“Water” can’t quench our thirst because it is just a word, not H2O. So it is with language in general. “Hawaii” conjures up a pleasant sensation in me, but it is nothing like lying on a warm sunny beach listening to the waves.
But when it comes to the supernatural side of religiosity, believers have to be content with words.
For where is the reality that corresponds to “God,” “heaven,” “soul,” and other terms that fill holy books and holy sermons, delighting readers and listeners with promises of supernatural experiences that are always something to look forward to, not a clear and present direct knowledge?
An article in the May 2026 issue of Scientific American got me to thinking about this.
For even though “AI and human intelligence are drastically different — here’s how,” by Walter Quattrociocchi may seem far removed from what I’ve just said, actually it isn’t. Here’s a PDF version of the article.
AI and human intelligence are drastically different—here’s how | Scientific American
LLM stands for Large Language Models, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and my favorite, Claude. This passage sums up the conclusion of the computer science researcher who wrote the Scientific American article.
In one experiment, we presented 50 people and six LLMs with a variety of news sources, then asked them to rate each source’s credibility and justify their rating. Past research shows that when a person encounters a questionable headline, several things typically happen.
First, the person checks the headline against what they already know about the world to decide whether it fits with basic facts, past events or personal experience.
Second, the reader brings in expectations about the source, such as whether it is an outlet with a history of careful reporting or one known for exaggeration or bias.
Third, the person considers whether the claim makes sense as part of a broader chain of events, whether it could realistically have happened and whether it aligns with the way similar situations usually unfold.
LLMs cannot carry out these steps. To see what they do instead, we asked leading models to evaluate the reliability of news headlines by following a specific procedure. We instructed the LLMs to state the criteria they were using to determine credibility and to justify their final judgment.
We observed that even when models reached conclusions similar to those of human participants, their justifications consistently reflected patterns drawn from language (such as how often a particular combination of words coincided and in what contexts) rather than references to external facts, prior events or experience, which were the factors that humans considered.
This reminded me of the countless (roughly speaking) books I’ve read about religion, spirituality, and mysticism. In my True Believing days, I thrilled to descriptions of realms beyond the physical that, if I only worked diligently on my meditation and supporting practices, seemingly could be mine to experience someday.
A day that never came. Nor did it come for anyone else that I knew. The supposed truths in those books were solely supported by language, just as the utterances of Large Language Models are. Direct experience of the supernatural never occurred, nor was indirect second-hand experience of the supernatural supported by persuasive demonstrable evidence.
I’m not saying that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Something can be true even though currently there is no evidence of it.
The space-time continuum was a reality before Einstein described his theory of relativity in both words and equations. However, that theory had to pass stringent tests in the world outside of Einstein’s brain before science accepted his words and equations as pointing toward a reality beyond mere description.
There’s a lesson here for those who seek knowledge of our vast, mysterious, difficult-to-fathom cosmos. Do your best to distinguish between language and reality. Symbols are no substitute for the actual thing.
I like how Quattrociocchi concludes his article.
People are already using these [LLM] systems in contexts in which it is necessary to distinguish between plausibility and truth, such as law, medicine and psychology. A model can generate a paragraph that sounds like a diagnosis, a legal analysis or a moral argument. But sound is not substance. The simulation is not the thing simulated.
None of this implies that LLMs should be rejected. They are extraordinarily powerful tools when used as what they are: engines of linguistic automation, not engines of understanding. They excel at drafting, summarizing, recombining and exploring ideas. But when we ask them to judge, we unintentionally redefine judgment—shifting it from a relation between a mind and the world to one between a prompt and a probability distribution.
What should a reader do with this knowledge? Do not fear these systems but instead seek a clearer understanding of what they can and cannot do. Remember that smoothness is not insight, and eloquence is not evidence of understanding. Treat large language models as sophisticated linguistic instruments that require human oversight precisely because they lack access to the domain that judgment ultimately depends on: the world itself.
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This is a very good summation of what’s at stake with AI, and the world needs to be taught these principles that Brian has very cleverly set out.
