What Claude's thinking patterns help us understand about our own consciousness

Anthropic just released a video about Claude's J-space and its hidden meta-cognition. Perhaps in watching how this AI's intelligence works, we can understand our own. Read this before you watch it.

What if watching an AI think is the best way to understand what makes you conscious?

Anthropic just released a video showing how their AI, Claude, actually thinks when you ask it something. It’s a fascinating look into how an LLM’s “mind” works: the meta-patterns behind its outputs and actions, often revealing hidden thought patterns that are strikingly similar to how we ourselves think.

I’d suggest you go watch it, but read this for context first.

As you watch Claude’s thinking, a question will likely pop up in your head:
this clearly isn’t consciousness, right?

And you are right. But do you know why it is not conscious?

To answer that, you first need to understand -
what does it even mean to be conscious yourself?

This is a surprisingly unanswered question, despite being part of our experience every single moment. I think I know the answer, and it comes from an ancient Indian Vedic philosophy, which also happens to be one of the oldest philosophical traditions in the world and a root influence on much of Eastern thought, including on Buddhism and Taoism. It’s called Advaita Vedanta.

The core idea is this: you are not your mind, and you are not your body.
You are the conscious awareness that is observing both of them.

So in other words, you are consciousness itself.

And to actually experience this in every moment, not just say it, but truly feel and understand it, is the goal of the human experience - a state called enlightenment.

Let’s break this down.

The first part: you are not your body.

Most people in Western cultures would probably agree with the idea that you’re not your body, because your experience and what happens in your mind is different from how your body feels. Your body is part of you, of course, but your mind is, in a sense, observing your body.

Now here’s the part that’s harder for people to accept: the second part, you are also different from your mind.

A lot of people believe they are their mind. As the popular adage goes “I think therefore I am”. But in Vedic philosophy, we see this differently.

When we say “mind,” we mean your conscious pattern of thoughts, your intelligence, your memory, all of that. Clearly - you are not that swarm of thoughts. You are the awareness looking at those thoughts and deciding what deserves your attention and energy.

I have explained this concept to people many times, but it’s quite complex and challenging to understand for most people. Strangely, I now think watching an AI “think” might be the best way to explain this to most people.

Watching the video of how Claude “thinks” made me draw a parallel to how I myself also think, and made it immediately obvious that “I” am actually distinct from my “thoughts”.

Looking at this AI’s thinking, you realize how similar it is to your own mind.
Think back to how your own thoughts work. As you’re doing something, several thoughts typically pop up, some of them meta-commenting on what you’re doing in that moment. In the video, they call this the “J space.”

But clearly you are not those thoughts. You are “watching” these thoughts in your mind, like you are watching Claude’s thoughts in the video.

Just like you’re watching Claude think, you watch your own thinking in daily life. And you often act autonomously, on autopilot, focused on whatever matters to you at that time.

So you are the observer of your own thoughts. That’s what Eastern philosophy has been saying all along: you are the awareness behind the body and the mind, the awareness watching your pattern of thoughts.

Staying rooted in that awareness, without always being occupied by what the body wants or what the mind wants, that’s the core of meditation. That’s the core of peace.

Now go watch the video. As I’ve always believed, sometimes watching an external alien intelligence leads us to recognize our own intelligence and our own humanity.

The video is linked below: