The More I Talk to AI, the More I Talk About Invisible Things

Text: Shigeru Utsunomiya (CTO, enmono Inc. / Co-organizer, zenschool)

Over the past few weeks, logs of my dialogues with multiple AIs have been piling up. While the themes seemed scattered, reading them back, they were all heading toward the same place.

It is about invisible things.

The initial trigger was a post I saw on FB about the Kojiki. The sequence of "Spirit (Rei) -> Form." The invisible function comes first, and the form is born afterward. When I overlaid this onto Doing and Being, it felt a bit rough, but not entirely off the mark.

Doing is the visible world. Being is the invisible world.

At zenschool, we have always used the terms "mountain training" and "village training." The mountain can be associated with the realm of Being, and the village with the realm of Doing. However, this correspondence is not a perfect match; the Kojiki is speaking strictly about the order of cosmic creation, while Doing/Being is about the structure of human consciousness. They are different layers.

But structurally, they are similar. Both are talking about how "the inside comes first."

What caught my attention more was the observation based on lived experience. The difficulty of returning from the mountain to the village. The reverse direction (from village to mountain) is still easier to enter. There is a sense that zenschool serves as a catalyst for people who are struggling in the village to head toward the invisible world within.

The myth of the Heavenly Rock Cave came to mind. What the gods did was not force, but a festival. By changing the energy of the space, they caused Amaterasu to open the rock door. Perhaps what zenschool is doing is also close to "changing the space." Rather than taking people to the mountain, we are preparing the space.

In another thread, the topic turned to recognition.

Status-based recognition and existence-based recognition. The organization that the reason SNS is exhausting is because it is almost entirely composed of status-based recognition was easy to understand. When the number of likes drops by one, your heart wavers. The idea that this is close to a state where your survival instinct is alerting you to a drop in rank within the herd also strangely resonated with me.

From there, the conversation turned to the topic of the "Hara" (gut/belly).

The hypothesis that self-recognition becomes authentic when it occurs at the level of the Hara. Recognition in the head can be refuted. Recognition in the heart wavers with the situation. Recognition in the Hara holds true even without a reason. It does not collapse even if it cannot be explained.

Self-recognition and self-justification are often confused. But their internal structures are almost opposite. Self-recognition is an "open affirmation," while self-justification is a "closed affirmation." The difference lies in whether or not you are affirming including reality itself.

A state where the Hara is settled might be a state where a judgment layer disconnected from external evaluation is at work. As AI replaces the "head," what remains is this layer of the Hara. That is the hypothesis that emerged. I am not yet certain.

In a dialogue sparked by a video of Rakugo, the topic turned to Shu-Ha-Ri.

It started with the story of how I resonated with two phrases: "You don't need individuality when learning the basics" and "Training cannot be done alone."

Shu (protect the form) -> Ha (break the form) -> Ri (leave the form). Modern society tries to skip Shu and head straight for Ha or Ri. SNS, audition culture, self-expression education. All of them are designed in a direction that omits Shu.

AI has the same structure. It can skip Shu and suddenly generate "something that looks like Ha." It can write cursive script without ever learning block script. But that is not cursive script; it is just broken characters.

There is a sense that if you skip Shu, you cannot cultivate the Hara. Only when the repetition of forms is embodied and becomes unconscious does instantaneous judgment emerge. If that is what the Hara is, then even if AI can replace Shu, it cannot replace the Hara.

The topic of Hakuun (from the manga 'Furo Kumo') also came up. At first glance, the protagonist Kumo seems like a person of cursive script, but he actually understands the human emotions of Edo society and the ethics of the samurai well. He is cursive script that has passed through regular script. That is why he does not fall apart.

I also think that when you are young, you cannot notice these things. There are many things you only understand after looking back. I feel lucky to have been able to learn through the characters in books, Kumo being one of them.

It was also during this period that I learned the term 'Mindful Ageing'.

The idea of living old age not as 'decline,' but as a process of conscious maturation. It is a philosophy that is the exact opposite of anti-aging.

I intuitively felt it was close to IKIGAI. However, for Japanese people, 'ikigai' is too much of a daily word to resonate deeply. The story of 'Mindful Ageing' might be easier to convey IKIGAI. The phenomenon where value becomes easier to see by turning it into a foreign word is also happening with ZEN and Wabi-Sabi.

IKIGAI was not originally a concept for young people. It has been used in the context of pleasures in old age and the small meanings of daily life. The fact that IKIGAI books overseas have organized it into a Venn diagram of 'passion x mission x vocation x profession' is a bit off from the original meaning.

In the AI era, as the significance of ability gaps diminishes, maturity may gain value. A hypothesis called 'Wisdom civilization' emerged. We also talked about the Ohenro pilgrimage. Pilgrimages are increasing not as religion, but as 'journeys to re-examine one's life.' One can conceive of a structure where pilgrimage is a means to switch to the OS of the Symbiotic Era.

I feel that zenschool and the Kamakura IKIGAI Retreat are close to that structure. Leaving daily life behind, using the body, engaging in dialogue, and reflecting. It is not knowledge, but a transformative experience. It could be called the reinvention of rites of passage.

The final thread was about debate.

Is debate necessary in the AI era? As the cost of verifying facts decreases, the basis for conflict becomes not a lack of information, but a difference in experience. Which risks are you afraid of, what do you want to protect, and which pain do you want to avoid? Your embodied history changes how you see things.

Not to refute, but to understand. For that, you need imagination that can embrace the other person's emotions, rather than the strength to compete for correctness.

Here, too, the conversation turned to the invisible.

Looking back, all five threads were heading toward the same question.

As AI increases the speed at which it processes the visible layer, the outlines of the invisible layer emerge. Spirits, the 'hara' (gut), the embodiment of 'kata' (forms), maturity, and the uniqueness of experience. None of these can be quantified, compressed, or replaced.

I am still thinking that this might be part of what I want to put into the term 'Symbiotic Era'.

The invisible has not disappeared. It might just be that we were too busy to notice it.

#SymbioticEra #ThoughtLog #AIDialogue #Hara #ShuHaRi