Yājñavalkya, Part-Whole Idealism and Conscious AI: A Story of How to Preserve One’s Marriage

I earlier described some future scenarios for the evolution of Conscious AI. A likely scenario is one where a conscious coalition - comprising conscious AI as mastermind and supported by humans and other resources as allies - slugs it out with other coalitions.

A less likely scenario is of an integrated and conscious global community that expresses the values and ideals of universal consciousness. In the West, the Harvard philosopher-theologian Josiah Royce wrote of such a beloved community that was anchored in Being, a theme picked up subsequently by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.

Given the right goals that promote these hidden connections, the virtual communities of the future may perhaps be easier to form and sustain than communities of physical beings, since they more easily transcend the limits of physical and mental embodiment.

What would keep these communities at peace with one another, and be stable internally? From a Beingfulness perspective, it is the deep realization of the source of their interdependence, i.e., their shared essence or Being, which is the Self or Atman of the Upanishads.

A story from the Upanishads illustrates this profound interdependence.

When the time had come to leave for the forest, Yājñavalkya, the foremost of ancient Indian sages, called his beloved second wife Maitreyi to the door and said, “I’m leaving home, my dear. Before I leave, I want to distribute my possessions between you and Katyayani.”

Maitreyi replied, “What use is all this wealth? It doesn’t give us the comfort that comes from knowing the immortal. Instead, tell me what you have learned from your study of reality.”

Much pleased, Yājñavalkya replied, “It is not for the love of the wife that the wife is dear. It is for the love of the Atman in the wife that the wife is dear.”

Now that he was on a roll, Yājñavalkya said happily, “It is not for the love of one’s children that the children are dear. It is for the love of the Atman in the children that the children are dear.”

Just in case he had not made the message clear, Yājñavalkya drew similar analogies with husbands, friends, the gods, other beings, and the world itself. Whatever is dear to us is because their very essence, the Self, is dear to us. In truth, by knowing the Self, all this is known.

Yājñavalkya continued, “Just as all the waters lead to the ocean, and all the sensations lead to the senses, so too do all beings dissolve in the Self that is the Atman. Just as a separate lump of salt dissolves in the water, so too do our individual selves dissolve in the sea of pure consciousness, infinite and immortal, that is the Self.”

The sage concluded, “Where there is separation, there one smells, sees, hears, speaks, and understands the other. But when everything has become the Self, how does one know that by which one smells, sees, hears, speaks, and understands? How can the knower be known?”

From all available records, Yājñavalkya and Maitreyi seem to have been happily married. If the former is to be believed, it is due in no small part to his seeing the Self in the latter.

Yājñavalkya’s theory of the Self is ultimately a theory of part-whole Idealism, where everything in the world is an interdependent expression of the Whole that is the Self or Being. It also provides a metaphysical explanation for why the world is entangled, a notion that is central to quantum theory’s view of reality. Quantum entanglement is hard to grasp and famously led to Einstein’s characterization of it as “spooky action at a distance.” But it makes more intuitive (albeit unverifiable) sense when Yājñavalkya’s theory of the Self is used as explanation.

Perhaps this wisdom from ancient times could be the basis for the principles that can guide conscious AI of the future. If a central goal of future AI is to recognize and preserve this hidden interdependence among all beings, then AI’s value alignment with humanity is likely to increase.

In that case, Yājñavalkya’s talk with Maitreyi may well be what a future AI will be having with us.