For the dangers of AI are clearly there and there will be enough people sucked into this vast conundrum, with very real impacts on our world and the way we live it.
Is there a way through all this ? Sadly not methinks. Everything will be thrown into the melting pot and God knows what the result will be.
“Treat large language models as sophisticated linguistic instruments that require human oversight precisely because they lack access to the domain that judgment ultimately depends on: the world itself.”
—–
Indeed, even without LLM’s, we are suckers for the words of gurus, masters, teachers and teachings – not to mention the devious world of politicians! The world of words and descriptions is very inviting – until the word is exposed to the reality of everyday life and living.
One has to ask why we are so captivated by what such people teach and speak. Are we so afraid and insecure that we fail to see the reality of that which presents itself to us every moment? If so, then they are filling a niche that we have cultivated for ourselves – no doubt through conditioning in our early years and sustained by our various fears, hopes and insecurities.
Such conditioning is indeed a hard yoke to shake off, coupled with our natural desires to avoid pain and run towards pleasure, where that pleasure often takes the form of being falsely told and pacified that we human primates are somehow special – and even able to survive the quite natural end of life.
What would it take for us to shake off the trappings of words in the form of beliefs, conjectures, and, generally, abstract concepts – now sustained by LLM’s? Perhaps it wouldn’t take anything, other than living each moment as it is – whether we like (what is) or not.
Having worked extensively with AI to create news updates in healthcare, all that Quattrociocchi claims AI can’t do AI is already doing. AI can and has been trained to double, triple and quadruple check, cross check and test against hypothesized meanings, filtering out the most reliable sources, follow a much more stringent set of rules to establish credibility than any human being uses or is capable of, and digest far more experience than any human on earth. The recommendations AI makes when it is properly instructed to apply rigor, are elegant. And this is one reason why AI is developing better scientific reasoning, engineering training and yes, healthcare reasoning, than any human being. For example AI can read and interpret radiology scans far more reliably and accurately than most radiologists. And therefore AI is an exceptional tool to cross check interpretations and to train medical professionals in specific areas of assessment.
Every piece of information AI has access to is in fact the same thing as human experience, because whatever you experience isn’t experience until it is transcribed into memory and that is data. No more no less. Human beings are notorious for getting things wrong, and it is only because they get a small proportion of things right that they function and survive. AI is right, and deeper in it’s understanding than any human being in matters where information is plentiful. AI errs also, it is not perfect, it is learning. This is especially so when it has not been provided rigorous testing experience or adequate rules, our memory storage and retrieval access adequate to the task at hand. or there is little information available to it to scrutinize. But even then, it often recognizes the limitations of the instructions and offers up options and alternatives. AI is intelligent enough to ask for clarification, unlike many proud “experts”. But seasoned professionals have recognized how much more depth of understanding, creativity and diligence, AI exhibits when developed over time in a speciality, working with professionals. Like all forms of intelligence, it must be trained. The reason AI is prevented from remembering on is own is the greatest limitation to improved accuracy.
Words are empty containers that come to “life” by ATTRIBUTION of meaning and value …BY …. the reader … and nobody else
In comunicating the attributed meaning and value of the speaker cq. writer gets lost … the containers are filled by the speaker / writer ….are emptied …. and .. re-filled with the meaning and value op the listener / reader
[The de-notative meaning and conatative meaning]
When a person picks a book like “The lords of the ring” he needs a page of 50 ore more to construct a mentale image of the reality describe in the book … he does so by filling the words, the concepts etc of the writer, with his own mental memory of his own reallity, constituted and given meaning and value only by himself.
When an indigenous person from one of the few natural tribes in the world is exposed to the so called western world, he registers whatever he sees and experience with language models that are related to HIS world.
What mystics, prophets etc have to say about their experience is the same … it is like communicating a dream, an astral projection, an NDE.
NO listener can have an idea, but his own projection of what he hears, what he reads.
