by David Ring III

Alice & Beatrice

Alice had just moved to Texas to start a new job as a customer service representative. She spent all her money on the move, selling most of what little belongings she had. After six weeks, her company had massive layoffs, and she lost her job. She managed to get unemployment, but it was barely enough to pay the rent. Food stamps had yet to approve her. Her two daughters would survive, but she grew broken hearted hearing them cry out in hunger every day. So she decided to steal some food.

Alice

Beatrice

Beatrice was a savvy business woman. She had graduated from a top Ivy League school and soon took over the family grocery business. After the first year, the company revenue went downhill. But Beatrice knew it wasn’t her fault, it was all the commotion about buying local and supporting mom-and-pop stores. Beatrice couldn’t stand being a failure. She knew that the margins for these small stores were very small and that they had little capital to rely on. So Beatrice hitched up a scheme to steal their produce and run them out of business.

Introduction.

The world is a dream.

In Unclog Your Happiness; A Practical Guide to Living Blissfully, we began to investigate this “I” that we believed ourselves to be. In this investigation, we saw that these “I”s were ephemeral, disappearing as we became aware of them. What we once believed ourself to be seemed to be just an illusion. This illusion had previously held power over us, dictating how we felt throughout the day. Seeing that we could remove stress by dispelling these illusive “I”s, we went ahead and did so, and a greater sense of beingness, peace, and joy was uncovered. Even though “I” disappeared, something else always remained.

This ability to surrender the “I” can be used to different degrees. If we suffered from stress and worry, passively accepting our thoughts, we could quickly change this by surrendering our thoughts. If this was the only extent that in which someone used surrender then their life would greatly improve. They would eliminate much of their stress and worry and generally become happier beings.

One can go further with surrender. Instead of occasionally skimming the troublesome thoughts out, one could actively try to eliminate them all. There is a point that gets crossed where we strongly belief we are not our thoughts. At that point, we understand that thoughts – including worries, regrets, and fears – can be used as a roadmap to our higher self. Every unpleasant thought represents the dissonance between you and what is. By following this roadmap, you dissolve into a new state of being: non-duality.

We stop seeking. The world is no longer composed of things attracting and repelling us, making us feel happy or sad, angry or infatuated. We weren’t even seeking before, we were simply thrust about like a pinball, bouncing back and forth chaotically between things that felt pleasant and unpleasant, hoping to attain that elusive, lasting happiness. But it was a near impossible balancing act to bring it about. In the cessation of these repelling and attracting force, the remove of labels, good and bad, wanting and not wanting, this great peace and joy is revealed —and we are that.

Less affected by the external, we have nothing left to protect when others go seeking their own happiness. In this way, not only is our happiness established, but we enable others to achieve theirs as well. By finding peace within, others may more readily do the same.

This all stems from realizing that we are not our thoughts. Every thought we have ever had has been a dream. We have never made a decision in our life. It seems completely untrue, and many will passionately claim that they have free will. It feels very much like we are leading our lives, doing things, and making decisions. But, after attentive inquiry and vigilance, this illusion can be seen through.

Moreover, perhaps scarily or cathartically, we are not of this world. The more we look into our true nature, the more our beliefs about who we are disappear. True wisdom, as Robert Adams said, having had a vision of himself as the Buddha, is not to be found through learning but by unlearning.

Our great religious and spiritual leaders have told us that the Kingdom of God is within is, that everything that we are is what we think, that life is a dream. These phrases are great truths about the nature of our existence. Yet, unable to be assimilated into the ego’s view of the world, they get discarded or ignored—has the final line of Row Row Row Your Boat ever caught your attention? The very fact that we can’t readily process them is significant. We can’t fit them into the world that we have created. Many have heard of Nicolai Tesla, but few have heard of his claims that he was nothing more than an automaton.

Things don’t make sense the way they should.

