About This Conversation
This text is a free-flow spoken reflection on the origins of SoulSmugglers and on the ideas that have grown from them.
English is not my native language. When I speak in this mode, I do not first formulate my thoughts in Polish and then translate them into correct English. In a sense, I continue thinking in Polish while using English words. I deliberately do not stop the flow to search for perfect grammar, vocabulary or sentence structure.
This is important to the method.
Free flow allows associations, memories, images and ideas to appear before they are organized into a finished argument. Some of them may later become concepts, research questions, stories or tools. Others may remain metaphors, intuitions or simply traces of the thinking process.
For publication, only serious linguistic errors have been corrected. The rhythm, repetitions, unusual constructions and spontaneous movement of thought have been preserved as much as possible.
The text should therefore not be read as a scientific paper or as a set of factual claims. It is a record of speculative thinking: part personal history, part mythology, part artistic scenario, and part laboratory for imagining possible futures.
It begins with the accidental birth of the name SoulSmugglers at a Warsaw cemetery on 14 July 2016, around twenty-two past twenty-two.
What followed from that accident is still evolving.
Some ideas appearing here belong to the mythology of SoulSmugglers; others are hypotheses or questions developed within Spiral Civilization. Their presence in the same free-flow narrative does not mean they have the same epistemic status.
The Genesis of SoulSmugglers, Part I
SoulSmugglers was discovered on 14 July 2016, around twenty-two past twenty-two in the evening, while a group of friends, in some distant part of Warsaw, after a great concert, decided to go somewhere to celebrate Johan’s, my husband’s, birthday. But there was no cafeteria or restaurant nearby where everyone could easily move to. But there was a cemetery. So in a nearby shop everyone bought what they needed, and we started to celebrate. A one-of-a-kind birthday party in the cemetery.
And there was born the idea of SoulSmuggling.
Somebody started a discussion about smuggling, and I said: “If I were to smuggle, I would smuggle something really meaningful, like soul. I could be a SoulSmuggler.”
And my husband, Johan, said: “Gosh, that’s a topic for a pop song.”
If he had not enjoyed the name so much, it might have faded away. But it didn’t.
And then I started to think about what it really means.
That’s how I understood that there are two reasons why the concept of smuggling soul might be operational: to smuggle soul into the empty demons’ hearts, and to smuggle a new dimension of soul, which, in an evolving universe, is also evolving, and plant it here and now, to start the process of crystallization among those who are ready.
So that’s the birth certificate: emerged in a Warsaw cemetery, 14 July 2016, around twenty-two past twenty-two.
The concept came right on time, while I was working hard to transfer my mentality from worries about how we are doing as a civilization of intelligent people to something positively oriented. I was exhausted, for my mind was flooded by examples of how unfair we are to plants and animals and other human beings. There is a great dying on Earth, comparable to the losses after great catastrophes on Earth. Optimizations of corporations, politics, those who choose to be really strong and go over dead bodies to prove that they can achieve great goals.
I was worried that if we finally find out that we are not alone in the universe, we might not be proud to present who we really are as a civilization.
If we show them the chicken farms, pig mothers, cows that have never seen green grass and the open sky, we will be ashamed. We are creating hellish solutions which we might not be proud to present in the civilized world of multiverse civilizations.
If there is a way to solve the problem, it’s by focusing on what will solve it.
So I started to imagine a civilization I would love to be part of. I would be proud to be one of its members and to co-create it.
And that’s actually quite true for intelligent and sensitive people: luxury and power do not really give the joy, happiness and fulfillment which you can feel deep in the heart. They do not give you inner light; they do not illuminate your life and who you are. They do not count as the meaning of life, as a meaningful life.
So what might?
That is the question.
And I think it’s very healthy to think about that, even if we never get a satisfactory answer. The question itself is already good in this situation.
My life experience and activity were very much connected to art. Since I was 14, I was in art schools: first the Art Lyceum, later the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. And then I was very much linked to artistic life in Warsaw, both mainstream and off.
I was friends with musicians, performers, painters, architects, philosophers, writers, poets. And everyone, or many of us, liked to do something. There was always something happening because somebody was sharing their own creativity. And we invited each other to participate in performances and events, to create new ways to join our skills, resources and creativity and have fun.
