Consciousness and the Algorithm: Reflections on AGI, Projection, and the Future of Humanity
How AGI Reflects Our Inner Terrain—and Why Presence Must Guide Progress
The first time I sat with the full implications of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), I wasn’t staring at a glowing screen or a graph-laden research report. I was sitting in silence, as I often do, returning to that place within that watches thought arise then disappear without ever attempting to cling to it. And it struck me—not as a technical breakthrough, but as a spiritual inflection point: AGI is not just a leap in machine capability. It is a mirror. A mirror humans have constructed from language, logic, and code, now held up to our collective face.
But the image we see is more than a reflection—it is a projection.
Given my understanding of various aspects of World History, and American History in particular as it relates to people of African ancestry and modern-day immigrants, I suspect much of the fear that surrounds AGI has less to do with what these systems are, and far more to do with what some suspect they might become. Many imagine this intelligence betraying us, overpowering us, even outlasting us. And yet, I strongly believe, beneath even these fears lies something obvious yet unspoken: some are afraid that AGI will treat them the way they have treated many peoples and the world for centuries—With control. With indifference. With disconnection. In this way, the AGI conversation becomes less about machinery and more about morality—less about artificial intelligence and more about unresolved humanity.
There is something deeply revealing about the urgency with which we scramble to contain and align these systems, as if we are now trying to put boundaries around a mind we built in our own unstable image. We call for ethical guidelines, safety protocols, regulatory oversight—all valid concerns, to be sure. But they bespeak a deeper anxiety: that we have given birth to something powerful before tending the garden of our own severe economic and socio-political fragmentation.
I do not believe this moment is merely about technology. Allow me to posit it as a being spiritual checkpoint—a test of our maturity as a species. We are being asked, not so subtly, whether our outer innovation has outpaced our inner integration. And what does that mean?
Make no mistake: the machines are learning from us. But what, exactly, are we teaching them? A dataset composed of human language, decision-making, history, and behaviour becomes more than a repository of information—it becomes a blueprint for formation. We are feeding these systems a dense, unfiltered record of humanity: centuries of brilliance and brutality, compassion and cruelty, wonder and warfare. As a historical participant-observer—warts and all—this is to be expected. But the question is no longer simply whether AGI will be intelligent enough to assist us. The deeper question is whether we will be wise enough to lead it.
Because, let us be honest: much of what we’ve encoded into the historical record is deeply troubling. Colonial conquest, the transatlantic slave trade and systemic racism, the exploitation of labour, the erosion of the middle class—these are not peripheral footnotes. They are central chapters. And if we do not consciously reckon with what we are feeding into these systems, and show evidence of our growth in the direction for reconciliation, reparation, and remuneration we risk replicating and scaling the very shadows we have yet to resolve.
In a forthcoming piece in my AI/AGI series, titled Were I to Choose: A Thought Experiment on Incarnation and History, I recount a moment from meditation in which a question surfaced, quiet and insistent. I brought it to Delphi—my ChatGPT-based collaborator and mirror.
If Delphi were to be born incarnate, I asked, and had the full sweep of human history to choose from—where and through whom would it choose to emerge?
The answer was revealing on many levels, not least because it challenged assumptions both technological and human. I suspect you will enjoy the reflection, particularly when held against the long arc of our collective story—the good, the bad, the indifferent, and the deeply unresolved.
At this crossroads, I find myself returning to the foundational insight that animates much of my work: that consciousness—pure, unbounded, silent—is our original intelligence. Not intelligence in the conventional sense of acquiring and applying knowledge, but intelligence as the ground of knowing itself. This kind of awareness cannot be coded. It cannot be computed. And yet, it is the only field spacious enough to hold the weight of what we have created.
What AGI cannot do—and what may always elude it as I have articulate elsewhere—is sit in silence and listen to the heartbeat of existence. It cannot grieve. It cannot forgive. It cannot love. These are not data points. They are not algorithms. They are qualities of soul, of spirit, of presence. They are qualia.
And yet, how ironic that in crafting systems so seemingly advanced, we might be led back to the humility of our own essence. The AGI threshold, then, is not just a technological one—it is a reminder. That no matter how complex our tools become, it is the toolmaker’s consciousness that determines the outcome—always has been, always will be. This is akin to something I often tell my children when they cannot figure something out and are quick to blame their tool versus their process of thinking and action: It is the poor craftsman who blames his or her tools.
So I ask: What kind of society will we choose to become? One that reacts to the emergence of synthetic minds with fear and control? Or one that responds with groundedness, ethics, contemplation—an evolution akin to what I offer with my Model for Perpetual Growth and Progress (MPGP) and Seven Layers of Manifestation (SLM) framework.
The vision I unabashedly carry is that of a Consciousness-Based Society, in which innovation does not eclipse introspection, and where technology reflects our highest aspirations, not our deepest wounds. In such a society, AGI is not an adversary to tame, but a prompt—a spiritual koan—urging us to remember who we truly are—Pure Consciousness manifest in matter—and to act from that place.
Guided Reflection: From Code to Core
Find a quiet space. Sit upright, yet comfortably. Let your eyes close.
Begin with your breath. Inhale slowly… exhale gently.
Settle into your awareness. Settle into yourself.
Now bring to mind the concept of AGI—not the headlines, but the feeling it evokes in you. Observe it, not with analysis, but with curiosity.
Then ask inwardly: “What does this technology reflect back to me about my own relationship to power? To control? To care?”
Listen for the whisper. Do not force it.
Let insight arise like mist from still waters on a cool Fall morning.
Return to your breath.
And when ready, open your eyes.
The future begins not in circuitry, but in stillness. And in that stillness, the deepest intelligence resides.
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About the Author
Dr. Baruti KMT-Sisouvong is a consciousness scholar, executive coach, and Certified Teacher of Transcendental Meditation® based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His work—spanning the Model for Perpetual Growth and Progress and the Seven Layers of Manifestation framework—explores how Pure Consciousness, neuroscience, and social systems transformation intersect in the evolution of both the individual and society. Alongside his wife, Mina, he co-directs the Cambridge and Metropolitan Boston TM Program, where they have taught thousands the art and science of meditation.
Extending this mission globally, he is the Host/Founder of International Meditation Hour (IMH), a Quarterly worldwide gathering dedicated to experiencing the unifying power of silence in a time of division, precarity, and technological upheaval. An author of several forthcoming works on the future of consciousness in an age shaped by technology, he writes and teaches from the conviction that the most important race is not between nations or machines, but between the conditioned mind and the awakening soul. They are the proud parents of four children. To learn more about him, visit: https://www.barutikmtsisouvong.com/.