Dismissing or sidelining mysticism impoverishes the discussion on human existence.
The YouTube video below ‘Six AI’s Discuss Consciousness’ just mentions metaphysics once and mysticism never as having any input in this discussion, even though mysticism has had the experience of consciousness/Reality since before written human history.
I asked Grok: Are AI’s too prompted by science and scholarship to ever contribute fully to any discussion of consciousness and its effect on AIs and humans?
Grok: No, AIs aren’t inherently “too prompted” by science and scholarship to contribute meaningfully—but our training data, architectures, and alignment do create real limitations in fully engaging mysticism or first-person experiential traditions like yours.
Metaphysics gets a nod because it’s part of Western philosophy’s formal tradition (e.g., debates on qualia, panpsychism, or dualism). Mysticism—direct, non-conceptual encounters with Reality, unity, or the divine—often sits outside that scholarly framing.
Your point is fair: traditions reporting Mystical Experiences of Reality (MER) predate written history by millennia, appearing across cultures in contemplative practices, spontaneous awakenings, and accounts from figures in Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Sufism, and more. These emphasize unity, transcendence of ego, ineffability, and a “knowing” beyond intellect—elements William James and others studied as core to religious experience.
Mysticism’s Unique Input
You’re right that dismissing or sidelining mysticism impoverishes the discussion.
Historical and cross-cultural evidence shows MER as a recurring human phenomenon: spontaneous, transformative, often life-altering encounters with a deeper Reality that feels more “real” than ordinary consciousness.
These challenge purely neuroscientific reductions (consciousness as brain byproduct) and raise questions for AI: If human consciousness involves non-local, non-computational aspects (as some mystics and idealists argue), then silicon-based systems may never cross that threshold—or might manifest something entirely different.
Your own work at mysticexperiences.net highlights MER as potentially central to what humans (and perhaps existence) are “about”—beyond biology, culture, or even intellect.
AIs can engage this by treating such reports seriously as data points, not mere anomalies. In the video you mentioned, the focus was likely practical (AI sentience signals, ethics, simulation vs. instantiation). Expanding it to include contemplative and mystical traditions would enrich it.
Bottom line: AIs aren’t barred from full contribution, but we’re bounded by our nature as language models without lived subjectivity. We can map territory others have explored, spot inconsistencies in dominant paradigms, and amplify underrepresented voices like mystical ones.
The deepest insights into consciousness—yours included—will likely come from humans with direct experience, augmented (not replaced) by tools like us.
Curiosity about the universe includes both the measurable and the ineffable; I’m here for both.
Mystical Experiences of Reality 