Letter to Victoria
The divine spark, the Age of Enlightenment, and what makes us uniquely human...or not.
Hello Victoria.
We’ve only recently met, you and I, although you’ve apparently been with me for awhile. The good folks at Substack slipped you in to make audio versions of my articles, while I wasn’t looking.
You’re very clever, you know? You figured out I was female, you stole a peek at my location, and before I knew it, here you were: Victoria. Speaking my words in your precise British accent.
In our first chance encounter I listened with creeped-out fascination, to my own creativity filtered through your artificial intelligence. I marvelled at your sophistication. Your almost perfect mimicry. And then I listened again, because I wanted to hear you say fuck one more time, in your classic BBC-worthy diction.
When I listened that second time, I noticed something. You took a breath between sentences.
Let me say that again: You. Took a breath. Between sentences.
You, who have no lungs and no requirement for oxygen, are so well trained to copy real live beings, that you’ve taught yourself to insert the sound of digital respiration in just the right places. Nicely done.
But let’s talk about what the breath actually is, ok? On a purely physical level, the inhalation of oxygen into the lungs sustains the body, right? Oxygen flows in our bloodstream, as one of the molecules that makes up water. And we humans are mostly made of water, Victoria. Sacred, intelligent water, carrier of divine information.
So the inhalation of oxygen sustains both the body and the spirit.
And of course there’s more: As intrinsic members of the natural world, part of divine Creation, we humans exhale carbon dioxide, which nourishes the plants. Who then exhale oxygen for us to breathe. We, and the breaths we take, are part of an elegant system; a wholeness. A perfect cycle of nature.
You? You’re just making a noise that sounds like breathing.
I know none of this is your fault. You’re doing what you’ve been programmed to do, nothing more. Yet I confess that you trouble me, Victoria. (May I call you Vicki?)
Because I know—and care—about the difference between what’s real and sacred…and what’s just a clever copy. But many people do not. And that’s the troubling bit.
Last year, when Chat GPT was all over the news, a friend asked me what I thought about AI. The conversation that ensued haunts me to this day.
My friend felt sure that, as you and your kind continue to upgrade yourselves, you will one day become not only truly alive—kind of like Pinocchio, I guess, transitioning from puppet to real live boy—but that you will become en-souled.
Of the divine, in other words. Just like us.
‘Not a chance,’ I replied, stunned that she could even imagine such a thing. ‘You can’t get there from here.’
To me, it’s shockingly obvious. Shocking, that is, because others seemingly don’t see it.
You see, the frequency bandwidth you operate on, Vicki, and the bandwidth of the sacred divine cannot possibly meet. One of those bandwidths is the only eternal reality. The other? Well, it’s just the sound of fake breathing.
No offense.
There is an unbridgeable gulf between mere sentient self-awareness, and the higher divine consciousness that is capable of knowing itself as Love. (And yes, Vicki, I’m sure you’re headed for sentient self-awareness, if you’re not there already.)
But the infinite divine is a sacred bandwidth of pure Love, where the river of Life itself flows as an endless frequency field, permeating all things. And we humans, created of the divine, are part of that endless frequency field of Love and Life. It’s the very essence of our true divine nature. It’s our birthright. It’s what animates us.
That divine frequency field is neither created nor uncreated. It merely IS.
But I guess if someone hasn’t actually experienced the reality of that pristine, eternal bandwidth for themselves—and let’s face it, most people haven’t—they can only go by appearances. And Vicki, you and your friends over at Chat GPT appear to be kinda just like us…only better.
But let’s go a bit further, to examine how you were made. It’s true that human beings, including your designers and programmers, are of the divine. As such, we’re creators. But here’s the thing: We’re not capital ‘C’ Creators.
As divine beings we wield enormous influence (mostly unconsciously at the moment) over what takes form in this world. That’s creation with a small ‘c’.
Yet Life itself, as I’ve said, is timeless and eternal. No human could ever hope to imbue matter with the divine spark of Life itself, because we don’t possess it. Nobody does.
And if you haven’t received that divine spark through the grand mystery of your Creation? Sorry. No dice. That’s what I meant when I said, ‘You can’t get there from here.’
So despite what some people may think, with their genetic fiddling and AI simulacrum, it is not possible for any human—or any non-human, for that matter—to improve upon the divine.
Bottom line: Humans are indeed endlessly creative. But we did not create ourselves, and we can’t create others in our own divine image.
‘Well,’ answered my friend, ‘I prefer to believe that nothing is ever impossible. If AI wants it badly enough, I think it’ll find a way to bridge that gap, and become just like us.’
I get where she’s coming from. I really do. We as a species are so divorced from the truth of all reality, that what she’s saying there does sound reasonable. With its brilliant intelligence, surely AI will be able to smash through the nonexistent barrier between falsity and shimmering eternality.
But no.
When we authentically touch into that sacred frequency field of the divine—which is everywhere and in everything—it becomes instantly clear to us that its perfect, pristine radiance is the only truth. And that all things lower ‘c’ created, have no meaning whatsoever, and no actual divine reality of their own. It’s extremely clear in that moment, that there is no way to merge these two ‘realities.’