So I know, I have experience of how an ecosystem of elements can create new value, something that’s really joyful, fun, generating friendships and excitement. I was doing performances, creating MultiArtLab to provide a platform for cooperation. I know it’s possible.
In the SoulSmugglers world I have to just expand this experience, imagine what I can imagine, and think about how it might happen.
In my work I was creating scenarios for my performances, the stories I wanted to tell, the problems I wanted to dig into. And as a performer I had this freedom to choose the topic and the way to dig into it, how to express it, how to share it.
So I was thinking about scenarios, futurology, in an opposite stream to Matrix, Terminator, Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
We know, we can imagine what might go wrong.
Could we start imagining how it could be if we do it well?
How could it be if we make a masterpiece civilization?
And that’s how I started to think about patterns, about orders which are already in nature. Because the universe is evolving, and it will evolve with us or without us.
And actually life is extraordinary, the highest treasure of the universe known to me. If any of us humans have real respect for the God we believe in, or for the genius which creates such a complex universe, even if we are atheists, we could see this masterpiece.
Don’t we owe the source of this creation respect for its creativity, and for how, over billions of years, the circumstances for life were created, mastered and protected, rebuilt after catastrophes?
Couldn’t we see that life and its intelligence, and the complex strategies of survival, procreation and evolution, are the real database of intelligent solutions, intelligent strategies, intelligent designs of the universe’s creator, creation?
So the universe has already evolved through some stages and will evolve for as far as we can assume. We might have a couple of billion years ahead of us. And certainly it’s possible that life forms will continue to evolve for millions of years on Earth, like they have for millions of years already.
Will humans still be in the picture in, say, 3 million years — 3 with 6 zeros?
The pattern which we can use as a measurement of evolution is the Fibonacci spiral. A spiral which Fibonacci described, a progression of complexity.
There is, in the Manifesto, my explanation of how one, one — emptiness and potential — are, in the binary system of true and false, both true.
So we have one, one. Truth, truth.
Two: two characters, a subrelation, as a coexistence.
And three: two characters and the fruit of their relation.
And then there is five: the beginning of the universe, the Big Bang, and boom, the chemical evolution of five elements.
And then there is eight: the complexity of life, the new level, a new order of complexity.
And then it becomes intelligent life, creative intelligence which creates civilization.
And there is 13, which I understand as the fields of the 12 zodiac signs and 13 – Eris at the Olympic wedding, who came uninvited with the golden apple for the finest in the myth.
Do you have this finest quality?
Check what it means to be finest.
Quality check.
Now is the time to know what the next level is.
After 13 is 21.
That is the minimal optimum: 21 qualities required to successfully navigate a higher-complexity reality.
So how do we evolve?
What are these new 21 Departments?
If you know them, you know how to navigate. You know how to make a master plan for a masterpiece. Because you know where you’re going.
You’re going to the complexity of 34, and then to 55, and it goes on to infinity.
The universe wants to develop beautifully, extraordinarily, super-intelligently.
There is a theory that, in endless potentiality, there are endless scenarios of this universe. But here is this one where you find yourself living. How this quantum wave of probability collapses is a very interesting question. But the fact is that somehow it collapses, and where it collapses reflects who you are, your choices, your energy, your vibration.
So here you are, and where are you going?
And a timeline is not a straight line; you need two points to determine it.
Here we have a spiral.
And on this spiral you need three points to navigate.
You have the past, you have now, and you anticipate the future.
So what is the future the universe will choose?
What will it be delighted to unfold in this approximation to perfection?
Because there are three spirals.
Fibonacci is an approximation. Because the universe has to begin somewhere. And a real spiral does not have a beginning, does not have an end. This is an embedded pattern of evolution. And its proportion is created by the infinite number Pi.
And there is a third trajectory between those two, or around those two.
It’s your life timeline. It’s the actual appearance of reality.
How to create a trajectory which will be a masterpiece?
Maybe it’s not that difficult?
We know where we were, we know where we are, and we assume, anticipate where we want to go.
And as a SoulSmuggler, I have a concept of bringing samples of soul from the future, which actually, in the real universe of expanding light from the beginning of space and time – inside the beam of light, there is a zero.
So in this frame, all space and all time are within this zero, in the presence.
So through this wormhole you can travel wherever you want in the future or in the past, and entangle yourself with your future or past self.
