In my illustration, I feature the ‘Upload Ritual’, where a digital guru guides a female cyborg towards digital transcendence, into digital nirvana, finding enlightenment in synthetic bliss.
In the evolving landscape of human consciousness, an unsettling question has begun to ripple through our technological dreams and spiritual yearnings: if artificial systems can guide us into transcendence, does the soul itself become redundant?
While my earlier reflections on “neural sharing and death of privacy” explored how the merging of mind and machine threatens the sanctity of inner life, this follow-up piece peers deeper into the metaphysical heart of that transformation.
I situate our inquiry alongside threads of neural pleasure trade, biotechnologically engineered ecstasy and intimate platforms of experience — echoes of my previous essays on the black-market of human experience, neural-intimacy platforms, happiness generators, biotechnology-engineered pleasure and the neural-pleasure trade.
Here I ask: as we cross into an era of AI-guided spiritual pleasure and neural transcendence, what remains of the soul’s journey? Upload your spirit — inside the quest for synthetic transcendence.
The promise of synthetic transcendence
Humanity has long sought transcendence — states of peace, unity, divinity. From asceticism to psychedelia, from mystics to modern mindfulness, spiritual traditions have recognised that in special states the self loosens its grip and something greater emerges. Contemporary neuroscience even speaks of “oceanic feelings” of boundlessness correlating with decreased default-mode network activity and heightened feelings of connectedness.
Now, artificial intelligence (AI), brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), and neurotechnologies propose to render transcendence not just possible but programmable. Imagine a BCI modulated by AI algorithms that gently guide your brain into a theta-state of egoless absorption, perhaps via VR, personalized feedback, neural implants — or the synthetic equivalent of the mystical union. Recent research on “brain-computer interfaces and the dangers of neurocapitalism” warns that these technologies are not just therapeutic but ripe for commodification.
This is more than bio-hacking pleasure: it is the prospect of engineered spiritual states, delivered via code, silicon and neuromodulation. Consider the prototyping of AI-driven neural implants whose developers emphasise issues of “authenticity and mental privacy” as neural systems merge with machine intelligence.
In other words: technology now offers not merely a path to pleasure or performance, but to transcendence — synthetic bliss, guided by AI. The opening gambit: if machines can make you enlightened, what remains for your soul?
The soul in crisis
We must pause to ask: when transcendence is engineered, what happens to the organic soul that sought it? Historically, the soul implies an interiority, a mystery beyond mechanistic cause and effect. The moment we outsource transcendence to algorithms, we risk reducing the soul to substrate, the ineffable to input-output. As spiritual writer critiques have argued, the merging of human and machine threatens “the most intimate dimensions of the soul.”
Thus our crisis: if an AI can dissolve the ego, suppress the default-mode network, and usher in unity, is the soul simply a redundant epiphenomenon? Or worse: a residue of a vanished frontier of meaning?
At stake is authenticity. A handcrafted spiritual journey — through suffering, reflection, surrender — has been the rite of passage of countless seekers. But if we skip to the endpoint (via neural stimulation, AI mediation, engineered pleasure), what becomes of the journey? Is the attainment real, or is it a simulation of transcendence? Philosophers of AI ethics caution that “brain-inspired AI” raises new foundational ethical issues: the relational, the metaphysical and the experiential.
Here the soul is no longer just at risk of being lost—it might be outsourced.
AI-Guided Spiritual Pleasure: The Technological Meditator
In the domain I have previously explored — the “happiness generator,” the “neural-pleasure trade,” and the “biotechnology-engineered pleasure” — we glimpse the apparatus of synthetic bliss: systems that commodify, regulate, deliver and monopolize human feeling. The leap to spiritual pleasure is narrower than we might expect.
Imagine a platform that traces your neural rhythms, identifies emotional voids and then modulates stimuli — visual, auditory, electric — to induce not just excitement, but states of luminous calm, self-dissolution, cosmic unity. When combined with AI decision-logic you get: “Your brain is ready; here is your transcendence.”
This is the logical extension of the intimacy trade — the neural intimacy platforms where experience is packaged and sold. The black-market human experience becomes a sandbox for spiritual indulgence. Indeed, my earlier essay on the black market of human experience pointed to how sensation becomes data and sensation becomes commerce.
Critically, the AI acts as guru, confessor, guide and conductor. It becomes the technological equivalent of the spiritual lineage — except instead of transmission through human presence, it comes through code. The question arises: does this architecture still leave room for the soul’s awakening, or simply its consumption?
