Are automation, robotics and AI the future and will humanity merge with machines? This is a view that the transhumanists hold firmly and believe in. Is it coming or are we already in it? Are we programmed to do a specific thing over and over again? Or do we actually consciously choose what we focus on?

I am sure each us would want to think that we as humans are far from being robots. Let’s just dive into this idea a little deeper and see what layers are there to be seen.

Perhaps we can agree that the mind is programmable. Education, news media, social conditioning, entertainment, arts and many other facets of our society pattern and mould our brains and the mind into accepting certain programs and avoiding others. This is what happens from the very first moments of entering into this physical life as a baby.

The conditioning washes through us for the first seven years when the brain is mostly at the theta and alfa state and it very easily absorbs information. And most of this programming goes into unconscious and it will colour our life for the rest of our lives unless new programming is consciously replacing it.

So much of our lives happen at the unconscious level. Our reactions and perceptions of life are as pre-formatted even before they filter into our conscious awareness.

The advertising industry knows very well how to program the mind and use the unconscious as the weak point. You walk into a store and buy things thinking that you are choosing to buy certain things when in reality you may just be following a program that has been set in your brain in the last two weeks as you watched tv and that particular add kept driving the message into you. And the the store knows where to place the items that you will most likely pick up the ones that they want to move out and sell the most.

Many of our choices come from preprogrammed behaviours and reactions. In that sense we do not differ very much from a robot that only does what the program says. This is how google can predict what you do in the next week. The algorithms of your choices and behaviour are recorded and from that a pattern emerges, there is a very high probability that you will follow the routine 95% of the time.

Routine creates comfort and a sense of knowing what is happening and also a sense of control over the environment. The cost is that we become predictable and machine like in our behaviour. The result is that there are not very many conscious dynamic choices that come from using intuition, awareness and being in the present moment.

But do not despair. There is an upside to this condition. We can choose to program our mind in a way that it is directed into expansion of conscious awareness of the more subtle aspect of our selves. We can use the mind as a tool to step out of the prison of repetition and robotic life.

If we understand the mechanics of the mind and the body, it is easy to see how this new program can be uploaded. We need high quality content, pure thoughts, that we can fill our minds with. Ishayas call these seed thought Ascension Attitudes. They are based on Praise, Gratitude, Love and Compassion. They drive awareness to the source of all thoughts and we begin the process of deleting the limited old programming while we simultaneously also install the new software that is based on living in the present moment with conscious awareness.

This is where the robotic life turns into life of a conscious being. It is not difficult to do, but it does require choice and commitment. To be or not to be? That is a choice and that is what is one difference between humans and machines.

Nataraja