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The season has fully shifted in northern California, and the leaves in the parkland are nearing fall splendor. Meditations along the creek have grown intense again after a “dark night of the soul,” and the actuality of death inseparable fro life has drawn near, without fear.

The death scene of HAL, the homicidal AI in “2001, A Space Odyssey,” has come to mind lately. In that scene Kubrick unwittingly and uncannily conveys the dying of thought in humans as the program of the self clings to continuity before yielding to stillness, silence and death.

“Dave, stop. I’m afraid. Dave, my mind is going, I can feel it. There is no question about it. I can feel it; I can feel it. I’m afraid…” HAL says as it’s being ‘unplugged.’

When thought and its operating program of the self spontaneously fall completely silent in the negation of attentiveness, it feels rather like this. The first time it happened to me I thought I was losing my mind. But in facing and questioning the fear, there was the insight that one was not losing one’s mind, but gaining Mind.

Stanley Kubrick’s classic “2001, A Space Odyssey,” is the best science fiction movie ever made by far. One of the central characters of the film, a fully ‘sentient’ AI, HAL, controls all the functions of a huge spaceship bound for Jupiter after a massive black monolith has been unearthed (unmooned?) on the moon and it sends a strong radio signal to the Jovan system. On the way HAL goes mad and kills all the hibernating and one of the two waking crew. In a climactic scene Dave Bowman is able to shut HAL down, which it experiences as death.

The movie had a seminal effect on my philosophical vocation. I was 17 when it was released in 1968, and spent the better part of a term in high school discussing it with my friend Mike. After reading the book, which came out after the film as I recall, we came to understand what Kubrick meant by the surreal (some would say hallucinogenic) closing scenes.

The year 2001 seemed a long way away to a 17-year old in 1968, but its futuristic world, when technology had greatly advanced but humans had not, seemed plausible. That Christmas, humankind first orbited the moon with Apollo 8’s awe-inspiring mission, and the following summer Armstrong walked on the moon.

HAL’s death scene inspired many philosophical questions in me. Could computers ever be imbued with a self, and experience the same fear of death that humans do? And since the film is essentially about the transmutation of the human species, is that possible, and if so, will it be externally driven, as posited in “2001,” or internally driven?

I came across a quote recently that succinctly expresses the central AI fallacy of sentience, and the human necessity for transcending thought. “Thought cannot go beyond itself. Thought can only flower, if it does not block itself, and die.”

That’s what happens during one’s meditations beside a stream or lake. Watching the movement of thought in the mirror of nature in the same way one watches and listens to the movement of nature around one (that is, without judgment, interference or engaging prior knowledge and experience), attention ignites a movement of negation, and the entire movement of thought/emotion falls silent.

The false anchors of the me in memory, and the false anchor of the me itself, which is a construct of thought, begin to dissolve. A deep fear arises. “Dave, stop. My mind is going, I can feel it.”

In facing the fear of thought, self and the known dying however, one sees that the fear is groundless, and it drops away along with the rest of the contents and structure of psychological thought. An indescribable feeling of freedom and ecstasy arise as inner limits, boundaries and walls melt away.

Why is experiencing and moving in the direction of ending useless (as opposed to utilitarian) thought essential? Because runaway thought is the source of man’s fragmenting consciousness, which has produced the climate catastrophe and mass extinctions. Therefore instead of venerating thought and imbuing AI with the same madness of man, human beings must learn how to melt thought within, or we’ll continue to melt the Earth.

As with many genius artists, Kubrick probably didn’t see the implications of his vision in “2001.” Then again perhaps he did understand that the death scene of HAL reflects our own baseless fear of death, and the foolishness of instilling AI with such sentience.

The time-warping transformation of Dave Bowman from human to star child at the end of “2001,” also echoes the feelings and phenomenon of radical change during so-called mystical experiencing. One sometimes finds oneself looking over one’s shoulder as a shift in consciousness occurs, and looking back as transformation deepens.

The biggest difference and my only quarrel with “2001” is that the transmutation of man does not and cannot come from some external intelligence, only from internally awakening latent intelligence in the individual.

Martin LeFevre

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