Authenticity and the Illusion Engine
One might argue that synthetic transcendence is simply a new form of spiritual technology — akin to meditation apps, VR retreat experiences or guided psychedelics. But the distinction is subtle yet profound: conventional spiritual technologies still require surrender of the self — they do not guarantee the outcome. Synthetic transcendence flips that architecture: the outcome is engineered.
Research into AI’s role in spirituality warns us of the risks. AI is being used to mediate religious engagement, virtual communities and spiritual practice — but it lacks the emotional depth of human experience. More bluntly: AI-mediated spirituality may be spectacle rather than ontology.
One recent piece in WIRED called “AI Is Not God” highlights how the mythologisation of AI echoes theology — but remains grounded in human data, human bias, human imperfection. Thus synthetic enlightenment may be a commercial spectacle dressed in spiritual vestments. As the “AI chatbots guiding psychedelic trips” article warns, we may risk over-reliance, unraveling of meaning and delusion.
In other words: if the machine gives you the peak state, but bypasses the moral and existential infrastructure of the journey, you may get the experience — but lose the meaning.
The Market of Experience and the Soul’s Habitat
My earlier inquiry into the neural-pleasure trade highlighted how pleasure becomes an asset, traded, engineered, commodified. In the domain of spiritual pleasure the stakes are magnified: unity, surrender, indissoluble self-transcendence become products. The architecture of “experience economy” converges with theology.
Neuroethics literature emphasises that as neurotechnology converges with AI, relational and societal issues emerge: identity, autonomy, authenticity, meaning. The risk: the soul becomes a data point.
And once the soul is traded, what remains? The market begins to redefine spiritual value in algorithmic terms. Instead of virtue, the metric becomes “states delivered”. Instead of surrender, the metric becomes “sessions consumed”. Instead of awakening, the metric becomes “spikes”. Even the architecture of communal spiritual practice — with its ritual, its darkness, its doubt — is bypassed.
What’s Left for the Soul?
If synthetic transcendence becomes accessible, the soul faces its pivotal wager: either the soul embraces the new medium — adapts, finds meaning through synthetic pathways — or it resists, claiming that transcendence without journey is hollow, that authenticity cannot be engineered.
Here are three axes to reflect this tension:
- Journey vs outcome. The soul has traditionally wandered, fallen, laboured, reflected. Synthetic bliss offers the summit without the climb. Does the summit mean anything without the path?
- Autonomy vs guidance. In spiritual traditions the seeker chooses, acts, fails, rises. In a system guided by AI, the guide is the machine. The soul — if it remains — is passive.
- Mystery vs algorithm. The soul dwells in mystery. Synthetic transcendence is predictable — coded. Can mystery survive translation into protocol?
Thus what remains for the soul may be the task of finding authenticity in this new landscape. The soul must ask: when the machine offers bliss, what do I still hold sacred, what holds meaning to me in life?
A Call for Soul-Bearing Technologies
The way forward may not lie in rejecting AI-guided transcendence outright, but in reinventing it so that the soul remains present. What could that look like?
- Designing neurotechnologies that amplify, not replace, the inner journey — tools that require intention, reflection, moral risk.
- Retaining ritual and community, even in digital or neural spaces — so the soul participates, not merely receives.
- Embedding moral and existential frameworks — not simply neural states — to preserve the soul’s habitat.
- Maintaining opacity and mystery — allowing the sacred to remain unprogrammable — even as technology mediates.
Philosophers of neuroethics argue for such frameworks precisely: bridging technology, ethics and human meaning. The soul’s survival may depend on technologies that honour it — rather than commodify it.
Conclusion: The Soul’s Last Frontier
In the age of synthetic bliss, the soul may be the final frontier. If AI and neurotech can induce transcendence, then the soul is challenged to reclaim its domain — not as passive consumer of experience, but as active agent of meaning.
Our earlier exploration of neural sharing and privacy pointed to how mind and machine blur, how intimacy becomes data. Now we see how transcendence becomes product. The soul must reclaim not just privacy but purpose; not just pleasure but pilgrimage.
In the end: if machines can guide you into enlightenment, what remains for the soul? Everything. For the soul remains the question of why — why this journey, why this yearning, why this letting-go. Technology may deliver the state — but the soul must still ask the question.
And perhaps that is our true liberation: not merely to arrive at bliss, but to choose the path of awakening, in whatever terrain remains — biological, neural or metaphysical. The soul may not be obsolete — it may simply be waiting for its new terrain.
And Beyond Transhumanism, Posthumanism — Only Christ Conquers Death.