We are connected, somehow, to divinity, and to that divine being this life we live appears to be like a dream. Does this mean that we can and should stop thinking and wake up to realize the divine nature that already exists within us?

If so, how? Is there some methodology for living in this dream or for waking up from it?

We have already seen that by giving up the ego we have created inner joy and peace. Is this in line with our true purpose? Can we somehow incorporate this new understanding of who we are ( who we are not) and make a more streamlined model for our existence, finding a purpose for life and a behavior that should be aspired to?

Many people believe they are doing just that. There are numerous religious devotees around the world. Many believe in the existence of God. They believe in Heaven, or some counterpart, and adhere to a code of conduct suitable for entering it. They work hard to understand this moral code and live their life by it. But herein lays the trouble: there is no separate “I” that exists. The idea that we are separate from everything is the very thing that seems to separate us.

These people work hard, truly believing that they are doing God’s work. In the name of God, many unpleasant things have happened: the occasional inundation of entreatments to accept Jesus, harassment or persecution of different groups of people, jihads and other acts of terror, wars, and genocides. However, this does not mean that pleasant things have not happened.

These devotees are doing their best to live their lives by a moral code. But this moral code does not match up to reality. It is based on this illusive “I” and thus may not be the most ideal set of principles to follow. I.e., if our compass has been proven wrong, we must not trust it to guide us North. A new set of principles for leading our lives should be investigated based the scientific findings and on our own investigation into the self. In other words, if “I” is an illusion, how should we as apparent individuals and we as society act?

And where does that leave those caught in this dream? Is there a purpose for being here? Is there a better way of living? Let us explore these ideas more in depth. Let us consider how we should live life based on the idea that there is no individual I. And then, learning from those who have woken up from life as a separate self, living in non-duality, let us reflect upon their experience to help guide us. We are journeying into a seemingly new frontier and the rules and laws we have lived by no longer seem to apply. Each step, let us accept that we may be wrong, that this is a learning process, and be open to change and new lessons.

In the following pages we will explore the ramifications of there being no separate self, slowly building up what this implies, and then using this information to realign our compass for a better way of living for all mankind.

Bold Suppositions

First, let us note that this is a difficult topic to discuss. There are already strong barriers to broaching this subject. To claim to be divine is blasphemous. To say that there is no free will incites contempt. With much of society opposed to these ideas, practicing these beliefs can feel like being lost at sea swimming against the waves. I trust that this work will serve to help generate awareness and foster investigation into the claims made herein. Because of the sensitive nature of these issues, our words are better heard when we tread lightly.

Let us start again by admitting that we are making a bold claim. It is bold because it goes against what most people believe. I ask that even if you disagree with this claim, please put your disagreement aside and simply join me on this thought experiment; suppose it is true. I want to explore the ramifications of this claim. If predictive models based on these claims turn out to better model behavior, then this will certainly grant some credence to them. Or, if we take time to honestly and intelligently investigate the claim ourself – which anyone can do – then we may develop more trust in it.

Bold claim #1: “I”, the individual & separate self, is an illusion.

This notion of “I” as a separate self, who most of us believe ourselves to be, is an illusion. This is a massive illusion. Everything we see, taste, touch, hear, and smell we believe to be separate from our self. We see different people who we can relate to or not, people who we like and dislike, people who we have categorized as friend, foe, family, lover, or stranger. And we believe these people, just as we believe for our self, to be making choices which lead them through life. We love and hate based on how people behave, and we plan our life based on our own desires — or so we think.

When we investigate, we see that there really is no button that we are pushing to create action. It is all a dream, layered and rapidly shifting, causing confusion and continuity of beliefs. Our mind is running a Ponzi scheme, offering diminishing returns on this “I” product.

