Shreepal Singh
The key for the forward movement of humanity today is Artificial Intelligence (AI). Artificial Intelligence is capable enough of doing all that, which humans can do – and in most of the instances it can do that better than humans! The agenda today before the advanced sections of humanity – intellectuals leading the humanity – is Artificial Intelligence: How should we fully utilize AI’s potential? In which way would AI effect the human beings – in their private life, in their society, their race of homo Sapiens in totality?
In the matter of work- that is, labor – it is completely able to substitute itself in the place of human beings, and in many instances it can perform in work better than humans.
The immediate agenda of human evolution is to yoke this technology in the service of humanity at large and liberate human beings from daily repetitious physical and mental toil.
Humanity has since the dawn of civilization been yoked to ceaseless labor – physical labor as well as mental labor. It was necessary for its survival against the odds of hostile nature. But this necessity had given birth to an unfortunate social condition, where society was divided into sections of those persons who did most part of the needed labor and of those who did little or no labor.
This has been the case through the ages – through various stages of social development – and created animosity and bad blood between those sections. Labor has divided the society – and many eminent philosophers and thinkers of humane and good intentions were inspired over the ages to visualize a society where this divide no more existed. Notebly among them in recent times was Karl Marx, who in mid nineteenth century propounded a workable program (in his “Communist Manifesto” of 1848) for establishing a society where no such divide existed any more – where (in his famous words), “everybody shall work according to his capacity and shall get according to his work; and then in due course, everybody shall work according to his capacity and shall get according to his needs.”
Also, this social divide motivated many evil-minded and ambitious political activists in recent times to utilize the bitterness between these two sections of human beings as lever to mobilize the weak section but more in number to take control of the state power and establish a devilish dictatorship; and, all it was done in the name of removing this divide by establishing a Utopian society. It all was made possible only because a large part of humanity was yoked – and had necessarily to be yoked – to do labor for the production of items that are needed by human beings for their very survival.
With the arrival of the technology of Artificial Intelligence, now it is no more necessary to yoke humanity for daily toil. It would be highly immoral and unjust if this technology of AI is not used to liberate mankind from such toil and instead is deployed by the rich section of human society for earning more profit in their production facilities by shunting the major part of humanity out of the employment in their facilities.
The proper use of AI should be the universal liberation of mankind from a ceaseless and now unnecessary labor for production of items of human needs. AI must be used to provide leisure to humanity.
Once humanity at large is provided the universal leisure of unlimited hours, it would be left with nothing to do but to turn inward to the mysterious subtle planes of human mind – say, from the consciousness part to the subconscious one and from the subconscious part to the unconscious one. It would result into new kinds of music, poetry, literature etc. and open new chapters of psychology and transform psychology into para-psychology. It would allow mankind to step into a new discipline of human consciousness, called Yoga.
This turning of mankind inward in human consciousness would bring in them a rapid spiritual progress. And such a rapid spiritual progress not only would bridge the present bitter social divide with love and sympathy towards each other but also would lay the foundation of a new civilization. Such civilization riding on a rapid spiritual progress would first catapult us from human race to a new race of para-humans and then into the orbit of a totally new race, which Sri Aurobindo called “supramental beings”. However, it is most likely that by and large ignorant masses with no scientific knowledge would not believe in such a possibility of para-humans and a few thousands of people belonging to scientific community around the world would consider such a possibility of para-humans (or given other similar names) an absolute certainty. Still, this tiny scientific community too would not believe in the existence of any “supramental beings” anytime in future. To make this matter simple, we may say that the race of “Supramental beings” would be like a race of “Buddha, Mahavira, Christ, Kabir, Mira Bai, Ramakrishna” found commonly and everywhere. This hint is more than enough to understand what Sri Aurobindo meant by “Supramental beings”.
We can very well foresee even today the difference between we humans and those para-humans. Our science and technology are already making them available in trikles with each passing day. These para-humans would be disease free, more healthy, beautiful in shapes (thanks to genetic engineering), with greater mental power and thinking in comparison to our race of ordinary humans. They would be the product of a hybrid of technologies of artificial intelligence and genetic engineering.
We can meaning fully talk about those para-humans and the time frame within which they would roam about on earth. We can very well foresee even today the difference between we humans and those para-humans. Our science and technology are already making them available in trikles with each passing day. These para-humans would be disease free, more healthy, beautiful in shapes (thanks to genetic engineering), with greater mental power and thinking (with hybrid technologies of artificial intelligence and genetic engineering) in comparison to our race of ordinary humans. All this is most likely to happen on earth within one hundred years – say, from 2021 to 2121. It would be the first miracle on earth. But it would not be the end of more miracles.
Though the para-humans would be higher than humans in capabilities, still they would be transitory beings only. Their foundation would be laid on the hard rock of natural humans but their apex point – zenith – would be beyond the reach of normal humans. They would be humans but beyond the normal humans – that is, para-normal humans. Such a state is not a natural or stable one in the evolutionary journey of life on earth – they would be transitory beings. Nature prefers stable and rythemic states in its evolutionary course of life.
The rapid evolutionary (spiritual) progress made possible by the liberation of humanity at large by AI would grow those para-humans or transitory beings further into a new race of beings with supramental consciousness. The debut of the race of supramental beings would be another miracle on earth – of course only if we did not destroy ourselves with atomic weapons etc. The race of those higher beings – called by Sri Aurobindo, supramental beings – would orient the life on earth to fresh – de novo – cycles of new goals in the scheme of universal evolution of consciousness, of which the human consciousness is but a small part and of a lower level. It is meaningless to talk about those supramental beings today. It is better to keep quiet about them.
This all would usher on earth a race of divinity – higher beings – out of our human race. It is not a fiction – as the debut of humans on earth was never a fiction. The oozing of life in matter and evolving of human out of that life is stranger than fiction – but a reality. Evolution has not ceased and we must hold our breath, for more miracles are yet to come – more dazzling than life and man on erath.
