WHO HASN'T FELT slightly desperate at hearing that list of 11 automated options at the other end of the phone: "Please press 1," etc., etc.

True, automation technology is generally saving labor, saving money, making things more broadly efficient. And although no one wants to go back to rotary dialing or typewriters, everything is poised to increase exponentially in the fields of artificial intelligence and nanotechnology—the science of programming incredibly miniscule mechanisms to "learn" and rapidly reproduce themselves in ever more capable forms.

Is there anything that bears watching spiritually in all this? It would be a surprise if there weren't. Here the issue may be what happens to our concept of ourselves, if we're not watching spiritually. Take those hapless individuals on the phone, trying to find a real person to help them out with more flexibility, kindness, understanding, than the computerized options. They may be feeling a bit like a very little i caught in the very large web of automation.

When such experiences are repeated for millions in much more sophisticated ways, the sense of insignificance and powerlessness the small i increases for humankind accordingly.

A recent independent film called Robot Stories told four tales of humans struggling to live better, and being offered futuristic robotic or digitalized detours that only illustrated the need—sooner rather than later—for more of human beings' own selfless love, spirit, and courage.

Surprisingly, the message may be that humanity has to keep growing spiritually in order not to be overwhelmed by automation or artificial intelligence. The more we're misled to think that intelligence and skills to cope are materially based—localized in matter—the more machine-like we conceive ourselves to be, and the more helpless in new ways we become.

This is evident fairly readily on a simple level. If I have to master the latest computer and its new software in order to have it serve me well, that's essentially a spiritual challenge. Why? Because it's an issue of ability, intelligence, capacity, and confidence. I need to think better of myself, not rigidly insist that I'm at a hopeless disadvantage in some established automatic system.

Ultimately, I have to have a better concept of myself as God's expression, which is unlimited, and so not fall into classifying myself as one more material machine with its built-in limits.

In a spiritually intuitive comment that long predated today's debates, Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, asked a question that went to the heart—or the height—of the real issue: "If Mind is the only actor, how can mechanism be automatic? Mortal mind perpetuates its own thought. It constructs a machine, manages it, and then calls it material" (Science and Health, p. 399). The unlimited nature of God, divine Mind, means that His creation, including man in the generic sense, represents His omniaction. His image is never locked in, never preordained, but always has the spontaneous freedom that an infinitely intelligent and loving God would afford His likeness.

Whether it's a Biblical world of rampant kingly power and literally enslaving circumstances, or today's world of megacorporate forces and administrative complexities, the need has always been to be able to draw on something that stands over and above it all. Infinite divine intelligence and love do transcend every human scenario. And because they do, we are able to draw on this divine, this most real and substantial, aspect of life.

When anyone is animated by this new, much enlarged view of himself or herself, there is a release. One no longer feels like a victim frozen before preordained finite choices, but more like a witness to the infinity and omnipresence and sheer naturalness of good. The Bible uses that amazing verb to quicken as applying to all the sons and daughters of God. As the Psalmist writes, "My soul cleaveth unto the dust: quicken thou me according to thy word" (119:25).

A friend of mine speaks of "watching God work." And we can watch—as individuals finding concrete, practical ways through, around, under, or simply over the hurdles. We can have unexpected ideas, "inconceivably" new concepts and solutions.

It seems time to revisit with more spiritually scientific understanding the Bible's initial vision in Genesis of man as the work of the one I or I Am: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion . . ." (1:26).