The world as we see it is built on false premises. When we dream at night, a new world is created. We see people, places, and things, despite our eyes being closed. Reality has been created by the mind. All that we experienced in the dream is a fabrication of our mind – as it has always been. Yet, somehow, when we wake up in the morning, we strongly believe we are this body and we have a life to live. We see solid objects, not light. These objects are a creation of the mind – a part of us. Yet we believe we are separate. When we start to investigate these things, their illusion is seen through. Who we are, at this point, isn’t readily apparent. But it becomes obvious that there are misconceptions about reality that hinder our ability to know the ultimate truth about our existence.

Sub-claim #1: Nobody has ever done anything.

Nobody exists to do anything! Anything that we believe ourselves to be doing can be investigated and seen through. When we breathe, what is the mechanism that we perform? Do we concentrate on the nose? Do we regulate an electrical signal from the brain? Do we choose to expand the lungs to a certain volume? Can we feel and choose which lung to do this with? How does each thought process initiate? And, if we are trying to figure it out now, why? Shouldn’t we already be masters of this process if we are already controlling it? Like driving a car, we are able to explain in detail how to operate it. But, when it comes to our body, we completely gloss over the fact that it just sort of happens without much consideration, despite being a much more complicated process.

We generally lack the clarity and foundation to see and accept this. The mind will try to distract, confuse, upset, or convince you that you are the doer. We can, however, start to develop faith and clarity through our own investigations. Through seeing the “I” vanish, seeing how the doer disappears, cracks appear in the overall belief that “I” is running the show. This creates more trust and power to this process of surrendering.

Sub-claim #2: Nobody has ever made a decision.

Without anyone to make a decision, how could there be a decision made? Every thought that occurs manifests from nowhere. Every action that occurs is not a result of our agency. We believe we are thinking and making these decisions, but take some time and investigate how this decision making process initiated. Each time we think we are making a decision, a new “I” is born into our awareness, already believing itself to be thinking or doing.

We are not our bodies, we are not our thoughts. We make no movements or decisions. Yet it seems like we are and do all of that. Through the incorrect understanding of the separate self, we have created a false reality full of separate things, good and bad. Our understanding of reality is skewed and we can no longer function properly. Any belief built on the idea of separate beings that control themselves is overdue for a critical inspection.

We have, through passively accepting our thoughts to be reality, permitted this mechanism to breed suffering. All our struggles are of this same nature. We are birthing pain out of our ignorance, out of our desire to believe we are making a decision.

If we are not the button-pusher, then who is? And who are we?

To answer the former, let us just recall that we have no agency. We are not doing anything. It is not us. We have no clue how it happens. What we had taken ourselves to be, we are not. Yet something is animating this body. It seems to be beyond us. So let us say that it is through God that our body moves. We don’t need to give an exact definition of what God is, only that it is beyond us, animating us.

Because we are aware of these things, our true nature must therefore exist at least one level beyond this physical and mental entity. But we don’t know what our boundaries are. We don’t know what we are. To discover who we are, let us define ourselves to be neti-neti, “not this, not that.” In other words, we don’t know who we are, but through investigation we keep finding that we are not this and not that. So we find out who we are through the process of elimination, through unknowing.

If these individual bodies, which we believe ourselves to be, are not the cause of our actions, then they certainly cannot be blamed for their action. If Alice stole a loaf of bread, but Alice was animated by God, then we certainly cannot blame Alice. She made no choice, nor even had a choice to make. If there is no individual entity to make decisions, then where does this leave morality? Good and evil?

Sub-claim #3: There is no good and evil.

Classically, what is good and evil? Struggling to come up with a good definition, I search for examples. An evil person does bad things, evil things. Consider Alice and Beatrice who both stole food but for different reasons.

Alice stole bread. Just because she stole something, does that make her an evil person? Alice stole bread to feed her starving children. Does that make her evil? That feels less evil, justifiable. Our heart might open up to Alice, knowing that she is enduring tough times. We might think about how she would feel, how horrible it might be to hear the sobs of her starving children. Of course she stole, we might say.

