The Sheldrake - McKenna - Abraham Trialogues
Lately, I've been listening to the audio recordings that Dr. Rupert Sheldrake has made available on his site. I posted the dialogues he had with Dr. Andrew Weil to the Astrology, Spirituality & Alternative Healing group due to the information on health within those talks.
Now, I'm listening to this three-way discussion he has with his two other friends, Ralph Abraham and Terrance McKenna. There are 35 trialogues, most about an hour long, and some 90-minutes and divided into two parts. So far, I'm on the one titled "Entities" and feel it alone would make for good conversation here. I'll give the blurb they have for it in a moment. First, the intro from that page:
These trialogues are from a series of lively, far-reaching discussions between Rupert and his close friends Ralph Abraham and Terence McKenna, that took place between 1989 and 1998, in America and England.
These three-way conversations began in private after their first meeting in 1982. Encouraged by their similar fascinations and complimentary views, and inspired by the synergy of their ideas and styles and the input of differing areas of expertise, the three friends continued to meet and explore new areas of thought. Throughout their public trialogues, which began in 1989, they maintained the spontaneous, playful and intrepid spirit of their private talks, and were thrilled that these explorations inspired further discussions amongst their audiences. Their trialogues and friendship have been a source of great inspiration and stimulation for their own lives and work.
In their first set of public trialogues, held as a workshop at Esalen in 1989, they explored aspects of the world soul from the perspectives of chaos, creativity and imagination, and discussed many topics including: light and vision; the psilocybin mushroom; the unconscious; entities; the resacralization of the world; the reform of the educational system and the Apocalypse.
Their second series of trialogues examined evolution in all its forms, through new topics that included: grassroots science; psychedelics, computers and mathematics; psychic animals; the World Wide Web; celestial intelligences; the nature of time and the evolving mind.
Ralph Abraham, PhD, is a Professor of Mathematics, author, and pioneer in the fields of Chaos theory, computer graphics, visual mathematics and dynamical systems.
Terence McKenna was an ethnopharmacologist, shamanologist, and author, known for his theories on plant hallucinogens and the novelty wave, and the bardic skill with which he conveyed his ideas. Sadly Terence died aged 53 on April 3, 2000.
Part I Chapter 6 of 'Trialogues at the Edge of the West'. Are disincarnate and non-human entities mental projections or non-physical, autonomous entities? What can we learn from them? Their variety and persistence in human history. Early modern science and angelic communication. The shamanic model. The aversion to the irrational in Christianity and science. The need to analyze the entities' messages. A mathematical model of body, soul and spirit. Entities as inhabitants of the spiritual domain of the logos. The evolution of their multifarious representations. The dogma of purgatory. Contacting these entities through dreams and psychedelics. The deepest layers of the faery tradition. Metaphors of light? Entities as artificers and their use of language. Is the world soul behind these entities? Corn circles.
Entities Part 1 (44 min)
Part 2 Pre-Christian ritual magic. The call to prepare language for these encounters. Experiential contact with the celestial sphere. The humanist illusion of self-sufficiency, leading to societal possession. Mammon. A celestial battle on earth? Redirecting attention to the positive forms. The ultimate partnership - reconnecting the Gaian and celestial spheres to the human spirit. Where could the new alchemical kingdom be? Included in Chaos, Creativity and Cosmic Consciousness first published as Trialogues at the Edge of the West Chapter 6.
Entities Part 2 (44 min)
And if you're lost just from what is described above, listen to the introduction audio, where each of the three give about 15-20 minutes about themselves and what they've contributed to the world.
= new reply since forum marked as read
As for artificial consciousness, news is always stating it's just around the corner. Well, that corner must be incredibly big to get around, because it's still not here yet. I agree that we probably won't see it, even the kind presented by Arthur C. Clarke's HAL-9000.
The movie (and later series) Ghost in the Shell has some semblance of AI in it, yet it's presented as somewhat childlike in its personality (used in weaponized robots called Tachikomas.) The movie develops the concept of AI further, and does question consciousness as well as our place in it. The director, Masamune Shirow, said it's an homage to Arthur Koestler's The Ghost in the Machine as well as the inspiration for the movie.
Recently, I also watched "Transcendence" but wasn't as thrilled by it as the commercials had led me to believe. If you haven't seen it, it's worth seeing once, in my opinion. It's well-acted and so forth, but it left me questioning the motives of the antagonists more than anything. Especially as none of them (or anyone else for that matter) ever pointed out that had they not taken the action they had, Depp's character never would have taken his AI that big step further.
It had promise, but wasn't realized in a believable way. HAL is still believable, both as a projection of the technology, and the questions about self-awareness and his positive interactions with humanity (at least until the end 
)
At the moment, I think I'd rather read one of Terrance McKenna's books after reading a quote on wikipedia about an ayahuasca experience where he met "machine elves" 
I agree with you about how AI will likely come about. It may also be a form of intelligence as alien to our comprehension as, well, aliens. While we'll know the physical and programming structure, how can we honestly predict the structure of its consciousness? That's more of an evolutionary thing, whether biologically-based or artificially.
Contact is a favorite, too. It's the best semi-recent science fiction movie to come out of Hollywood. 2001: A Space Odyssey is still my top favorite, and covers some of that incomprehension we'd have with aliens, and them with us. However, to truly have your mind blown on that topic, watch the original Russian "Solyaris" (Solaris.)
Fair warning, it's slow. Yet, I found it compelling enough of a story and topic to keep me watching, like I was studying it, as well as trying to understand what was going on. As I understand what I've read about the writer, Stanislaw Lem, he tried to convey that "alien-ness" when confronted with an intelligence we couldn't comprehend (and it had difficulty comprehending us.) I haven't yet read any of his books, and wish there were translations for the Kindle. In the meantime, I am re-reading James Hogan's "The Two Faces of Tomorrow" which is indeed about developing AI and its evolution to existing with humanity 