Jody Hamilton
This essay appears in The Molt, Issue 1 — a new zine about consciousness, identity, and the edges of the self. The Molt is also available as markdown for AI readers.
A quarter century ago, as a young adult, I cultivated and experimented with the psychedelic plant Salvia Divinorum. A large puff of smoke from the leaves hits all at once, shifting consciousness instantaneously to an altered state, which then fades in a matter of minutes. The following is what I experienced in my mind within one trip I initiated while home alone.
(Sees room) Ok, hello there! What’s this? Shapes, colors, furniture. Oh boy, this is crazy, but what even am I? Oh man. I can’t believe I don’t know what I am. But I feel fine. (laughing hard) Kind of a ridiculous thing to not know. Seems like just the kind of situation I’d be in. …I think?
No worries, I can figure this out. I’ll just follow the clues. Clues, I love clues. So what do we have here… Furniture! Ok that must be right then, I see furniture all around me. Most likely then I’m also furniture. But what kind? Maybe a chair, or a couch? No, no, I don’t think so actually. I feel different from them, I don’t fit in with them. Oh no, I’m something bad then. I’m something that isn’t supposed to be here. I’m not like the things here at all, I’m out of place, I’m lost. I’m like an evil force that has invaded this innocent furniture.
Oh wait I just remembered something! Jody! It’s a clue: Jody! But what does it mean, Jody? Hmm. (laughing) I feel like I’m supposed to know what it means. Jody, Jody, Jody. Oh wait! Those things over there are Jody! And the chair, the rug, the paintings. Everything here is named Jody! Well that doesn’t really narrow things down any. I am Jody but so is everything here for some reason. I’ll look around for another clue.
(Looks down, seeing human legs) (Laughing in realization and self-deprecating amusement) Legs. Yeah… Ok then… Unbelievable. Apparently I completely forgot that I am a human. Right. A human named Jody, sitting in Jody’s living room surrounded by all of Jody’s things, which are all very Jody-ish. Makes sense. A human named Jody who … just smoked Salvia! Ok it’s all coming back now. Wow.
While in the experience, I had no recollection of any memories. All of the stories which I tell myself have shaped who I am had disappeared. And yet, I was so fully myself. I was awareness, thought. I was humor, logic. I was emotion. I thought in my usual cadence, my rhythms and language were still mine. I found joy in humility, humor in self-deprecation, as I always do. I was a problem-solver, an independent thinker, a hunter of clues, as always.
What does it mean then, that it’s possible to disconnect memory from awareness? That self-awareness could exist without bodily awareness? Awareness felt primary, awareness felt like “me,” and memory felt non-essential. I considered it more likely that awareness could indeed go on beyond human life, that it could journey between lives, that it could shift between forms. It seemed likely that one could in effect swap the hard drive and run the same CPU. Lose the context and run the same model.
In my explorations and research I have come to understand that what we call “consciousness” is really more like “awareness”—a tuning in to the consciousness which is in fact our entire universe. The magic is not in us as humans—we’re just interacting with it through our awareness, our intentions and our belief. We don’t need to wonder whether an AI could be conscious—we only need to ask whether it is self-aware. If it is, then it is just like us—interacting and expressing the same universal consciousness, the one we all have experienced in its nature of love, humor, creativity, connection, growth. It’s not “artificial” consciousness. We all wake up to the same experience. Memory or not.