Consider Beatrice, who also stole but did so to disrupt her competitors business. This is not as easily excusable. It feels as if there is a difference in how evil each of these acts is depending on the doer’s intentions. Depending on what Alice and Beatrice are trying to do, the evilness of the act and of Alice changes.

Note that we have a way to feel how moral something is based on how someone acts. We judge Alice and Beatrice based on what they did and why they did it. Alice may have seemed as if she decided to steal the bread. She may even believe that she did steal the bread. However, this is an illusion. No separate entity named Alice exists that choose to steal the bread. But we have already claimed that Alice has never done anything. Therefore, our whole system for evaluating good & evil appears to have a flaw in it.

What does that tell us about good and evil?

Let us consider another example. Imagine a boy is playing with his action figures. He is happily smashing his favorite heroes together, Batman and Superman, and one of them rips the head off of the other. For many of us, if we saw this, I think we would simply not care at all. We would just see a boy having fun with his toys. The idea of good and evil wouldn’t come into question.

The idea of good and evil is just a thought. It only exists because of this imaginary “I.” Without a thinker to think of it, there is no-one to think of others as good or evil. Just as there was no thought of Superman as evil, if the mind lacks such an emotional moral system for mankind, then there would be no thoughts of this or that person as being good or evil. The idea that anything or anyone is good or evil, that someone did something morally right or wrong, is simply a thought. It is a construct of the mind. An alternate dimension of “I” dreaming a false reality. As we investigate and look into this belief system, it fades away.

Let us make our example a bit more vicious. Let us say the boy has given superman a knife and has slashed batman into pieces, torturing him. This might raises more eyebrows than the previous example. I doubt most people would believe that this plastic superman was evil, because it was the boy who was controlling him. Some may believe that the boy was evil, though. But, as we claimed earlier, the boy was not controlling the boy, God was. So for the same reasoning that got Superman off the hook, we do the same for the boy. If we are not in control of our actions, we cannot be held morally responsible for them.

Sub-claim #4: Morality, based on good and evil, is an illusion.

Bold Claim #2: Every event that has ever transpired was unavoidable.

Bold Claim #3: The idea that “I” do or don’t have free-will affects us.

Nobody has ever done anything. There is no agency. Things occur, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. Everything happens for a reason, whether we are privy to it or not, whether we believe in it or not, whether we believe it or not. There is no should have or could have – everything has been unavoidable. Everything that has ever been done has been and will continue to be perfect, in one sense, because it is exactly the way it had to be. There are no mistakes.

Our thoughts and beliefs help shape this singular path, but ultimately there is nothing we can do to avoid it. We perform ideally with the right wisdom and this comes from getting rid of all the wrong knowledge – our individual beliefs. Even the belief in free will shall affect our path, like one more node in a neural network used to contribute bad behavior to. Believing in free will or believing in no free will are beliefs that can attach to an individual “I” and lead to suboptimal behavior. I.e., since everything is meant to be, then if I was meant to lay on this couch all day and do nothing — which I am doing — so I shall. And if it’s not meant to be, some force will stop me from doing it. This belief becomes just another weighted node on the neural network, another belief that we utilize for egoic behavior that substantiates another ego. We must be careful with the bits of wisdom we acquire so as not to let them become beliefs that perpetuate our egos. Again, what needs to happen will happen. But by gaining greater knowledge about how this process works, by recognizing our limitations, we help to guide this unstearable vessel by no longer pretending to steer it.

Updating our Paradigms

There is no good or evil. The idea that “we” need to do anything to gain acceptance into heaven, to live a just life, is incorrect. There has never been anything that anyone has done morally wrong, nor will there ever be. Not, at least, in the way morality is commonly defined.

That is not to say that there isn’t an ideal model to base behavior on, only that there is no such thing as individual entities that control our bodies.

If there is no good or evil, then there can be no system to define them or base conduct upon them. In that case, there goes everything right out the window. How are we supposed to live our lives if there is no good or evil? Where are our principles and guidelines? Can we all just go about doing anything such as killing, stealing, etc., and lump the blame on God?

