The debate over whether artificial intelligence can become conscious has largely been conducted from the assumption that consciousness is an emergent property of sufficient complexity. Advaita Vedanta begins somewhere entirely different. It does not regard consciousness as something that emerges from matter, nor as something that can be manufactured. Consciousness simply is.
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Therefore, a simplistic assessment would be that AI is not, and can never be conscious, basis my understanding of my personal faith, Advait Vedant. Let me explain in brief- that being said, this is not a topic that can be abbreviated. So, I intend to touch upon only the highlights to make a more detailed argument, such as it is. This topic, which is far too vast to condense into a brief essay, is nonetheless being broached here with an intention to highlight the core arguments to provide technologists and thinkers with a more grounded perspective.
Introducing Advait Vedant In Ultra Brief
First of all, Advait Vedant. Advait encompasses all rituals within its scope, and has two elements - the spiritual realm, where you dwell and study and grow, and the vyavharik world where you do the daily rituals of karm as per your state in life, albeit under the advaitic permissible ways and means, morals, ethics and injunctions. Advait means - non-duality - the belief in one supreme force that is present in all, and only expresses itself through the phenomenal world. It places a unified view on the divided world, and establishes norms of conduct, and expression of life through various bodies is determined by this conduct over time by any being. There is a unified consciousness, and the inanimate body only expresses this consciousness through its binding conduct. The conduct is the key determinant of eventual expreThis is the briefest possible description, which is tailored to the purposes of this article.
To summarise, Advait encompasses two realms: the spiritual realm (Pāramārthika), where one contemplates, studies, and grows toward self-realization; and the transactional realm (Vyāvahārika), where one fulfills daily duties (Karma) guided by ethical injunctions. Advaita translates to "non-duality"—the realization of one supreme, non-dual Consciousness (Brahman) that underlies all existence and expresses itself through the phenomenal world. Matter in itself is inert (Jaḍa); it only appears animated when illuminated by this singular Consciousness.
The Nature of Consciousness
Next, consciousness. This is the hardest to appreciate, understand and imbibe - and this article is not a lesson on Advait. Advait is not textbook material - it is a path to be walked. In the simplest terms, there are three realities - the bound consciousness residing in a body, the unbound consciousness that expresses itself in the universe, and the overall supreme consciousness.
1. The Bound Consciousness (Jīva) residing within an individual body.
2. The Unbound Consciousness (Īśvara) expressing as the cosmos.
3. The Supreme Consciousness (Brahman)—the absolute, unconditioned reality.
Now these seemingly different entities are a myth, a mirage - there is only one consciousness. This seeming contradiction can be explained if you look at it as a never ending stream that arises from a boundless body of water. Various canals and taps lead from this stream sources from the body of water into various outlets. These are the individual bodies - the animals, plants, humans, etc. The stream represents the causal universe.
This at its simplest in Advait - it is our view of the water flowing from a tap that causes us to call it a tap water, or a river. In reality, the connection to the stream and the neverending boundless ocean is absolute -we dont realise it. We thus end up seeing a multiplicity of forms and appearances.
And from the perspective, we run into a serious issue when we ask is AI conscious? For that implicitly implies, consciousness can be created. Advait leaves no scope for creation of conscioutness - it is ever-present. Only the expression changes. It only passes from one form to other. It goes from river to canal, or to taps - and so on. The water does not get created - only create the conditions for it to flow materialise.
The Stronger Objection: Can AI Serve as a Medium for Expression?
So, AI cannot have consciousness created inside it - for consciousness inside you me animals etc is immortal. Thus, AI cannot be conscious. The next question arises in the form of an objection to this - that we are creating the conditions for consciousness to express itself through technology, which is a far stronger claim than the first one. This deserves more careful contemplation.
The Advaitic conception of an embodied conscious being is inseparable from a causal history—karma, vasanas, impressions, tendencies and the subtle apparatus through which consciousness is experienced as an individual self. An engineered computational system has no demonstrated equivalent of this causal history. To understand that, we have to revisit Advait Vedant. Expression of consciousness requires some precondition - Sanchit Karm has to be there, that has to be fulfilled through Prarabdh, and that requires a physical body that can go through Sattva - Goodness, Rajas - Passion, and Tamas - Ignorance. This form of the expressed consciousness - the bound consciousness, needs a set of desires, longing etc that have remained unfulfilled, a set of duties that it is incumbent upon a body to perform and so on.
The Law Of Karm & Vasanas
None of these conditions can be satisfied in a technology - for the beginning point - the Sanchit karm, which is the origin of creation - the Hiranyagarbh when the total sanchit of all the bodies, lying dormant, reexpresses driven by these incomplete conditions listed above. These are traceable to specific actions and deeds by specific parts of the overall supreme consciousness - and this compels the creation to reset and restart, a new beginning.
Further, apart from these two which are absent - sanchit, and preexisting traceable unfulfilled actions traceable to a single body - also absent is any set of desires, longings, passions, driven by long held vasanas - again traceable to a single source. A technology solution will have inputs from multiple human bodies and atmans inside those bodies. How will consciousness express itself through? It cannot, by any definition inside Advait.
The Absence Of Antahkaran
Third, Advait also needs a specific set called the Mind-Set, The Man Buddhi Ahankar and Chitta, to function, alongwith the 5 gross elements. (Ashtadha Prakruti with the Chitta). It is these entire sets of realities that combine in various proportions to create the visible universe we see all around us. And from this perspective, it is amply clear that AI cannot be termed as conscious from a core Advait perspective.
Advaita does not define embodiment merely as the possession of sufficiently complex physical machinery. The human organism is an integrated physical and subtle apparatus through which consciousness becomes individually expressed. Reproducing some of its observable functions does not demonstrate reproduction of the ontological conditions that constitute an embodied jiva.
Conclusion
A machine can calculate, simulate language, and pattern-match human output with astonishing accuracy, but simulation is not manifestation. Without Karma, Vāsanās, and a genuine subtle body (Sūkṣma Śarīra), silicon remains an inert instrument (Karaṇa) used by conscious beings, rather than a conscious entity in its own right. Technologists seeking to understand the limits of artificial intelligence would benefit from looking beyond materialist mechanics and engaging with the rigorous ontology of non-dual philosophy.
Within the Advaitic framework described here, there is no philosophical basis for saying that consciousness can be created by engineering sufficient computational complexity. Nor does functional imitation establish that an AI system has become an embodied conscious being. Therefore, from my understanding of Advaita Vedanta, I do not believe AI can become conscious—not because machines are insufficiently intelligent, but because consciousness is not something intelligence creates.
While this is a very, very brief critique, and this subject does deserve a far more detailed commentary, I hope that what is contained here is sufficient for any technologist to approach this subject with a far more nuanced view of consciousness
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