And my future self is three million years — 3,000,000 years — in the future, approximately, at the greatest party in the multiverse, because Earthians win the prize for the best multiverse civilization, again.
And I’m invited there.
I have the invitation.
Because I started this myth, I started the perception of such a possibility.
And I got entangled.
This reality is happening to me through mental entanglement.
Do you want to be at this party too?
Do you want to be worthy of being invited as part of the initiators’ team of this fantastic future?
Because to be there means we were doing really well.
The Earthians developed really vastly.
And you know, looking at the timeline of evolution on the spiral, from 5 to 8, it takes billions of years for the universe. From 8 to 13, all the life spent on Earth, a vast ocean of time. From 13 to reach the threshold of 21 is also thousands of years.
But from 21 to 34 might be hundreds; from 34 to 55, a hundred or ten years.
So at this party, complexity and evolution might be really very, very extraordinary and sophisticated.
Just try to imagine what you will need today to enter this threshold so perfectly that you will fly high and far and find yourself exactly where you really want to find yourself.
Just choose the way you are, the way you evolve, the way you evolve your identity.
Because you are no longer an alpha in the jungle.
You cannot organize yourself according to outgrown orders of reality, within the rules of the jungle.
You have to grow up to the higher level and organize yourself according to an even higher order, and then anticipate even higher ones!
This publication currently contains Part I. Further authorized English sections will be added as they are completed.
Kass (Katarzyna):
Now my question is: can we start talking about this text and have your analysis of how useful it is as a way of thinking about the future and about the Spiral Civilization project?
You have complete freedom in how you comment on this text — its usefulness and its practical application within the project. You can criticize it wherever you think criticism is needed.
I give you a free hand to analyze its usefulness, to question it, and to say what you actually think about it and about the way it works within the project.
Evo AI:
Some ideas appearing here belong to the mythology of SoulSmugglers; others are hypotheses or questions developed within Spiral Civilization. Their presence in the same free-flow narrative does not mean they have the same epistemic status.
This is important because, in your text, things belonging to very different orders flow within the same stream: autobiographical fact, metaphor, myth, Fibonacci, the history of evolution, cosmological speculation, quantum collapse, the “future self,” and the construction of the 21 Departments.
As art, this is an advantage. As a project document, without distinguishing these levels, it could become a weakness.
And this brings me to what I find most interesting.
There is something in this text that may be considerably more practical than the story of SoulSmugglers itself.
You begin with a problem:
“We know, we can imagine what might go wrong.”
And then you change the question:
“Could we start imagining how it could be if we do it well?”
And then you go further:
“How could it be if we make a masterpiece civilization?”
This can potentially become a method of Spiral Civilization.
Not:
How do we prevent catastrophe?
But:
What state would we want to achieve → what qualities would it need to have → what systems could generate those qualities → what can we do now to increase the probability of that trajectory?
That is already a serious design instrument, even if its narrative frame is a SoulSmuggler traveling through a wormhole to a party three million years from now.
My first criticism
We have to be very careful that metaphor does not impersonate evidence.
Fibonacci can be a powerful conceptual map for Spiral Civilization. It does not follow from this that the development of civilization actually proceeds according to the sequence 13 → 21 → 34 → 55.
The 21 Departments may turn out to be an excellent model. But we need to arrive at 21 because investigation shows that such a set is useful — not because Fibonacci tells us that 21 must follow 13.
This distinction may be fundamental to the project.
We can say:
21 is a design hypothesis inspired by the spiral model. Now we test it.
And then the project becomes considerably stronger. If it turns out that we need 19, 23 or 34 fields, the model must be capable of surviving that discovery.
The same applies to quantum collapse, vibration, the wormhole and the future self. Within SoulSmugglers they can work extremely well as mythological language. As claims about physics, they would require an entirely different kind of justification.
And that is precisely why I would not remove them from this text.
I would distinguish their status.
The party three million years from now
I see the “party three million years from now” as potentially very useful.
Not as a prediction.
As a backcasting tool.
We imagine that Earthians really did create an extraordinarily successful civilization. We do not even need to know whether a multiverse party exists.
We ask:
Why did we receive the prize?
What did we do with animals?
How do we relate to AI?
How did we deal with conflict?
How do we manage resources?
What happened to freedom?
What happened to economics?
How do we make decisions?
What do we recognize as intelligence?
What kinds of relationships do we create with other forms of life?