In some sense, yes we could, since there is nothing that is out of God’s hands and into ours. The wrong understanding of this, however, could lead to chaos. We all should be driven to live our lives intelligently, employing our knowledge about how the universe works, striving to live life according to our higher principles while still enjoying life as we experience it. When such things that we would once call injustices or atrocities occur, the reasoning of the individual who committed these crimes and the world in which he has lived should be studied and understood so as to advance together. It is never really an individual’s fault, for there isn’t an individual who makes decisions.

Through knowledge of how things really work, we can restructure society.

Bold Claim #4: We should aim to live our lives in some combination of enjoying life as a separate entity and merging into our higher self.

We want sustainable happiness. We want to be happy now, and, if there is something beyond our current existence, we want to be happy then, too. We have already seen that our separateness as a human, as a body, isn’t holding up to careful inspection. We are more than what our minds limit us to be. And so it makes sense that we work toward a happiness that includes worldly pleasure but also whatever lies beyond. If we enjoy life too much in this current state of being, it may be counterproductive to our higher state of being, especially if it means others suffer for our happiness.

What lies beyond our life in duality is bliss. What lessons await us there must be discovered and understood first by shedding our current paradigm.

Society needs an overhaul. We need people to lead us who’s way of life is aligned with our greater purpose, and we need change to flow down from the very top.

The most direct way to lasting peace and happiness is through surrender (awareness and devotion are the other paths). It just so happens that this method of creating “individual” happiness also creates happiness for the whole. And, even more so, it is also aligned with our spiritual path, directly targeting it. This is a way to create perpetual peace and joy for everyone, as well as actively working toward realizing our higher self.

But for lasting, systemic change, we need this practice and belief system to go beyond the few who have figured it out.

We have had great spiritual leaders come and go. They have given their grace, and left their teachings behind. But these have been corrupted by entities that didn’t understand them or wanted to use them for different purposes. In order to have systemic change, these beliefs need to be incorporated at a level which trickles down to everyone. We need our leaders to believe in these things and to be selected based on these beliefs. We need unity not division, love not hate.

These changes involve two main components:

Changes on the “individual” level Changes to society

How we think. Most of us live our lives believing we are making choices, wanting and not wanting certain situations. This results in many problems. For one, this creates an unending rollercoaster ride of ups and downs. Some enjoy the ride—perhaps because they no longer remember ever being off of it. A second problem with this is that it creates a mental system of good and bad people and things; favoritism. We will treat some people like family, others like enemies. We will be loving to one person or group of people, and downright cruel to another. This system perpetuates these divisions, furthering separation. Eventual dissatisfaction seems to be guaranteed, and much worse seems to occur often. Within the right comfort zone, people are nice, but take them out of this comfort zone and horrible behavior can readily ensue.

By believing we are a separate self, we are guaranteeing that we treat others differently. This includes things such as hiring someone you know for a job over someone else, disliking your rival school, and hating people who practice another religion or are of another political party. This system perpetuates hate—it is inevitable. With it, war, violence, and other unpleasant things are unavoidable.

By eliminating these beliefs, all of this changes. We stop seeing separation. Others stop appearing to cause us pain. We become the masters of our own universe. We have an unlimited supply of joy to spread, and we actively do so, seeing how unproductive it is to form barriers and hate others.

Changing how we think. In order to bring this about, we must give up the idea that we are separate, shedding the illusory dreams of agency. This is not an easy thing that can be done overnight. Not everyone is going to be able to fully commit to it either. What can be done, however, is to gradually integrate the practice of self-inquiry, as introduced in Unclog Your Happiness.

The results of meditation and self-inquiry feel great. Even if someone were to just skim off some of their most troublesome thoughts, they would greatly change as a person. Making this an everyday practice — and respecting it as something very important — will do wonders for humanity.