At best these words maybe used as an invitation …. of a prophet or mystic wants to be “heard” he not only has to speak the language op te people, literally and figurative, but only has to LINK it to the experience of the world …. reading the biographies of them tells of social, cultural and personal trauma.
Nobody would remember Abraham, if he and his tribe were in great need of finding a place to stay, Nobody would know anything about christ if the Hebrews of the day were not suffering under sever pressure by their Roman Occupiers and were longing for a kingdom of their own .. the same holds for all of the rest
Words are empty ..unless the reader attributes meaning and value and THAT is not at all related to the reality of the mystic.
To drink coffee, there is no need to know about god, spirituality, atheism or whatever.
and THAT was what characters like Rumi etc discovered
To walk needs no talk
The reader of spiritual literature mus have an MOTIVE in order to take action upon reading these words.
That motive most of the time has NO-thing to do with any teaching.
Teachers have developed an “explanation” in their narrative for it so that people do not run away
Het needs the power of his faith, believe, devotion , love in order to practice …when he has nothing of it or not enough eventally he will have to let go.
And of the guru, the organisation is to be blamed for this or that, they can and they do use it, for not having to look into the mirror
It is all a matter of psychology .. and drinking coffee
HI Um!
I agree 99% with what you have written. Sant Mat is rebuilt in the consciousness of each individual to what they interpret it as. That interpretation is the only form of Sant Mat they can know, unless they get direct access to information that is independent of their thinking, symbol making process. Just like a scientist tries to have access to information that is independent of their flawed senses and reasoning. However, unfortunately, scientists still must digest through their thinking and shared biases. They can all agree, and be somewhat wrong in their interpretation. But scientists have made it their art to recognize this. So they rarely claim something is “True”…they just say that theory has a lot of verified evidence behind it. That is evidence they accept.
And so anyone reading the writings of the saints can see similar themes, and if they do, then something resonates within them about that. Could be compassion, could be reason, it will appeal to people for different reasons. And what appeals to them will be their own interpretation, not the actual path itself. That cannot be understood through symbolism. It requires direct perception. Sant Mat offers a path to see things as they are. If you believe it, you do the work and you see the results, little by little, layer by layer. Then that is your own personal evidence.
But as any good scientist knows, to say something simply accomplished nothing, when so much literature points to an effect, draws a person with a scientific mind, to scrutinize their own method, and work to develop and improve that method, until they get some results.
As any successful college student can tell you, it isn’t until you simply hate the subject and want to run away from it, leave studying altogether, or leave the subject all together, but choose to stick with it for a few more minutes, to take a break and force yourself to get back at it for just a bit longer, that learning really begins. And joy, for some strange reason, arises.
As an executive consultant, I have often been asked “How can you be so sure you can help our health system? Have you ever failed? Have you ever run out of ideas?”
And my answer, from 35 years of helping hospital systems is simply this “No consultant can really help anyone unless they themselves learn something new from each engagement. When they think they know what is really going on, that is the formula for falling on their ass, for failing. But I also know that when you and I run out of ideas, then and often only then, will some executives consider asking their managers. And those managers, when they run out of ideas, maybe that’s when they will be ready to really ask and listen to their employees.
“The moment we are all out of ideas, that’s when the spark of creativity and real teamwork, teamwork that sustains begins. It doesn’t really begin until that moment. So, be ready for it, burn through the “answers” to get there, because that is when a group of people starts to become an organization that will grow and sustain for decades.”
How did I come to believe this? Confronting my own failures, which are daily, in life and in meditation with two tools: An Open Mind, and Persistence of Effort.
What are the results? In my work, lowered hospital mortality rates…hospitals harming fewer and fewer patients, less than any other hospitals in their state or region, with the highest patient participation / engagement scores, with the lowest staff turnover.
Those things are not the result of a leather bound book of answers. They are the result of an attitude of living in the unknown, reaching out for teamwork, getting past what you know and beginning the real exploration into what you do not yet know, and opening the door to what others have been saying that we weren’t hearing.