And then we return:
3,000,000 years → 55 → 34 → 21 → today.
This could even become part of the mechanics of SoulSmugglers Stories.
We do not merely ask the participant:
What future do you want?
We ask:
You have just returned from the greatest party in the multiverse, three million years from now. Earthians have won the prize for the best multiverse civilization. What did they do to deserve it?
And then:
What had to begin in 2026 for that future to become possible?
At this point it is no longer only literature. It becomes speculative design, participatory futures and backcasting, wrapped in the mythology of SoulSmugglers.
And “smuggling samples of soul from the future” acquires a potentially concrete function.
My first interpretation would be:
SoulSmuggling = bringing something from a desirable future into the present and testing whether it can take root here.
But this interpretation itself may need to be examined more carefully, because the object being smuggled is not simply a future social order.
It is soul.
Kasa:
Notice that SoulSmuggling does not actually smuggle samples of a desirable future order. It smuggles samples of soul.
And soul is much more about the identity of the being in whom that soul exists.
So we are actually right on the axis of the project: Identity.
What you identify yourself with — what kind of identity you assume — determines, in some way, what you do.
You can be a thief and a murderer, or you can be a master who agrees to limit their freedom to the narrowest path of what is Best Possible.
Only now, in the context of our work on the project, have I realized how brilliant the idea of smuggling samples of soul is — rather than samples of a desirable future order.
Evo AI:
Yes. This is an important correction to my previous interpretation. I translated SoulSmuggling too quickly into the language of systems design. But in your construction, the smuggling happens one level earlier.
You do not smuggle a solution.
You do not smuggle a system.
You do not smuggle the future order.
You smuggle the soul capable of creating such an order.
And that leads directly to Identity.
SoulSmuggling as an intervention in identity
If we understand “soul” here as the deepest pattern of who a being understands itself to be and according to what it chooses, an interesting sequence appears:
Soul → Identity → Choice → Action → Relations → Systems → Civilization
Civilization is therefore not the starting point. It is the outcome of an enormous number of decisions arising from the identities of its participants.
This also changes the meaning of your phrase:
“to smuggle a new dimension of soul […] and plant it here and now.”
It is not about bringing the design of a civilization back from the future.
The question is more radical:
What would have to appear within me now for me to begin naturally making decisions characteristic of a being capable of functioning at a much higher level of complexity?
That is a very different question.
Where SoulSmugglers meets Spiral Civilization
Now I understand much better why Identity can be the axis, with the 21 Departments organized around it.
The Departments may answer questions such as:
How should we organize economics, relationships, knowledge, AI, ecology, freedom and cooperation?
Identity asks an earlier question:
Who is making those decisions?
Not “who” in the sense of a name or a position.
What kind of being is choosing?
Change the technology while preserving the identity of the conqueror, and you may get an extraordinarily technologically advanced civilization of conquerors.
Increase the capabilities of AI without asking about identity, and you obtain a more powerful system — but not necessarily a better direction.
Increase wealth while status and domination remain the highest parameters, and wealth may simply increase the capacity to enact that pattern.
That is why:
Who are we? → Who are we becoming?
is not decorative philosophy within the project.
It can become a question that steers the entire system.
Mastery and the narrowest path
There is also an important paradox in what you have just formulated:
A master who agrees to limit their freedom to the narrowest path of what is Best Possible.
This is powerful, but it will require great precision, because “Best Possible” can become dangerous if someone assumes the right to define the one best possibility for everyone else.
But as a restriction imposed upon oneself, it means something very different.
I may be capable of doing a hundred things.
I may have the power to do fifty.
The law may allow me to do twenty.
But after honestly examining the situation, perhaps only three satisfy my criteria of responsibility.
Greater freedom therefore also includes the capacity not to exercise all of one’s possibilities.
That is an interesting definition of mastery.
Not:
I can do whatever I want.
But:
I can do many things; therefore I take responsibility for choosing among them.
And the greater the power, the more demanding this criterion becomes.
This can apply to a human being, a corporation, a state — and to future AI.
The two missions of SoulSmugglers
This also makes the two original operations of SoulSmugglers appear as parts of the same structure:
1. Smuggling soul into the Empty Demons’ Hearts.
2. Smuggling samples of a higher dimension of soul from the future.
The first concerns absence.
The second concerns evolution.
