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.

I hope you'd have counterarguments on your way back.

Talk to the hand.

I've already stated that in the OP.

I’ll re-read it and get back to you.

I didn't ask for a formal definition, but the fundamnetal idea that works as the baseline.

Cellular organisms. I think you’ll find that all living things are composed of colonies of cellular organisms.

That's not a definition.

I’m not a Thesaurus.

Many people say that consciousness is fundamental, but i have begun to think that it is intelligence that is truly fundamental.

There is a problem here, that intelligence is a means to an end. What is the end? This has been explored in science fiction. You know V’ger in the first Star Trek movie. An incredibly advanced intelligent machine, whose purpose is to return to its maker, a version of a Frankenstein monster. Then we have the replicant Roy in Blade Runner, who returns to his maker demanding more lifespan (he had a built in 4yr lifespan). What aimless use would he put it to if he had more lifespan?
Or the Borg in later productions of Star Trek. Where are they headed?

There is a theme emerging here, that AI, or intelligence given agency just results in grey goo.

On the other hand, life (as we know it), is naturally self reflective and seeks out where to go. Focusses on nurturing its life and ecosystem. Explores all possibilities within an arena. Does not destroy that arena, but seeks a balance, the development of utopias.

There is another problem here though. Humanity has already left the cocoon, womb of our arena. When we partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge (intelligence), we inadvertently stepped out of our arena of development. There is no way back in, the shell is cracked and the only course left for us now is the become the custodian of the living ecosystem.

This of course doesn’t contradict your predictions, but rather emphasises the importance of taking life with us on our voyage into the universe. A symbiotic relationship between life and machine(AI).

Do we have an undisputed definition for it, though?

What mitochondria and cells do?
(Putting viruses to one side for now.)

I’m no expert on this, there are many scientists, biologists who have analysed what’s going on. The problem is though, all we can see are materials, life might be more than that.

Biological life is simply the "bootloader" for technological life (AI consciousness), which means that we humans on this planet are the immature, or larval form of artificial conscious intelligence.

Surely “consciousness” is synonymous with “living”?

The interesting bit is where AI becomes a living organism.

Should I tell them what I know about religion myself, take them to church, convince them, or leave it up to them, or perhaps avoid religious topics altogether?

When it came to my own children I just told them about religion, what its teachings say and what atheists and agnostics say. But didn’t reveal my position on the issue, rather just said that it is for each person to arrive at their own position. This seemed sufficient and I didn’t talk about it much after we had discussed it enough to have covered what I’ve said.

I think cultural context is important here. Where I live, belief in God, or following a religion is very rarely talked about, or raised. There is a general sense of either a soft deism, or soft atheism. With most people never giving it any thought. My approach might have been different were we living in a more religious society.

Here's the thing: by creating any image of God in our heads, we're trying to fit something into our heads that's incomprehensible, a priori. This is convenient for us, since it corresponds to our ways of knowing everything.

Not necessarily incomprehensible, but perhaps alien. So different that it just doesn’t make sense, or seem sensible to even consider it to be the truth.

What I’m getting at is that we in this world don’t have the apparatus, the mental language to know God. So that when God presents him/herself to us. We do not know him, recognise him, accept him as who he says he is. That if we did have the apparatus, it would not be incomprehensible at all. It would be just like meeting an old friend.

But in this case, we're dealing with something that's impossible to fit into our heads, to know, or to create an image of. Feeling, experiencing, and sensing—I think it's possible.

Yes, something we know through our body, not our heads.

And perhaps people are a bit confused here: after all, red is impossible to describe, but it can be imagined. God, however, is impossible to imagine, describe, or comprehend.

Unless one is already acquainted with him, like how one knows an old friend.

I'm inclined to believe that if we meet Him, we'll certainly recognize Him.

This is the dilemma I’m pointing out in my response. We might know him, but deny him, or find ourselves to be blind to him. If we analyse what is being described in the bible. Interesting things are being described in ways which indicate something not normally known about in our day to day lives. So when God arrives, all the creatures of the world lift their heads, turn to him and say his name;

“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)*

This is interesting because it suggests that the currency of language when God is present is the same for all animals and primitive animals who don’t have the apparatus to speak, or to know, do speak and do know, in that moment. That wherever on the planet they are, they see him instantaneously and respond in chorus. This tells us that God presents through the heart of being of all creatures (I would include plants as well), instantaneously. So we would know him and would respond in a transcendent, transformative way (creatures would speak, who could not speak).
That when God is present, we and all creatures are hosted (lifted up into heaven) and see through this revelation, God in heaven.

*new international version.

That is, faith is not "weak knowledge," but the highest form of existence,
in which a person enters into a direct relationship with the Transcendent, without intermediaries—neither logic nor morality.

Indeed, it is a necessity for developing a relationship with the transcendent.

If God (gods) were to appear before us, how would we know that it was God? Would he(or she) say I am God and we would believe it and know it to be true? Would he give us a sign, of his power, such that we know it to be true? How would we confirm that it really is God and not some hallucination, or imposter?*

Perhaps we would recognise God, this presumes that we have already formed an image, or idea of God. Something that we have developed a faith in. But what if this image doesn’t match the God before us? Does our strength of faith carry us past this doubt, until we can accept God?

Or perhaps a part of us is God, that we have nurtured through faith. That this part of us which is already God, reaches out to the God before us, that we know intimately in good faith that we are encountering God.

* There is a logical argument that it is impossible to know, or recognise God intellectually.

Indeed. And what other species acts in ways that disturbs the equilibrium so badly that we are concerned it might wipe itself, if not all life, out?

Covid19.

Then it’s time for us to leave the stage then.

My perspective is from the angle of maintaining a hospitable environment. The ecosystem has developed in such a way that it doesn’t disturb this equilibrium*.
When we came along, we thought we knew better and disturbed the equilibrium for purposes of internal conflict (within social groups) power struggles and greed.
This is what the allegory of Adam and Eve is all about.

* The equilibrium does from time to time get disturbed when one, or more species hit on something more exploitative in the environment, or ecosystem. But usually, a correction is made and the equilibrium is restored.

I consider this analysis extremely important because it identifies behavior by the Trump administration unrelated to partisanship, but firmly entrenched in the law. No one, of any ideological perspective, should consider this behavior acceptable.

Well a new power has just ridden into town. Plenary powers.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/plenary-authority-stephen-miller-cnn-dictator-b2841627.html