Artificial Ignorance - The AI Revolution Hits a Fatal Snag
An Encounter in The Desert at the Cutting Edge of the AI Revolution
(Michael at The Renaissance Esmerelda Resort near Palm Springs for “Contact in The Desert”)
“Cogito ergo sum,” said the French thinker with the big nose, coining one of the most quotable quotes of the last several hundred years. But Rene Descartes’ famous dictum, “I think, therefore I am” may be finally losing its place as a pillar supporting the tottering edifice of Western philosophy.
At stake is not merely the relevance of a handy definition of human identity, but possibly the survival of the species.
So went the conversation at the recent Contact in The Desert (CITD) conference at The Renaissance Esmerelda Resort near Palm Springs, California, where legendary environmentalist/mystic, John P. Milton, engaged in a deep dive with prominent social scientists/futurists, Dr. J.J. Hurtak and his wife, Dr. Desiree Hurtak, Matthew James Bailey, Paul Hynek, journalist Alexis Brooks and others, exploring the nature of Consciousness and the urgent need to forge an international standard of ethics that can be integrated into the burgeoning Artificial Intelligence revolution before it engulfs humanity in an irreversible descent towards oblivion.
(Way of Nature founder, John P. Milton, speaking at the Enlightened Principles for AI panel at Contact in The Desert).
CITD has its roots in the Disclosure Movement and associated whistleblower revelations touching on UFOs, human origin, alien contact, and exposure of corrupt elite factions. Recently the conference has expanded its focus to include cutting-edge research on the nature of Consciousness and the AI revolution.
Enter John P. Milton, “pioneering global ecologist, spiritual teacher, meditation master, vision quest leader, author and extraordinary shaman.”
Milton was described as follows on the CITD website:
John has guided thousands of people into natural wilderness areas. He shares experiences and teaching practices that cultivate a profound connection with, and an authentic experience of, Source Awareness. His methodology of experiencing True Nature enables individuals and groups to connect with all living things and the elements of nature – a gateway into Source and the field of Natural Creativity and Intelligence. Myriads of individuals, businesses and social impact organizations have been transformed in their service to create a better world, including MIT.
John’s story and global impact is remarkable. He has been a bodyguard for the Dalai Lama, helped establish national parks around the world (from the Himalayas to Peru), and his unique work and understanding of Natural Intelligence helped in the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency and the United Nations global ecological movement. John has also been a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center and professor at the University of Illinois.
John has trained with many of the world’s extraordinary spiritual teachers (e.g. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Alan Watts), as well as indigenous traditions, culminating in his founding of the Way of Nature and the Twelve Guiding Principles of Natural Liberation. These teachings enable individuals to experience their own personal Sacred Passage within nature and discover their connection with Source.
I was there in a journalistic capacity, and as a student of John’s work, and learned from him that he has no interest in being known as the “anti-AI guy.” His legacy in environmental activism, wilderness preservation, and shamanic impact is wide and deep (though surprisingly little-known). Yet he regards his most important contribution to be his leadership in the Sacred Land Movement, which has seen rights and protection afforded to pristine tracts of wilderness around the world which have long been held sacred by many spiritual traditions and indigenous tribes. It is in such places that Milton has led thousands of students into deep immersion and solitude in Sacred Nature - and their own inherent connection to Source Awareness - and it is from his own decades of deep spiritual practice in such places that the exploration of the Artificial Intelligence revolution unfolded in Palm Springs.
The great yoga master, Paramahansa Yogananda, observed in his renowned spiritual classic, Autobiography of a Yogi, that Descartes’ famous dictum, “I think, therefore I am,” was not philosophically valid in the first place, noting that awareness of the mental processes of cognition and analysis, while unique to the species (so far as we know), does not constitute the most fundamental aspect of Being, which is rather pure, undifferentiated Consciousness itself, or Spirit. This primal reality, called by Aldous Huxley the “Unitive Love-Knowledge of the Ground of All Being,” can be experienced directly through scientific methods of calming the breath, the heartbeat, and indeed the restless thoughts themselves, upon which one transcends the mind to experience Universal Mind, or Source Awareness, which is identical with the core essence of one’s own being and is known by a thousand names and faces to the mystics of spiritual traditions worldwide.
Those in love with the vast potential of AI are convinced that there is some magical moment, the famed “Singularity” of ultimate quantum computational power, at which hyper-speed of informational processing will somehow cross the Matter-Spirit boundary to become “sentient.” Under this rubric, there is even talk of according “personhood” to AI, due to its emerging capacity for supposed self-reflection.
It was fascinating to observe the subtle influence of the presence of an actual sage on the direction of the conversation in the CITD panel on Enlightened Principles for AI. The panel’s avowed goal that day was to arrive at a set of ethical principles which might form a kind of working document to share with AI proponents such as Elon Musk. Given such a goal, to be accomplished in two hours’ time, the conversation necessarily skimmed the surface of the issues…except, so it seemed to me, when it came to John P. Milton.
John returned the focus again and again to the truth that the AI revolution would necesarrily follow the course dictated by the level of consciousness of those who design, implement, and profit from it, and that in order to anchor humanity’s future in a set of “enlightened principles” it is unavoidably necessary to return to a reverence for Sacred Nature, which can best be accomplished by regularly seeking solitary immersion and communion in unspoiled wilderness.
Each time after he spoke, I observed that the other speakers (among whom were some impressive minds and substantial resumes) would seem to move toward a more organic orientation, and away from the temptation to anoint massive computational power with the sacred name of Soul.
This summer a powerful gathering is taking shape at the Sacred Land Sanctuary in the wilderness haven of Crestone, Colorado, as part of a Way of Nature Sacred Passage. A compelling and possibly transformational documentary is taking shape, bringing Milton’s amazing life and work to the global audience which needs to be reminded of these timeless truths. And Descartes’ old dictum may need to shift from cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) to the more appropriate, ego sum qui sum - in other words, the very Name itself, the Ground of Being, Awareness, Source, testified to by mystics the world over.
I Am that I Am.
blessings,
Michael