It is extremely easy to find people who speak pleasantly. But it is rare to find people who speak and hear true words even when they are not pleasing to hear.
— Ramayana

My love for both physics and philosophy, which started in childhood, went on to become a lifelong passion, a quest that continues to this day. As a college undergraduate, I immersed myself in the nascent field of consciousness studies and discovered that renowned theoretical physicists, such as Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger, had been inspired by Vedic insights and used them as the philosophical lens for understanding quantum mechanics. This approach came to be accepted as one of the interpretations of quantum mechanics in the twentieth century and has, since then, influenced many scientists. Later, while studying computer science in the US, I became interested in algorithms. An algorithm is a systematic, step-by-step process to achieve an outcome, like a recipe, whether for cooking, getting a driver’s license, or managing payroll. Algorithms are typically used to describe streamlined, repetitive and predictable procedures. The interplay between my spiritual quest and interest in computer science generated many questions that have intrigued me for the past several decades, such as:

• Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power
• Physics can be viewed as the discovery of nature’s algorithms. But is nature only algorithmic, or are there also natural processes that cannot be modeled as algorithms because they transcend all algorithms— such as exalted spiritual experiences?
• What are the limits of algorithms in modeling humans? In particular, is it possible to model human psychology, emotions, and intuitions as algorithms?
• If all processes could, in principle, be modeled as algorithms, what would be the implications for free will and the nature of consciousness?
• How Is rtam (rita), an important term used in the Rig Veda to refer to the patterns that comprise the fabric of all existence, related to algorithms? Isrtam related to algo-rithm?
In the early 1970s, a subject of intense discussion was the investigation of a category of algorithms under the umbrella term of Artificial Intelligence (AI). That is when I started out as a graduate student specializing in AI; the aim was simply to develop algorithms for activities like playing chess. At the time, the best computer program could only just beat an average human player. But that was then. It took a quarter of a century for the major milestone in 1997 when an IBM computer program named Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov, the reigning world chess champion. The rest, as they say, is history. My lifelong quest has been to understand the nature of intelligence, both natural and artificial, and how it plays out at various levels. To pursue this quest, I set up Infinity Foundation in 1994, a nonprofit organization to promote dialogue between Eastern and Western schools of thought. Its first projects included investigations in consciousness studies.