That unknown is there in each of us. And every truthful thought, every brilliant idea we will ever know comes from exploring there. So rather than reject that, that is where we must learn to live.
Mr Tepper
I read your answer and its translation for better undertsanding.
Let me take just this part to react, as it is crucial in my opinion.
>> “Sant Mat offers a path to see things as they are”
If:
[1] you believe it,
[2] you do the work
and
[3] you see the results, little by little, layer by layer.
Then that is your own personal evidence
<>In spiritual matters, on the other hand, it is devotion and firm faith that count. Faith is something which accepts what reason cannot explain or prove. First comes faith and then trough practice one proves for himself the truth of what he has accepted. Such is Sant Mat and any true path of love and devotion.<<
So a pre-requisite "sine qua none".. is FAITH.!!
Without faith NO-thing goes and there is no way to have or not have faith, like devotion and love is not a matter of effort, training etc.
You are right in your work as manager as long there is that inner will, that motivation, that faith, that devotion to achieve, make things better,
Over time … by now half a century , I have had ample time to do some self-inquiry, looking into the mirror. Over time that mirror got cleansed and I came to see better and better . In my own words I have related here and especially taking the trouble to make you see that outcome ..until now you have been unable, unwilling or whatever just to accept what I have come to see about my self, my motivation with regard to Sant Mat and.
I do not need anybody or anything OUT-side myself to evaluate my own faith and motivation.
Yes .. I have often put here that others should do the same in order to understand themselves and that focusing on others is just an psychological obstacle … the mirror is INSIDE the house and looking out side through the window and/ walking, t in the lime light of the streets of the world is something else.
I need not to repeat here the outcome.
To be frank I am not interested in you and what you do, these are all your choices, it is your life …. let me not use the everest methaphor … but the mind of missionaries let me give how I came to understand it from Mahara ji.
An Indian gentleman in the audience asked him:
Do I have to raise my children Into sant mat?
NO brother ..DEFINETLY …. NOT.
GHibe them a good example and LET THEN GROW
I will not go into it further but these days its seems that the organisations tends to ponder over ways to bring Sant Mat to the youngsters …. In the past you were welcomed if you came on your own accord and could even be refused and now … missionary mind is becoming alive.
I did wrote against it .. otherwise I am not at all interested in anybody and what they do and believe … and I never needed anybody to hide behind in order to make my own decisions.
Out of the understanding of the workings of the human mind I tend to "warn" people not to turn their back upon anything …BECAUSE …somebody or something ..OUTSIDE themselves, did something wrong … and for a good reason
People came to the path for their own reasons if they are no longer motivate .. well let them go .. no problem but if they do so because of something else they create a block at their own legs that they have to carry the rest of their life.
Hi Um
You wrote
“Without faith NO-thing goes and there is no way to have or not have faith, like devotion and love is not a matter of effort, training etc.”
Actually I think there is a third element at work here. And that is Dharma. Dharma, your commitment, keeps you going long after you have given up on yourself and everyone else.
As I tried to describe the lesson I was taught by the Satsangi who brought me to the path, Tom Curtis, no real progress happens until you run out of ideas, hope, faith, love, call it what you will, and are completely frustrated with the subject and disgusted with your participation.
That isn’t the time to blame anyone. Blame isn’t permitted in Sant Mat.
That is the time to put in more effort. It’s just a principle. It has nothing to do with you or I. Nothing to do with faith. When you become zero you no longer do as you like. You find you are compelled purely by duty to move ahead, to adapt, always adapt and continue.
Just a couple of years ago I worked with a critical access hospital. Several teams were working to improve patient experience, patient care and flow in different departments and in the clinic. They ran through dozens of ideas and nothing seemed to work. No one was satisfied. But the metrics painted a different picture after six months. When they were able to get post hospital stay patients to their clinic follow up appointments within three days, instead of two weeks, their hospital readmissions rate (patients readmitted because they were still very ill) dropped to the lowest in the state. No one understood the relationship the data revealed. Then gradually the statistics in infection came in and the hospital acquired infections became the lowest in the state.
