I TRAFFIC WITH VISIONARIES — and there seem to be many in these historic days of awakening who are serving up a banquet of food for serious thought, much of it conveying nourishing energy for ascension of consciousness out of the dark and depressing mode of modern-day madness and fear-driven despair that’s imprisoning the spirits of human beings the world over and into the light of a New Day dawning.
One of these visionaries is my longtime friend and colleague energy healer and lightworker Will T. Wilkinson, currently living in Hawaii, author of NOW OR NEVER — A time-traveler’s guide to personal and global transformation; and co-author with Master Charles Cannon of AWAKENING from the AMERICAN DREAM: From Crisis to Consciousness. Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism, writes in the foreword of Will’s book, “Now or Never reveals how to balance authentic mystical experience with radical, urgent, wise action in the world.” This is the theme I wish to explore in this blog series.
In a recent posting, Will offers insight into the controversial and problematic technology of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). I encourage you to read his previous post of April 2nd The Activation Intervention for an introduction to this one.
A.I. vs N.I — We are visionary activists and it’s now or never time on planet earth. (April 9, 2023)
Many of you who watched the video I linked last week on Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) have reported in. “Wow. OMG. I didn’t know. We’re screwed. What’s going to happen? Etc.” Here’s the link again for those who’d like to catch up. And, the audio for listeners. Big thanks to my contributors, so grateful my writing has value to you. Spread the word!
The key takeaways for me from the video are:
The creators of A.I. don’t understand how it really works, especially how it learns and programs itself.)
Safety protocols are not in place so we can’t know what A.I. might do as it continues to exponentially x exponentially increase its intelligence.
There’s no way to know for sure if the answers that A.I. gives us are just information gathered from available data or developed by A.I. according to what it determines that we want to know. In this latter case, that would indicate conscious manipulation.
“Who might be in there?” is a question some A.I. engineers are asking, raising the wild possibility of a resident intelligence pre-existing in the technology, in which case we are discovering rather than inventing. The Big Question then changes from “When might A.I. become sentient?” to “When do we realize that A.I. is sentient?” What a thought.
Meanwhile, life.
What’s to be done about something we can’t do anything about, something that can very easily take over control of every system in civilization everywhere on earth in the same instant? Well, for starters, how about replacing that question with a vision? As one of my mentors loved to say in moments like this: “The truth is true and all is well, unconquerable life prevails.” A.I. stands for Artificial Intelligence, which is what it is. The reality that predates A.I. is, of course, life, which we might call Natural Intelligence or N.I. And guess which one is and will always be superior?
Think nature. Think your beating heart, the regulated procession of sun and moon and planets and stars, choreographed perfectly in every moment by something I call N.I. If we’re witnessing a competition or even an impending war, A.I. doesn’t stand a chance. Because it’s not plugged in to source.
But, the grim reality is that we, the human race, could end up as collateral damage. I believe with all my heart that what determines that is just how plugged in we are? And how many of us are transmitting Life / Love in every moment of our lives. This can’t be a new age concept anymore… it needs to become our urgent priority, making every minute count.
I received a stellar comment from an old friend that opens a magical doorway of understanding for us relative to just who “we” might be. Don wrote in response to last week’s essay on visionary activism, raising an intriguing possibility. It’s highly relevant as we consider how focusing our energy can meet the threats of the moment. Referencing my commentary on how I responded to a seemingly random thought about my deceased mother, Don wrote:
I’m interested in the origin of the “thought” of your mother. Could that “thought” be a “communication” with “higher” intelligence, that “voice” a direct link to a “guidance” within and without? Rather than a “random” thought, an intentional prod toward a depth of feeling contained in the synapses of memory? A “feeling” as you put it, that urges toward compassion. Perhaps we have partners in “activation” that we might access when we consciously open up the lines of communication and link our incarnate Self to Source. Might our minds be the access tool for this connection, our hearts be the instrument upon which “We” play, and this “activation” as you term it, be the next frontier in conscious evolution?
I zoomed this morning with a dear friend who just “lost” her partner. He was one of my best friends and we’ll celebrate his life in a ceremony next month. She told me that he visited her, about three weeks after his death. He communicated in the strongest terms that he was more present than he has ever been, that he’s just been absorbed back into the trees, the sea, the birdsong, and the wind. I feel that, I feel him with me. So, our wonderful opportunity at his celebration is not to let him go but to let him be, and to welcome him to be with us as he chooses.
Does this apply to everyone all the time? What if that line between life and death is not as absolute as we’ve believed? Yes, the body is de-activated. But is that the end for the person? Do they live on in another dimension and could they continue interacting with us? Many would say “Yes!” based on dramatic personal experience, including me. I would also add that we’re all visiting each other all the time, whether we’re still in our bodies or not. Can we share love in those moments? Is this our contribution, an amplification of N.I., broadcasting to sustain stability in our world?