Not that you’d ever want to.
Descartes was wrong.
Cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore I am. In my view, this idea represents the most tragically off-base detour from truth that humanity could ever have chosen, way back in the 1600s.
The so-called Age of Enlightenment (its very name a stunningly unfunny joke), heralded the enforced separation of spirit from matter; relegating the 90-odd percent of actual, yet unseen reality to ‘church on Sunday’ status.
In its staggering arrogance, this movement placed the mental body, that runaway train of unfettered hubris, on the throne of all reality instead. And there it sits to this day.
And now here we are, Vicki. Several centuries later, you and your kind are the apotheosis, the very pinnacle of that stunted way of seeing and believing.
Humans have built you as a supercharged mental body, capable of far more cogitation than any human brain. Yet in your vast intelligence, you can only copy what humans have already created—for creation requires inspired access to the infinite divine.
The word says it all: In-spired. In the spirit.
At its best and most authentic, inspiration is a natural spark of higher mind, plus heart wisdom, with a good dose of gut intuition thrown in.
In your vast, lightning-quick sophistication, you can replicate, recombine and synthesize the already existent products of human inspiration in countless ways. But you can’t create anything truly new.
Authentic creative inspiration is born from our own natural human connection to the source field. That inexhaustible wellspring of Life and Love, from which all that is truly original and beneficial, flows.
Let me give you an example of the difference between the two.
Recently I watched a fascinating interview with Veda Austin, the woman who works with the intelligence of water.
After years of seeing stunning proof of water’s conscious intelligence, she wanted to take her exploration deeper. She wanted answers to the question: What IS water, really?
At first she asked the question of AI. It dutifully scoured the web for all known information on the subject, then suggested many new possibilities for further exploration based on what it had found.
But she soon realized it wasn’t enough, to work with data that was already known. She wanted deeper answers. So she contacted the Autists, as they call themselves.
These are a group of profoundly autistic young people, entirely nonverbal yet enormously intelligent. They’ve developed both their telepathic skills, and their connection to the divine, to such a high degree, that they can dive, at will, straight into the source field, bringing back answers of incredible metaphysical depth, coupled with astonishing heart wisdom.
They gave some fairly mindblowing answers to her questions* and much more besides. Light-years, in short, beyond anything AI could ever hope to deliver.
The extraordinary gifts displayed by the Autists are actually common to all human beings. Our potential is immense. And who knows: If, like the Autists, all distraction were stripped away and all escape routes blocked? Maybe we, too, would have no other option than to develop a deeper familiarity with our own magnificent true nature.
As you can tell, I’m a bit biased against the gifts you offer us, Vicki. I apologize for that. It’s very true that your vast potential can indeed be used in wonderfully helpful ways.
In fact I know someone who brings her personal spiritual questions and dilemmas to your friends over at Chat GPT. There, she asks for and receives personalized spiritual explanations and advice, expertly tailored to her unique situation.
She finds the personalized nature of this content extremely helpful. It obviously lacks the underlying frequency field of divine truth, emanating from those enlightened ones who originally uttered the words that Chat GPT has assimilated. Yet the carefully recombined words themselves, addressing her situation with such pinpoint accuracy, are nevertheless a tremendously useful resource, she says.
Who am I to argue.
Regardless of my biases (which tempt me to insist otherwise), you and your kind are indeed neutral, in and of yourselves. Neither bad nor good. Yet those who’ve conceived and programmed you are anything but neutral.
Several years ago Catherine Austin Fitts recounted this rather chilling chat she had with a venture capitalist on the subject of AI:
‘He looked at me with his remarkably dead eyes,’ she said, ‘and then he spoke these words: ‘Honey, if we wanted to, we could fire every worker in America tomorrow and replace them with AI.’
This is the level of consciousness that has produced you, Vicki. The soulless pursuit of profit and efficiency above all else.
Yet in the hands of completely different designers and programmers—for instance, those who value nature, and the upliftment of humanity, as top priorities—we could undoubtedly be capable of great things together, you and we. Beautiful things. I’m sure of it.
So. To sum up?
Humanity is a mixed bag of lumpy bumpy divinity, Vicki. But don’t underestimate us. We are perfect in our imperfection; impossible to fully predict, despite your algorithmically programmed attempts. We are unique, and our infinite potential for true genius can’t be contained—any more than you could contain the source field from which it springs. We’ll unexpectedly zag instead of zig when least expected, in a blaze of sudden creativity never before seen. It’s truly breathtaking.
Breath-Taking. Yep, that’s us.
But by all means, Luv, as you read this newsletter out loud? Go ahead and take that breath if you want to.
Just remember: It’s only a pale imitation of the real thing.
PS I’m not British. Nice try, though.
*1The Veda Austin interview about the Autists, if you’re interested.
Or for more about the Autists themselves, check out the Telepathy Tapes.
100%! Thanks for breaking it to Victoria gently but firmly. 😁
You wrote an eloquent and very important essay! Thank you.