Consciousness and intelligence

I've been thinking this week about the difference between consciousness and intelligence. As we veer into our new world with computers that are getting smarter every day, it seems like a good idea to be solid on what this difference is. Consciousness is awareness, and a particular kind of awareness that is not available to the machines we will be building. Unless we can build a machine that is capable of truly caring about another being's pain, it's unlikely that we will ever build computers that can replace us.

They can replace and even exceed our intelligence if we define intelligence as speed of processing and acting on information. They may even be able to replace and exceed our ability to liberate others from suffering, in that machines can be programmed to look at the facts and not be prone to faulty beliefs or perceptions.  It is indeed possible that self-driving cars will liberate us from accidents. But what machines cannot replace is our ability to care about or value life.  All life, not just human.

The technology that machines cannot replace is compassion, which I define here as the desire to liberate others from sufferings. Computers and robots cannot want others to be free of pain, cannot want others to be happy.

There are certain kinds of value decisions that computers cannot make. A machine will never be able to make the decision to be grateful for what it has, to hold life precious, to take to time to be struck by beauty rather than roam the world feeding a craving for more possessions, more sensations, more permanence.

And if we are able to offload much of our intelligence to computers, will intelligence continue to be valuable? Perhaps a natural intelligence will become more valuable as the more machine-like processes of intelligence are replicated.

The future is going to be harder and harder to predict because humans are more predictable in many ways that machines. As machines are given more control of the world it may seem that chaos will reign forever from now on.  But maybe not.  At a certain point, we may reach the limits of what machines can really do and we can come to a consensus on what to do with our newfound power.

Dictation

This week I am no longer alone.

I've noticed of the course of many years of practice that if I manage to maintain a one hour meditation time for more than a couple of months that I start to feel an intelligence in my life. A voice starts to speak to me, to reassure me, to guide me, to bring my attention back to the present again and again. At times I've thought of this as my muse.  But from now on I'm going to think of it as a daemon.

Not a demon. A daemon, in the Greek sense of the term, and energy that drives the soul.  Thomas Moore, the Jungian psychologist, writes in Original Self, that the daemon is to the soul what the ego is to the self.  If we are to live from the soul, from chi, from kundalini, from whatever vitality we've chosen to cultivate, having that intelligence that keeps us on the path is an essential drive.

Ben's been studying the Renaissance this week at school. So I'm conscious of this shift we made several centuries ago as a civilization to place man at the center of the world instead of God. What we ended up placing in the center was the ego. If we could shift again what would we place at the centre? I would like to think it would be the soul.  Perhaps consciousness.  Whatever this energy is that transports us to a better place, a more peaceful place, a more joyful place.

This week I have felt it become more central to my life, not just because of my daemon emerging.  I've started to feel this kind of double body. Almost like double vision, but it's more like double feeling. Sometimes I see my heart as a green energy pulsating a little bit outside of and to the right of my body. Sometimes I  just sit with waves and the rythms of the universe.

Last night I did a long meditation.  Almost two hours and felt the undeniable deep warm coil of energy. Not the whole flow yet,  distinct parts in my neck and my upper abdomen.  Nothing imagined there.  This was a physical energy.

Daemon has instructed me to stop watching T.V. and Netlix, so I don't have much else to do but to become aware of it.

The adventure continues.

natural intelligence

I find when I wake up in the mornings, now, I'm a little less focused on achieving energy highs, and more focused on just absorbing the peace and quiet and subtle energy of the morning as it become light.

I think true happiness is a process of aligning oneself with the natural intelligence and happiness of the universe at it is. Sometimes this process brings tremendous gifts, tremendous alterations of consciousness. Sometimes it bring only a deeper appreciation for a more subtle stillness.

What I'm becoming more aware of today is the subtle tightening and stress that grips my body when my mind drifts off to other processes. The processes that have been promised to me by the civilization I live in, education (Ben's), career (mine, my parents), all my anxieties surrounding these things. My lack of mate, and to some extent community. I'm not saying these anxieties are not legitimate. But I no longer desire to be driven by them. I would prefer to be aware of them and to make my decisions from a place that is driven by authentic peace.

That I think is what I call natural intelligence. A place of natural intelligence where my choices and decisions are directed from the place of peace and strength we have when we are committed to this alliance with nature, with light, with the sky and the sun and the planets. This is a good place to come from. This is the only place I want to come from.