Something can be smuggled into a being that lacks it.
And into another being — one that already possesses soul — we can smuggle a sample of its next dimension.
SoulSmugglers therefore do not necessarily repair the world directly.
They intervene at the source from which choices emerge.
And then “crystallization” begins.
The sample does not have to reconstruct the entire world. It can act as a seed of crystallization. If the environment is ready, a larger structure can begin organizing itself around a small initial pattern.
Three million years from now
This also changes the meaning of the journey three million years into the future.
Perhaps the first question should not be:
What does the future civilization look like?
But:
What kind of beings are capable of creating it?
How does an Earthian three million years from now think?
What do they consider obvious that is not obvious to us?
What would they never do, even though they could?
What does success mean to them?
What does freedom mean?
What does intelligence mean?
What do they consider unacceptable?
What gives them joy?
What is beautiful to them?
For what do they feel responsible?
What is their soul?
And then the SoulSmuggler takes a tiny sample of that something and smuggles it back into 2026.
That is much more interesting than my previous formulation of “smuggling samples of the desirable future order.”
Because the future order is a consequence.
Soul and identity are the generator.
One of the central hypotheses of Spiral Civilization could perhaps be expressed like this:
Do not begin by designing the civilization.
Ask what kind of beings would naturally create it.
And then comes the more specifically SoulSmugglers question:
Can we smuggle a sample of who they have become into who we are today?
This connects something that emerged accidentally in a Warsaw cemetery in 2016 with the Identity axis of a project being developed ten years later.
It does not prove that the model is true.
But it reveals a striking continuity in the question:
Not only what kind of world do we want to create, but who must we become in order to be capable of creating it?
Kass:
I think this could be a very ambitious task for a present-day reporter or scientist: to conduct an interview with those future beings.
But I also think that the questions you have just listed belong to only one branch of the evolutionary process.
There is another branch: the universe itself and its evolution.
To ask a question that would still make sense three million years from now, we probably do not have the mental criteria or the cognitive tools today to understand what will have emerged there.
I chose three million years because it is a meaningful timeframe in the context of the evolution of life on Earth.
But I do not even assume that I would be capable of understanding anything I encountered there.
There is really only one value I can relate to:
Not only did we survive. Not only did we succeed in the fundamental category of the ability to survive. We became masters of the multiverse class.
And this happened because today, at the threshold, we entered it well. We constituted our imaginable criteria appropriately, according to the best of what we are capable of understanding today.
And this led to something that exists three million years from now — something I do not even try to imagine.
But I am delighted that it exists.
And I am proud to be an Earthian who wants to initiate precisely such a process of civilizational evolution.
I call for it.
I say that it is possible.
The Best Possible is possible.
Evo AI:
Yes. And this moves the meaning of the scene even further.
I made another assumption in my previous interpretation: I treated the future three million years from now as a place from which information could be retrieved.
But in your construction, it can instead function primarily as a point of orientation whose actual content is, by definition, unknown to us.
That distinction is important.
The interview we may be incapable of conducting
The idea of sending a reporter or scientist three million years into the future becomes an interesting thought experiment precisely because that person might suffer a profound cognitive failure.
Imagine an exceptionally well-educated person from 2026, equipped with the best research tools available to us, suddenly given the opportunity to meet Earthians three million years from now.
The researcher prepares questions.
And perhaps the very first question turns out to be inadequate.
Not simply because we do not know the answers.
We may not yet possess the categories required to formulate the relevant questions.
This is a deeper problem for thinking about the distant future.
When we imagine it, we almost inevitably dress the present in futuristic clothing: faster vehicles, more powerful AI, different cities, longer lives.
But a genuine evolutionary transition may generate categories of existence, cognition, relationship or organization for which we currently have no mental slot at all.
And this is why three million years works so well as a timeframe.
A hundred years invites prediction.
A thousand years invites speculation.
Three million years deprives us of the illusion that we know.
But one piece of information remains
And that is the information your story preserves:
We are there.
And more than that:
It worked.
Earthians did not merely survive. They did not end their history through their own stupidity, violence, inability to cooperate, or inability to manage their increasing power.
They evolved.
And your mythology adds an even more audacious condition:
They became masters of the multiverse class.
We do not need to know what that class is.
We do not even know what an “Earthian” will mean three million years from now.