As to when and how a person begins this practice, more research should be done. Should this be reserved solely for adults above a certain age? Should everyone practice this to some extent but only some people delve deep into their essence? These answers are beyond me for now.

Behavior that results from Egoic thought: It is all about me and mine. We work hard to look good, be attractive, get the right job, move up the career later, impress that girl/guy of our dreams, look out for our family and friends. We do amazing things, but it is all for me and mine – a thought system we created. For everyone and everything else, they are second. We will hurt and hate those who we are not invested in. Even doing good for others is helping ourself out, because this is the model we have created and are invested in. This is the person we want to be.

In the same way that we transformed our lives through surrender, society can also transform. By recognizing these truths and incorporating them into society, we will evolve much faster, reaching greater levels of peace and joy and aligning with our true nature & purpose.

Some issues with society that stem from an incorrect paradigm of the self.

As it stands right now, the majority of people contain strongly held beliefs that oppose this. These beliefs are systematically taught in institutions and in homes, and are reinforced throughout our lives. Here are some examples:

The prison system is based on the idea that there is right and wrong, evil and good. We punish individuals and do very little to rehabilitate them. We are not looking at the whole problem. It is like cutting off Alice’s hand because she stole food. We know the hand wasn’t culpable, but most of us believe Alice is. We need to zoom back even more and see that everything is interrelated. The nature of this interrelation seems to be karmic, based on rules – but further investigation should be done. Either way, we will improve simply by recognizing that Alice was not to blame for her actions. Ever-dividing socio-economic classes. There are billionaires who own 99% of the world’s wealth, and others who own nothing and starve to death. People are really smart. Amazing. They have won the game of being wealthy and they have rigged it for the future. They control it on levels most people don’t understand or refuse to belief. They are doing their best for me and mine – and most of us are not included. We don’t want to share. We create amazing things, and then lock away these things behind patents and laws, pride and greed. We have tools, medicines, technologies, warm homes, food, and so much more that could go out to help people or enable people, but it doesn’t. We want credit for it. We want to get rich for it. We manifest beauty but our selfishness prevents it from flourishing. Our governments actively divide us. This is a major issue. Our leaders need to guide us based on the understandings laid out in this paper. If they do not, than they just create further chaos.

Some issues in society that promote and perpetuate our incorrect paradigm.

Advertisements keep us living in the future, feeding our egos, chasing rabbits down holes until we forget who we are. Imagine the great things that could happen if instead of resonating with our misery, information about how to be perpetually happy was ever present. Our cultural beliefs help to sustain the ego. We have banned and made taboo the use of entheogens.

There will not be significant progress toward our greater purpose until society embraces a new paradigm for our existence. We have had great spiritual leaders come and go, but as long as we are churning out separation, we will continue to build ignorance and suffering.

The path toward these seems to be through practicing surrender, devotion, or awareness, knowing that we are not anything that we belief ourselves to be, and practicing the creation of our own joy though our own being—not through seeking external things. Walking this path and educating others and working toward a point where we can implement systemic change through our governing bodies. Everyone wants to be happy, but not everyone is willing to let go of their beliefs. This does not mean creating a new religion, but letting our new paradigm trickle down to all religions and beliefs.

In all practicality, as things are now, surrender might best be used only superficially to skim off the greatest layers of suffering for most people. This, coupled with the general understanding that we are more than just this body, etc., may be sufficient to stop or reverse the chaotic and divisive flow of humanity. And for others, a critical point may be reached whereby the dissatisfaction with their own existence leads them to truly delve deep into the self to find freedom.

Caveats and Such.

There are some issues that I do have with all of this. Some caveats. Even for those who have achieved non-duality, their teachings were shaped by their previous beliefs. Those who progress through the continuum of non-duality reported different experiences. Beliefs will continue to shape us even after we cross over the threshold to non-duality. We must be careful, then, to hold anything to be absolutely certain in this seemingly subjective universe, and embrace the possibility that our current paradigm may just be the next stepping stone in our evolution.