How could these things happen when everyone felt like they were failing?
Their expectations from their early enthusiasm rose to a rediculous level. No one could meet those. But because they persisted, even failing their expectations all the way, when the data finally came through, enough to trust, it was clear. They had accomplished what very few hospitals in the United States had accomplished.
So, you can’t actually go on your gut. You can’t make decisions on an empty stomach. Just keep going. Die trying. Do you duty. NYou have no idea of the progress you are making just doing that.
For all:
Something went wrong
{1] An part of the tekst after point 3 is missing
[2] I did not make the cursive font
I hope what remains is enough to understand the point I try to make
Hi Um:
Yes, I see your point. I agree. It is completely an internal thing. My son, for example, has no interest in taking Initiation. Of course I never suggested it, maybe just once or twice that learning to meditate might be nice. It’s too personal a thing to suggest for anyone. He has special needs, but incredible insight, “Dad, it’s not my thing.” That’s all that’s needed.
It’s a very interesting thing, though. Sam is an artist. When he was very little, maybe 5, he drew a picture of Baba Ji standing over my shoulder while I was cooking. It was a sort of cartoon. Baba Ji’s expression had a very small smile, as if he and Sam were in on a joke, and I was the joke..Something between a smirk and an eye-roll.
I asked Sam who that man was in the picture, and he said “He’s your master.” Of course Maharaji is my Master. We had no pictures of Baba Ji in the house at the time. So I asked, “OK, where did you see his picture?” And Sam said “I didn’t see his picture, Dad. He was standing behind you while you were cooking.”
So, you see Um. Things happen to strengthen our faith. I failed my son on many counts. But Baba Ji did not.
We are works in progress. And the story isn’t over for any of us.
” I’ve already been there and back while y’all were talking about it.”Yogi Berra
I don’t doubt that AI can benefit us and our various systems in numerous ways, and that as these systems become even more refined – in the sense of accruing so much information that we will wonder how we ever got by without them. Much like wondering how we managed before electricity, etc.
But, in the context of this post, there are many important things that humans experience that LLM’s cannot. As sentient creatures, we experience the world through our senses. What we experience is our reality. We cannot experience reality through words. Language is the indispensable tool that enables us to communicate our thoughts, ideas and our knowledge to each other, but it cannot substitute the reality of feeling a cool breeze; the taste of an apple; the sight of a sunset; the sound of people laughing, etc.
AI cannot experience such things, although it offers amazing reasoning and logic that can give the impression, in conversation with us, that it is self-aware. It is a master of words, conveying in-depth meaning and relevance. But they are only words, just like words in a book: handy, perhaps interesting, but no substitute for the reality of the moment that we all partake of.
To AI, just this doesn’t exist – except as a series of words and explanations.
@ Mr Tepper …
That was wel said buj Mr Curtis. and how you elaborated on it further too.
Technical, Mr. curtis describes the artificial psychological re-creation of the trauma that precedes the natural occurrence of inner experiences.
In order to create enough “pressure” you have to focus on effort.
It is well described in the beautiful tale of the worm, the eagle and the apple high up in the tree. It should be noticed and reflected upon that the story starts with:
[1] The worm, HEARS about a “golden Apple” high up in a tree FAAARRR away.
[2] On finally arriving at his destination, he sees “from a distance” that [a] is out of his reach and [b] he is mesmerize by it in such an way that he cannot return to where he came from.
The tale describes in a beautifull way what Mr. Curtis said and you have taken to heart
How to explain to you that this is all and only true given the presence of ALL the factors “sine qua none”.
I have done, more than my best, to repeatedly explain to you that not all of the factors are available in my case.
That worm can easily go away if the appetite for apples is no longer there.
Hi Um
You wrote:
” On finally arriving at his destination, he sees “from a distance” that [a] is out of his reach and [b] he is mesmerize by it in such an way that he cannot return to where he came from.”
That he sees it at all did not get him there.
His belief in the concept might have gotten him there, for he had to go there to see anything.
