This is a wonderful issue. I have been thinking about all these possibilities of the human and machine minds since I found the transhumanist philosophy.

You know, the problem lies in the lack of a good definitive notion of consciousness. Some people think that the capacity to manage data with a certain degree of independence is enough to claim the existence of a conscious thinking. Even the Turing Test sets a series of conditions that only implies the management of data.

But as you well said, there are many states of the human mind that annul such continuous data management but, in spite of that, they can be seen as the biggest expression of the consciousness (mindfulness). In those silent moments, the being is even more aware of his existence than when his brain was full of words.

Nonetheless, I find it amazing to question whether machines could, in the future, reach that mindful experience. A machine capable to wonder in mystical silence about its own existence... Amazing. We cannot deny that possibility.