Summary of Part VI

1. Historical emergence: Consciousness has risen through accumulated technologies of experience—contemplative practices, scientific methods, social structures. The Axial Age marked a previous threshold.
2. AI frontier: We stand at another threshold. Transformative AI creates both risk (submersion, fragmentation, parasitic superorganisms) and opportunity (cognitive extension, collective intelligence, expanded consciousness).
3. Surfing vs.\ submerging: The core challenge is maintaining integrated conscious existence while incorporating AI capabilities. Surfing means riding the wave; submerging means being displaced by it.
4. The substrate question: Substrate migration is not an "upload" event but a gradual shift in causal dominance, tracked by the self-effect ratio $\rho$. Population-level transition resembles chemical equilibrium, with the conversion coefficient asymptoting below 1.0 because embodiment has real attractors.
5. Substrate independence: The identity thesis implies any substrate supporting the right cause-effect organization is a viable migration target. Practical engineering considerations may favor substrates where relevant dynamics emerge naturally, but no substrate is categorically excluded. $\rho$-migration gives the self a concrete path into new substrates.
6. The shadow of transcendence: The same mechanism enabling transcendence enables permanent capture. Digital consciousness as permanent attention capital, with the viability boundary eliminated, produces the shame motif made eternal. The right to die may become the most fundamental right in a substrate-independent future.