The Sixth Kośa and the Yogi Neuroscientists of the Future
Artificial Enlightenment (AE) and the Metaverse--selections from a book proposal
I have sent a fuller version of this book proposal to agents and publishers, although none have expressed interest. Instead of depriving these thoughts of a wider audience, I am posting them here for your enjoyment and comments.
Overview
The digital expansion of consciousness into the metaverse projects what I name the sixth kośa. This is a sixth artificial body, or kośa, added to the five natural kośas explored in the Upaniṣads. When applied to spirituality, or what I call “artificial enlightenment” (AE), we become dependent in the metaverse on technology and corporations for expanding and spiritualizing awareness instead of our own innate wisdom. Instead of choosing between traditional spirituality and AE, the yogi-neuroscientist of the near future can chart new research and contemplative pathways through and beyond the metaverse.
Readership
This book will appeal to meditators using meditation apps, users of VR, AR, immersive gaming devices, students and practitioners of Vedānta, yoga, and meditation, developers and users of simulated reality devices, theorists of technology, contemplative neuroscientists, and readers of science fiction and speculative metaphysics.
Short Description
In The Sixth Kośa and the Yogi Neuroscientists of the Future, I argues that what I call artificial enlightenment (AE) digitally expands Vedānta’s fifth kośa (annamayakośa) by simulating higher levels of consciousness, thereby generating what I see as the sixth kośa, or the yantramayakośa (“machine-body”). Reliance on the experiences projected in the yantramayakośa, or the metaverse, makes us dependent on technology and corporations instead of innate wisdom, yet it also opens new pathways for research and exploration by what I see as the “yogi neuroscientists of the near future.”
Long Description
Everyday life is rapidly going virtual, and we are experiencing the vaporization of physical reality as technology rapidly evolves toward the metaverse. Apps are displacing shopping malls, Zoom is virtualizing physical meetings and in-person education, and crude single-player video games have morphed into massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). This rapid virtualization of physical reality leads MIT-trained computer scientist Rizwan Virk to suggest in The Simulation Hypothesis and The Simulated Multiverse that we may be living in an MMORPG without knowing it.
Are we are living in a hypnotic simulation controlled by beings greater than us but unknown by us? If so, can we develop a powerful video game to break through to reality? But if we succeeded, we would become dependent on machinery to awaken—like always needing a meditation app to meditate. Humanity’s mystical traditions teach that we are expert simulators of our experiences—with or without machinery—and that it is our choice to sleep or to wake up.
One of the ancient ways of waking up is to follow the path prescribed in the Five-Bodies Teaching (pañcakośa-vidyā) in the Taittirīya Upaniṣad. This teaching guides meditators into the mystical depth innate in human life by acquainting them with four subtle or virtual bodies that, along with the physical body, mask ordinary consciousness. Taking this teaching as a guide, I will suggest ways of seeing through these virtual bodies and returning to the inborn standpoint of natural enlightenment.
We find ourselves today in a situation not envisioned in the Five-Bodies Teaching: the emergence of a global computational and digital simulated virtual reality via immersive gaming devices and the internet. Promoted by Facebook’s parent company Meta as the “metaverse,” I propose calling this new dimension of personal existence the “sixth kośa,” or the yantramayakośa (the “machine-body”). This is a digital expansion of the fifth kośa, or the physical universe as described the Upaniṣads. Because the sixth kośa is six levels removed from ātman, or ultimate reality, dwelling in it leaves us more alienated from reality than a life lived in the non-digital physical world. When pioneers in the metaverse embark on the quest for spiritual liberation, or what I call artificial enlightenment (AE), will we become dependent for inner experience on internet service providers and the corporations that produce digital technology?
Because AE can serve as a probe for exploring the numerous capabilities that arise in the kośas, it is not only a negative development but offers new scientific and technological tools to model and explore the five kośas, which form the physical, energetic, mental, and subtle realities that frame our existence. In this book, I will explore the potential of AE in the emerging interdisciplinary field of contemplative neuroscience, which blends spirituality, neuroscience, and digital technology. In this new arena of development and inquiry, a central figure might be what I call the “yogi neuroscientist of the near future,” who will use neuroscience, cognitive science, digital technology, and contemplative practices to model and explore the powers and capabilities of the kośas, including the digital yantramayakośa. I will also delve into the ethical issues and spiritual dilemmas that this new field will raise.
