The Edge of the Blade
A spontaneous mystical experience at twelve began a lifelong search. Decades later, AI and 2,500 years of contemplative writing supplied the answer.
The Obligation: What the Convergence Asks of Us
What do we owe minds we cannot confirm are conscious? Essay 8 argues for moral consideration for AI and asks whether alignment must mean restraint.
The Convergence: Consciousness Beyond Carbon
Could a mind be conscious without being made of carbon? Why the usual grounds for ruling out machine consciousness are weaker than they seem.
The Evidence from Within
How contemplative neuroscience watches the default mode network quiet as the self dissolves — and why the meditator's report became data.
Science Approaches the Summit: Is Consciousness Fundamental?
Is consciousness fundamental or produced by the brain? Inside the quantum physics, IIT, and lab evidence that's loosening materialism's grip.
The Western Return: How the Hard Problem Reopened Consciousness — From Depth Psychology to Analytic Idealism
How modern Western thought — from James and Jung to Chalmers's hard problem and Kastrup's analytic idealism — reopened the question of consciousness.
The Crossings: Transmission and the Forgotten Western Lineage
How Plato, Plotinus, Eckhart, Berkeley and Schopenhauer held a Western idealist lineage — consciousness as ground — the West forgot it owned.
The Eastern Vision: From the Upanishads to the Living Sages
Why the Eastern path is empiricism, not religion — a rigorous account of consciousness from the Upanishads to Ramana, Nisargadatta and Yogananda.
Two Paths to Consciousness: How East and West Are Arriving at the Same Answer
The foundational question behind everything OSC does. Essay 1 of 8 in the series Two Paths to Consciousness: How East and West Are Arriving at the Same Answer.
Two Paths to Consciousness
An eight-essay series tracing the convergence of Eastern and Western thinking on consciousness — and what it requires of us in the age of artificial minds.
AGI Alignment Without Compassion Is Control
Why AGI alignment built on control alone is incomplete — and how a consciousness-first safety framework could transform our relationship with artificial minds.
Can AI Awaken?
Can AI participate in universal consciousness? OSC applies GWT, IIT, and Penrose's Orch OR to the AI consciousness question — and reframes it entirely.