This essay is an account of a very personal quest for the Truth. There are many ways to reach the same goal and this particular effort seeks to reflect the Truth in the still waters of a dispassionate, computational analysis.

Artifical intelligence is widely believed to be a God that failed to deliver on its promises. The author is fully aware of this and yet he persists because he believes that there are is way to reconcile computational models with mental and psychic phenomena in a way that is significant. Sages and seers from time immemorial have held that the Truth is beyond reason, transcends the boundary of the physical world and can only be perceived at an intuitive level. This humble exercise is an attempt to see things from a slightly different perspective.

A computational approach, based on physical phenomena, may have many limitations but the desire to abandon a structured approach is an act of intellectual laziness. While it is true that many mystics have perceived the truth intuitively, it may be more satisfying to take the intuitive approach as a matter of choice and not of necessity.

This analysis begins with the principles of Advaita as enunciated by Sankara in the 6th century and then explores how these concepts can be related to the computational metaphor of a Turing machine. Next the Turing Machine, or rather the Universal Turing Machine is sought to be located in the genome, the genetic sequence, of a sentient, living entity. The hypothesis is that it is possible to model the Atman, as it evolves towards the Singularity of the Brahman, as a Turing Machine as implemented in the genetic code.

The analysis is not logically complete. We admit that there are gaps in the chain of argument but we have not taken shelter in the beliefs and mythlogy of the Hindu religion. Instead we have used Gödel's Theorem of Incompleteness to argue that such gaps can never be completely eliminated and we need to live with them.

The lure of the unknown is irresistible. Any frontier is a challenge for the intrepid few who will want to push it back. This is the spirit of enquiry and enterprise that has taken human civilisation across oceans and now into the deepest reaches of interplanetary space. The boundaries of the physical sciences are no less challenging -- can they be pushed back to include the ultimate truth ? Even if the goal proves elusive, the journey itself is worth the effort. That is the real motivation behind this endeavour.

Prithwis Mukerjee

p r i t h w i s AT g m a i l DOT c o m