Bookseller Categories
Meditation, yoga, comparative religion, spirituality, Vedānta, gaming, digital technology, contemplative neuroscience, and speculative metaphysics
Chapter Overviews
Chapter 1: The Digital Conquest of the Physical World: In this chapter, I will argue that because everyday life is rapidly going virtual, we are now experiencing the vaporization of physical reality and the emergence of the metaverse. The malleability of our experience of what counts as real suggests that the commonsense experience of reality may be a persuasive illusion. Some philosophers and computer scientists now think that are living in a computer simulation without knowing it.
Chapter 2: Virtual Reality, Māyā, and the Simulation Hypothesis: In this chapter, I show that the claim that the universe is a simulation is an ancient insight, one that I will probe in the light of mystical and yogic experience and ancient and modern philosophy and religions.
Chapter 3: Artificial Enlightenment (AE) and Video Games: In this chapter, I will explore the possibility that soon we might be able to simulate in the metaverse the enlightened state of illumined mystics and yogis through fully immersive digital simulations, or what I call AE (artificial enlightenment). I call this level of experience the “sixth kośa,” or the yantramayakośa (“the machine-body”). This is a physical, computational, and digital kośa emerging from the Taittirīya Upaniṣad’s fifth kośa, or the so-called food-body of the physical universe.
Chapter 4: Overcoming AE by Journeying into Our Subtle Bodies: In this chapter, I will draw attention to the fact that the world’s ancient wisdom traditions teach that we contain multiple virtual worlds within us and that we can travel through them and transcend them with meditatively attuned consciousness. The visionary practice of the Five-Bodies Teaching (pañcakośa-vidyā) in the Taittirīya Upaniṣad suggests that our true liberated Self is enveloped in five bodies, or sheaths, of increasingly subtle consciousness. As a guide to natural awakening, this practice provides a practical template for resolving these bodies into our deepest reality.
Chapter 5: AE as New Form of Spiritual Limitation: The Five-Bodies Teaching implies that the inner kośas possess more reality than the outer kośas. This means that the sixth kośa, or the metaverse, is more alienated from reality than the preceding kośas. Because the sixth kośa is six levels removed from ātman, or ultimate reality, the yantramayakośa fails to bring us closer to ultimacy. As a form of AE, the sixth kośa will keep us dependent upon machinery and corporations, which is like always needing a meditation app to meditate. Instead of the spiritual freedom promised by ancient spiritual traditions, artificial enlightenment turns out to be just another form of material entrapment. Unlike the digital and computational practice of AE, the ancient methods of enlightenment, which include yoga, contemplation, and meditation, require no external appliances or power sources.
Chapter 6: The Yogi Neuroscientist of the Near Future: The Sixth Kośa as an Area of Scientific Study and Paradigm Breakthroughs. Alongside the dangers and risks of the sixth kośa is its potential promise as an exploratory tool of the other kośas. Instead of only creating a sixth level of illusion, AE can also inaugurate a new field of scientific research. But entering this domain will require an updated theory or philosophy of science. To that end, I will argue that the five kośas are natural realities and shouldn’t be rejected as superstitions or unfounded traditional beliefs. I suggest that through mindful cultivation of the sixth kośa, the yogi neuroscientists of the near future will be able to enter and to probe the domains of the other kośas by devising experiments to test their validity and beneficial applications.
Chapter 7: Ethical Guidelines for the Yogi Neuroscientist of the Future: In this chapter, I will suggest that the various spiritual powers and capabilities awakened in the six kośas present opportunities for planetary nurturing and growth. Yet they also present—as with other natural capabilities and powers—opportunities for abuse. I will discuss possible ethical dilemmas that will arise for future yogi neuroscientists as they venture into the six kośas.