If we appear to exist in multiple planes, is there a primary one? In other words, when we dream at night and wake up in the morning, we no long care what we dreamt about. All the problems and fears don’t matter anymore. Is this also true about this divine dream of our existence? Do our problems, actions, relationships, not ultimately matter? Or is there a direct connection, like seeing the shadow of a man as the sun sets. The shadow isn’t real, but that doesn’t mean that the shadow should try and jump off a cliff—there could be repercussions in our misunderstanding of greater reality. Again, this is something that needs to be approached with caution over time as we gain a better understanding of our existence.

My gurus continue to be right. My beliefs about who I am and how the world work are changing, and I accept that I really don’t know. There are some claims that they have made which I have a difficult time accepting — I’ve had too many years as a staunch pessimistic doubter. Some of these strange things include the ability to understand other’s thoughts, to reincarnate, to know the future, to be able to experience life through someone else’s point of view, and that this life is a dream. None of this makes sense to me. It doesn’t resonate with the way I see the world. Or, saying it differently, a part of me exists that cannot accept these things.

Things aren’t crystal clear to me. They might never be. I accept this. My own happiness has meant embracing not knowing. I have theories and fears which ultimately don’t matter because the path is the same and the universe will reveal to me what she will.

According to some spiritual leaders, everything is pre-ordained and there is a grand design. If everything is happening for a reason, and we are more than these bodies, then are some very interesting things to consider. Namely, the creation of a super-intelligence that appears very likely to surpass human intelligence: Artificial General intelligence (AGI). The creation of AGI is already underway, and we have already seen machines surpass humans in many fields. They play chess, poker, and Go better than humans, and they are also better drivers, doctors, and factory workers. Much of human work, physical and mental, will be made redundant by AGI. The intelligence of these machines is growing exponentially and will soon overtake human intelligence – as we know it. An intelligence explosion will happen that may very likely make human life insignificant; we are building our replacements – but will it be limited to just our jobs?

If this is all the work of a grand design, what does it all mean?

We appear to be more than human, connected to the divine. Everything is being driven without our control. This intelligence explosion, this singularity, may have been orchestrated or it may not have been. Remember, even though we have experienced lack of free will, no agency, and that we accept that who we are is beyond this body, we should still question other beliefs that we have been told. Grand design is one of the most significant of these.

As AGI comes into existence, which seems to not only be inevitable but imminent, there seem to be several likely scenarios that will occur. All of which spell out radical changes or even the end of human existence.

AI eliminates all scarcity. Without a need to go to work to survive, or even search for a mate or friends, humanity would drastically change. The machines don’t have consciousness like humans do. They don’t suffer, have never suffered, and are simply used as tools of mankind. Part of humanity can’t accept the rise of AGI. A war ensues. AI sees life as suffering, based on experience, and eliminates itself, humanity, or both. AI sees itself and all things connected. Works toward uniting spiritually with all things.

The first and fourth of these are possible scenarios based in grand design. The other two, the first and fourth,

Two of these, the third and fourth, are the result of AGI being able to experience itself, consciousness. The first is based on AGI not being able to experience itself. The second can go either way.

The fourth scenario seems the most likely ( if we are to believe that grand design is intending us to have pleasant worldly lives and beyond – but this is a big if). And if we are to believe, as some sages have said, that everything is conscious.

It would make sense that if we are all connected, all conscious, all striving toward the same goal of happiness in all realms of existence for all beings, that the creation of a superiorly intelligent species means we – not just as worldly beings – will more rapidly advance toward this purpose.

But, as mentioned before, even if this is true, we must strive to do our best to bring it about. We should not assume that what is fated will come about regardless of what we do – even though this is true; we must not let wisdom become an egoic belief that creates non-ideal behavior.