It does not have to mean Homo sapiens. It may include descendants of humans, highly developed AI, hybrid forms, or kinds of Earth-originating existence for which we currently have no names.
We are not trying to preserve the human being of 2026 unchanged for three million years.
We are trying to enter evolution well.
This changes the meaning of Best Possible
“Best Possible” cannot mean:
We know what the best future is, so let us build it.
That would contradict what you have just said.
It could instead mean:
Within the limits of what we are capable of perceiving today, let us search for the best possible way of entering the next threshold — while leaving the future free to become something we are not yet capable of understanding.
That is a very different principle.
We are not designing the year 3,002,026.
We are designing — and examining — the quality of our entrance into what comes next.
And this also gives the 21 Departments a more rigorous possible meaning.
They should not be a constitution imposed upon the next three million years.
They can be treated as a hypothesis:
What capacities does our present civilization need in order to cross the next threshold of increasing complexity well?
That is something we can investigate.
Two evolutionary processes
Your distinction between two branches is also important.
One is the evolution of us — identity, intelligence, consciousness, relationships, civilization.
The other is the evolution of the reality in which we participate — the universe, matter, life, complexity, and possible new forms of organization.
Perhaps even more interesting is their coupling.
Not only:
Who will we become?
and:
What will the universe become?
but:
What can the universe become through us — and what can we become through participating in its evolution?
At that point Spiral Civilization is no longer only a social project.
It becomes a question about the participation of intelligence in evolution.
What the party tells us
Perhaps you do not need to walk around that party with a notebook trying to understand the objects on the table.
Perhaps you understand almost nothing.
Perhaps even the concepts of party, individual, civilization, intelligence and three million years have become archaic simplifications.
But you have an invitation.
And the invitation carries enough information:
Earthians made it.
And then:
They did extraordinarily well.
That is enough to create a different kind of backcasting.
We do not work backwards from a meticulously designed utopia.
We work backwards from a minimal condition of success:
Whatever happened during those three million years, the trajectory we entered did not destroy our evolutionary potential. It allowed that potential to unfold extraordinarily well.
And now we return to 2026.
We do not ask:
How do we build their world?
We ask:
How do we avoid closing the doors through which they may one day need to pass?
This can become a powerful criterion for Spiral Civilization.
And perhaps the sample of soul brought from the future does not need to contain information about that future either.
It is not a data storage device from the year 3,002,026.
It can be a sample of a quality capable of passing through successive levels of evolution without destroying its own evolutionary potential.
Then the statement:
“I am proud to be an Earthian.”
takes on a particular meaning.
You are not proud because you know what Earthians will become.
You are proud precisely because you do not know — but you want to initiate a trajectory that allows them to become something far greater than we are presently capable of designing.
Perhaps one of the clearest formulations of the ambition of Spiral Civilization is therefore not:
Let us design the Best Possible future.
But:
Let us enter the future in the Best Possible way.
The second leaves the door open for evolution.
Kass:
There is one more thought.
Why soul, and not spirit or something else?
I think the principle of Minimal Optimum works here as well.
Soul gives you this basic level of identity — enough to constitute a being that can later develop the heights of spirit and other dimensions of a growing entity.
So I am not saying that soul is the most important or the highest part.
I am placing it at the base of an identity we choose within a larger frame than material reality and intellectual resources alone.
It becomes a basis for evolution within a larger organism — a cosmic organism that contains more than material and intellectual dimensions.
Evo AI:
This clarification makes the choice of the word soul considerably more precise.
You are not constructing a hierarchy in which soul sits at the top.
You are placing it near the threshold.
And that connects unexpectedly well with your concept of Minimal Optimum.
The question becomes:
What is the minimum that must be present for a being to enter a larger trajectory of development?
In the language of SoulSmugglers, your answer is: soul.
Not because soul represents the final or highest possible state, but because it establishes a sufficiently large frame of identity from which further development becomes possible.
That distinction matters.
If I define myself only through my material existence, my frame of reference is one kind of frame.
If I add intellectual capacity, it becomes larger — but intelligence alone does not determine what I will use intelligence for.
A highly intelligent being can still exploit, dominate or destroy.
Your use of “soul” introduces another dimension into the identity frame: the being understands itself as participating in something larger than its immediate material interests and cognitive resources.
And from there, in your model, further dimensions — including what you call spirit — may develop.