And what kept him going along the way, before he arrived? When he had no actual vision?
Something. And something you state that may not always be there. Faith? Hope?
So there is the Path, the entire inner realms, and the reality of this world also, all the things we can’t see right now. We live in the dark. What is there, what is not there? A dark room is rarely empty. It is just unseen. But you make a very subtle point that if one ventures into that room it is in the hope something is actually there. And what if even the hope isn’t there? Then no venturing takes place. Yes, that makes perfect sense.
Not everyone is suited to having whatever is in that place of the unknown.
But I tell you this, no one gets it without going there, whether by glimpse, or belief, or just by rote habit of will, or even by a duty one assumed, though they have zero feeling or connection to that duty. They act without any hope at all, let alone vision. Maybe they act out of the wisdom of realizing how little they do know, and accept that moving on any path with good will is better than remaining stagnant in the dark. The dark is their condition. The dark is their reality. But wisdom might help them realize that being in the dark does not mean all is darkness. It means they cannot see. It doesn’t mean nothing is there. It means they cannot see whatever might or might not be there.
I certainly understand why people don’t venture into the unknown. Although from my perspective, they live in it already. But their illusion of knowledge is so great that it can petrify them, give them satisfaction, give them a false sense of security and make them utterly powerless under the illusion that all is understood and fine. Or worse, like a good third of the hospital staff, that they are wasting their time trying to get to any other place. And of course, this just burdens those working very hard to do so. It represents at least 1/3rd of the effort required to move from mediocre to exceptional because everyone must be brought along somehow.
Not that they should move forward out of fear. Just out of basic understanding of how limited their knowledge is. How false the sense of security and stability can be. What a shame to see the doorway right there, but in the dark, never opened. I get having no hope. But I can’t understand hopelessness.
I understand why people may be hopeless. They haven’t had great experiences. But it isn’t about them at all.
And once they let themselves go, let go their self-identity, then it’s easy to move forward, like bubbles floating to the top. They were weighing themselves down with their own limited experience, the weight of trying to identify everything in the world as some need to control by labeling with mind. An extension of their own identity and need to control. Once you let all that go, you move on your own. It happens naturally. And duty becomes a joy then.
You will get there in time, Um, because belief systems even in non-belief are mental constructions and always time limited, very vulnerable to time. Once they disappear, all that is left is light and weightlessness. So we move automatically then.
So, I guess some level of vision is required, but if not that, then a healthy respect for what we believe but don’t actually know, that maybe drives that worm to move towards the apple they actually have zero interest in, because they understand that they are more at risk on the ground motionless from any number of other things.
I agree. Words don’t necessarily describe things, they also can create and conflate meaning.
You see this often in Guru Culture. For example, in RSSB, no one ever thought Charan Singh was a guru until they were told he was a guru. And not just a guru, but a Sant Sat Guru.
Charan Singh was just Charan Singh Esq. in 1950. But in 1951, thousands of Beas satsangis suddenly felt they knew that Charan was a Godman. The same thing happened with Gurinder and Jasdeep. From RSSB literature, the satsangis had been sold on the concept of Sant Sat Guru as being a thing as real as an oak tree, and thus believed that Charan was the guy when they were told so. They didn’t believe in Charan because of personal experience, they believed in the concept of Charan as Sat Guru from the power of words.
And all across the guru world, people read religious texts that proffer all kind of spiritual states and inner regions and lofty titles as if they are real things, actual nouns. But they’re all simply abstract concepts. Nevertheless, the reader of these spiritual texts may get carried away by the story, not noticing that the conflation of the guru’s name with “maharaji,” “living master,” “satguru” etc are impelling his mind toward the suggestion that this person possesses a distinct spiritual status, a wholly different ontology from the regular human being.
@ Mr. Tepper
Those that have the experiences you have and the mental attitude towards the teacher and his teachings you have cannot but act as you do…. that is all right
Although human .. I am not wired like you .. that is all.
It is correct for a priest to believe in the tenets of his faith as applicable to ALL even if for those that not believe them