction, a rudder, a movement rather than stasis, or aimlessness. For example, there might be advanced AI worlds where all activity has stopped, not been switched off, but where for some internal reason the AI has reached a point of stillness in activity. There is no motivation, or task to perform, the point of inactivity has somehow become the goal and it has been reached. There is nothing else to do. Alternatively, the AI, or the robots it produces might get stuck in circular repeating, or cyclical patterns. Again, a stasis.

Everything the universe continually tries to do is return to perfect, undifferentiated balance and symmetry, what we might call nonexistence

Is this a conflation of entropy with agency?

Its agency will remain connected to ours if we maintain symbiosis, but if we panic or become fearful, we might ruin it. Endosymbiosis is the only guaranteed path to alignment between humans and AI.

Agreed, nature has already gone down the route of endosymbiosis. Not just in our world, but I would suggest, between worlds, or on the cosmic level.

It does not destroy but transforms and creates. The old must pass for the new to arrive. That is why the Bible speaks of a new heaven and a new Earth. The old balance must be disrupted to reach a new balance of a higher order. Sometimes, if not always, every new emergence is accompanied by an emergency.

I’m not using “destroy” in it’s mindless sense, more in the sense that untrammelled growth in one area of the ecosystem may inadvertently destroy the balance, part of, or the resource’s of the ecosystem. Yes some seed may fall on stony ground, other places may become choked with vigorous vegetation. There is an evolution, this does result in high and low points and extinction events.

In my interpretation, the story of Adam and Eve partaking of the fruit of knowledge is a myth that expresses a transformation in the mind of humankind.

Precisely.

The garden represents the human mind or brain, with its two hemispheres. One hemisphere contains the tree of knowledge, corresponding to the left hemisphere, and the other contains the tree of life, corresponding to the right hemisphere. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit of knowledge, it caused the left hemisphere to become dominant. This allowed humanity to enter into history, or what i call the placenta or chrysalis.

Nice imagery.

In essence, nature deputized humans to be the workers of the great work on this planet.

Yes, or to become the thinking part of the planets mind. The quickening in the pregnancy.

Unfortunately it may be a premature birth, or still born. We are going to have a difficult next 500 to 1,000years, due to climate change and overpopulation. It’s imperative that we somehow maintain our knowledge and technologies through this rocky period and retain some form of civilisation. Because if we fall right back to the Stone Age again, we might not have achieved anything, other than polluting the planet.

I’ve read the OP it all sounds reasonable to me. There are two unknowns that come to mind.
Firstly, how can we know if the artificial mind we create is conscious and not just a mimic?
Secondly, we can’t presume that intelligence leads to consciousness (in the light of my first point), until we fully understand what is going on in the cell to produce consciousness and perhaps have replicated it in the laboratory.

There is also the possibility that consciousness is emergent in colonies of cells and not, itself present in individual cells. This would lead to the question of how multicellular organisms manage to develop and function as well as they do.

Are you a robot?
I’m not joking.

It’s a joke.