Spirituality Studies 11-2 Fall 2025 75 Gábor Pék, Gejza M. Timčák duality (Abhinavagupta 2023, 124), when “you don’t feel the nature of Lord Śiva [note: Sa. Absolute Consciousness] in this objective world… that kind of knowledge is called ignorance.” (Lakshmanjoo 2017, 37). Every form, including living and non-living systems are under the veil of ignorance to a certain extent the effect of which can only be changed by the grace of the guru which is beyond the dimensions of causality. As Sū tra 8 of Pratyabhijñāhr̥dayam says, “The positions of the various systems of philosophy are only various roles of that (Consciousness or Self)” (Kṣ emarā ja 2014, 65). That is why in the corresponding commentary the text explains that “Thus of the one Divine whose essence is consciousness, all these roles are displayed by his absolute will, (and) the differences in the roles are due to the various gradations in which that absolute free will either chooses to reveal or conceal itself. Therefore, there is one Ātman [note: Absolute Consciousness] only pervading all these (roles)” (Kṣemarā ja 2014, 68). It simply means that whatever role one assumes such as being a great scientist, a given philosophy, a language, an LLM, or a “mini brain”, it is actually the various gradations of erroneous concepts or ajñ āna due to one’s identification with the body or any form, and “unable to comprehend the great pervasion (of the Ātman)” (Kṣemarā ja 2014, 68), which is both immanent and transcendent. Seth calls the experienced world as “controlled hallucination” including the sense of “I-ness” underlining that “what we consciously see depends on the brain’s best guess of what’s out there. Our experienced world comes from the inside out, not just the outside in.” (TED 2017, 14:17–53). While his approach sounds appealing reminding one to what traditionally called mā yā or measurable experience, real selfstudy is not about realising that the world is a hallucination of the brain, but that essentially there is no difference between inside and outside, between objects and subjects, between the world and the lack of it. As Dyczkowski notes it in (Abhinavagupta 2023, 124) “the total absence of consciousness is impossible… the tables and chairs we perceive do exist. So what we see is not incorrect or false.” The problem, he continues, is that when we “do not perceive the totality of reality and view the individual entities we perceive as a part of the plenitude (pūrṇatā) of that all-embracing oneness” (Abhinavagupta 2023, 124). It seems that various theories and experiments suggest that in the future a moment comes where a system which is not conscious today will or can be conscious by effort. It is to be noted that integrated information theory (IIT) disagrees with the design and implementation of such a conscious AI, still IIT is based on panpsychism assuming that consciousness relates to objectivity (e.g., living beings) which still cannot be assimilated into the non-dualistic realization of pure Consciousness which is not relational – a reality that encompasses all phenomena, including what we call AI, technology, living organs, and everything else one believes to exist or not. 4.3 Spiritual Guidance by a Guru versus an AI To understand a bit more deeply the real difference between the spiritual teachings of a genuine guru and an AI agent, we need to focus on the source of information they build upon their guidance. First, the source of all type of information must precede its manifestation. A more traditional standpoint supposes the existence of the “Supreme Truth of universal and divine laws” (Sa. ṛta) (Veda Bharati 2015, 414) as well as multiple existential spheres (Vyasa 2018, 252–281; Vay 1925, 24). The higher the level of existence, the simpler is the energy system or “body” of a being. That makes it easier to live in harmony with one’s real nature. If the existential freedom is misused, then the being is “exiled” into a “denser” world with less freedom. Thus, the amount of psychic energy available and the level of understanding gets limited due to this more difficult life environment (Vyasa 2018, 260–272; Vay 1923, 20). However, a genuine guru can seemingly descend and manifest at a lower level of existence (Lakshmanjoo 2020, 127–128; Kṣemarā ja 2014, 27), whilst staying firm in the “bliss of the universe” (Sa. jagadā nanda). For a guru the whole creation appears as the Universal Consciousness, thus “citta or the individual mind is now transformed into Cit or Universal Consciousness” (Kṣemarā ja 2014, 27–28, 85–87). In other words, when ahaṁkāra melts into Being (Timčák 2018, 18) manonāśa occurs and it starts working under a different “programme”, where the flow of information from the Absolute Consciousness substitutes the original role of the mind. That’s why a guru’s place of living, book or a video record-
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