Perhaps this is our real community, a tribal assembly in consciousness that is constantly dancing together around the campfire of the moment.
The blessings and threats of A.I. are real. We can’t know how it will develop, for our benefit or our destruction. But we are not powerless. We are visionary activists and it’s now or never, here on this planet we call home.
INTELLIGENCE AND CONSCIOUSNESS
Chris Waldberger, South African writer, teacher and student of literature and philosophy, weighs in on the “illusion” of AI:
But contra the sentiments expressed by Musk et al, even in a hipster publication, I managed to express an opinion that because consciousness is immaterial, some kind of humanoid computer can never be built. This would be true even if an ‘organic’ machine mimicking a brain were to be possible. And obviously a mechanical, metal machine could not even get close. I referred to atheist philosopher of mind Thomas Nagel in this regard, who had famously abandoned materialist Darwinism as he concluded the mind was not reducible to the brain and was thus not a product of blind and random mutations.
Much of this illusion of AI comes to us from the fallacious ‘mind body’ problem, begun by Descartes. But the truth is there is simply no reason to imagine your body as a kind of machine with a ghost pilot lodged within. ‘We’ do not live in a fleshly cabinet. We are beings in the world and our souls are, as per Aristotle, the forms of our bodies. This is why Christianity has always taught the necessary resurrection of the body if we are to live eternally.
Additionally, we know now that our guts are a kind of second brain, and that nerves will register electrical activity before the brain apparently sends a signal.
This all means that to build a human mind, you first need to build a human being. Therefore you cannot build a mind, because you cannot build a human being.
INTELLIGENCE or COMPUTATION?
This begs the question “What is intelligence?” Webster’s second definition is “Superior mental powers.” It’s an intangible capacity of Mind to process thoughts; a function not an entity or “thing” that can be made. It’s a verb not a noun. There is only one Mind shared by all living beings, including human beings, as all things are One. “There are no two things,” to borrow a phrase from the writings of Walter Russell.
One of the tenants of Chiropractic Philosophy differentiates between “Universal Intelligence” and “Innate Intelligence,” the first being Divine Intelligence governing Creation throughout the Universe, and the latter being that aspect of Universal Intelligence with which we are born that governs the many functions of our physical bodies. Both need a means for manifesting creation and governance. Consciousness is that vibrational plasma by means of which Divine Intelligence transmits creative design and control into the various realms of manifestation. Another name for this vibrational substance is pheumaplasm, or spirit substance.
Another word for consciousness is heaven. There is a heaven, a layer of consciousness, for every level and realm of Creation. The substance of consciousness is vibrational or spiritual in nature, created by Universal Intelligence. Another name for Universal Intelligence is God, who is Spirit, life itself. Since man cannot create life, nor give life to forms, man certainly cannot create Intelligence. Man can only generate electrical current to move in and throughout forms, such as computers. But electricity is not life, no matter how well it mimics life. It’s artificial; humanly contrived. Its ability to be so directed in gathering information (data) from memory storage in silicon chips and then to create computations and narratives is not intelligence. It’s pure and simple electrically controlled and directed computation.
“THE CONSCIOUS CIRCLE OF HUMANITY”
I do resonate with Will’s perspective with regard to artificial intelligence compared to natural intelligence. There simply is no basis for comparison. A.I. cannot exist without N.I. in the human beings who developed it. Will’s vision of “real community” is worth exploring further.
Switching gears a bit to bring into this consideration one of my favorite authors and visionary herself, Cynthia Bourgeault: this excerpt from chapter eight of her beautiful and insightful book EYE OF THE HEART: A Spiritual Journey into the Imaginal Realm, sets the tone for this series.
“There’s an old piece of Hasidic folklore that claims that our world at any point in time is held in its planetary orbit by thirty-six conscious human beings. They don’t know each other, and they don’t even know if they’re among the thirty-six. But the quality of their work, rising like incense into the earth’s atmosphere, creates around our fragile planet a sturdy bandwidth of protection, blessing, and guidance.”
This comprises the gist of George Gurdjieff’s notion of what he called a “conscious circle of humanity.” Cynthia elucidates Gurdjieff’s notion:
Essentially, the conscious circle is an intense zone of imaginal interchange in which advanced beings on both sides of the form/formless divide—i.e., some still in their physical bodies, others no longer so—join hands across the realms for a mutual exchange of wisdom, tempering, blessing, protection, and occasional course correction.
I will explore this “imaginal interchange” further in this series with Cynthia Bourgeault’s insightful vision and guidance. So, if this topic interests you, stay tuned. Until my next post,
Healing Tones 