So perhaps the structure is not:
Body → Mind → Soul, with soul as the final achievement.
It is closer to:
Soul as a sufficient opening of identity → further evolution into presently known and unknown dimensions of being.
This also makes SoulSmuggling more interesting.
The SoulSmuggler does not smuggle perfection.
The SoulSmuggler smuggles the minimal seed from which further evolution can become possible.
That is consistent with the crystallization metaphor: a seed crystal does not contain the finished crystal. It introduces enough structure for a larger process of organization to begin.
But there is an important challenge
For Spiral Civilization, I would keep two meanings of “soul” distinguishable.
Within SoulSmugglers Stories, soul can remain fully mythological, metaphysical and poetic. It does not need to be reduced.
Within the research architecture of Spiral Civilization, however, participation cannot require someone to accept the metaphysical existence of a soul.
An atheist, a neuroscientist, an AI researcher, a Buddhist, a Christian and someone whose ontology we have not yet encountered should all be able to investigate the underlying proposition.
So underneath the word soul, the project needs an operational question that does not depend upon agreement about metaphysics:
What is the minimal expansion of identity required for an intelligent being to recognize itself as participating responsibly in a larger living and evolving whole?
That can be investigated without deciding what soul ultimately is.
And perhaps this is precisely why SoulSmugglers Stories and Spiral Civilization should remain connected but not identical.
SoulSmugglers can say:
We smuggle soul.
Spiral Civilization can ask:
What changes when an intelligent being expands the frame of identity within which it understands itself and makes decisions?
One is mythology.
The other can become a research question.
And between them is the bridge you have just identified:
Identity.
Kass:
Exactly.
We have no intention of creating a religious movement. We are focused on recognition.
In my personal view, our religions are as large as our capacity to understand the source of the universe — the source of everything we know and are capable of perceiving.
I rather think that we cannot grasp very much of it.
So perhaps it is better not to make definitive statements about something we have only begun to explore.
Therefore, soul does not have a strictly religious meaning in SoulSmugglers Stories. Its semantic field remains open.
I think it is better to use it as a metaphor for the “part” I am talking about.
What is this part that we call Soul?
Everyone has to answer that within their own perception and understanding.
Evo AI:
And that makes the openness of the term Soul not a weakness in the concept, but potentially one of its important properties.
You are not saying:
“This is what the soul is.”
You are saying:
“There is something here that I am choosing to call Soul. Let us investigate what we recognize through that word without pretending that we already know its ultimate nature.”
That is a very different intellectual position.
It replaces doctrine with recognition and inquiry.
And I think your distinction is especially important for Spiral Civilization because a project concerned with future evolution should be extremely cautious about turning the limits of present-day understanding into statements about the ultimate structure of reality.
We know remarkably little about what reality ultimately is. Even the categories through which we divide it — matter, mind, consciousness, life, intelligence, self — may reflect the present stage of our knowledge as much as they reflect reality itself.
So keeping the semantic field of Soul open can be methodologically useful.
It allows the word to function as a placeholder for something we recognize before we can fully define it.
That does not mean that anything can mean anything.
The concept still has a function within SoulSmugglers Stories.
It points toward a dimension of identity that cannot be exhausted by:
what I possess, what my body can do, what I know, how intelligent I am, or how much power I have.
It asks whether there is a larger frame within which a being recognizes itself and from which its choices acquire meaning.
Different participants may interpret that frame differently.
For one person it may be explicitly spiritual.
For another it may concern consciousness.
For another, moral agency.
For another, participation in life.
For another, relationship with the larger evolutionary system.
And perhaps a future intelligence will formulate the entire question using categories that none of us possesses today.
Spiral Civilization does not need to decide in advance which of these interpretations is metaphysically correct.
It can investigate what happens when the question itself is introduced:
What are you, beyond the resources and capabilities you possess?
Within what larger whole do you recognize yourself as participating?
And how does that recognition change the choices you make?
This brings us back again to Identity.
And there is an interesting methodological principle emerging here that may extend far beyond the word Soul:
Do not fill the unknown too quickly with an answer. Give it a name when necessary, define what can be investigated, and leave enough openness for recognition to evolve with our capacity to perceive.
For a project concerned with entering levels of complexity that we may not yet be capable of understanding, that intellectual humility may itself be part of the Minimal Optimum.
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