A Vedic interpretation of the Bliss and Curse of physical Technology

Not many people will disagree, if you state that modern technology has brought many benefits. We live longer, have eradicated many diseases, we can do everything faster: commute, communicate, conduct a business, we can generate more food in a shorter period, we can keep our food fresh for a longer time, we have more choice in amusement, we can spend more of our time for leisure activities, it has generated wealth and globally reduced poverty.

But has it increased our happiness? Has it improved the depth of our social interactions? Have we become more responsible, more involved and more caring towards each other? Has it paved the way for us to open ourselves to self-realisation?

Or are we are drowning in an excess of choice, an excess of ennui? Are we drowning in pollution of air, water and land? Are we suffering from noise, electromagnetic and visual pollution? Are we suffering from the massive scale of everything? Have we entered the proverbial multiplicity of Hell?

Think of it. The air has become polluted with exhaust gases from vehicles and manufacturing plants, the content of CO2  has also risen due to these factors, plus due to the gases produced by humans and animals, in particular by industrial farming. In cities as Beijing and New Delhi, the air is frequently unbreathable due to the smog. The resulting climate change will have dramatic effects changing ecosystems, flooding and provoking extreme weather conditions. 

Water and soil have become massively polluted due to plastics and metal littering and dumping. Especially the single use non-degradable plastics are responsible for this. Chemical waste, pesticides, fertilizers, oil spills, heavy metals, toxins and nuclear waste already render the conditions for life more precarious than ever before. Deforestation, loss of biodiversity and poisoning the food chain do not promise an auspicious future for our posterity.

We may have eradicated certain diseases; with our current lifestyle we're introducing many new ones. Microorganisms becoming resistant to antibiotics, cancer on the rise due to the dumping of toxic waste on the farmlands (.e.g. by the Mafia in Italy; due to solar cell! production in China) or due to the accumulation of toxic heavy metals in the food chain, especially in fish.

Bon appetit!

We can travel faster to any place of the world... at the cost of causing air and noise pollution on a massive scale. We can spend less time on cleaning our house or preparing our meals. To have more time for our self-development? No. In general people just spend more time being numbed down looking at a screen.

Children suffer from attention deficit disorders on a large scale due to computer gaming or other activities on their computers, tablets or mobile phones. Family members do not connect on a deep emotional level anymore; there's hardly any communication left. All family members autistically absorbed on their own computer device, chatting with unknown people they have never met, seen, touched or smelt. People are flooded with information and drown due to the overflow of choice. 

The world doesn't become a safer place either. Drugs and criminality flourish, like bacteria on a rich broth.

Has technology brought happiness? Perhaps initially in the 20th century, yes. But it seems it has gone over the top. We've entered the phase of diminishing returns. What we add doesn't become better. At present it only seems to worsen the state of life on Earth.

Is it intrinsic to technology that it brings all these devastating side effects? Or is this a consequence of the corrupted short term profit based thinking without regard for our posterity that has put us in this predicament?

Let's test our technologies in the light of the moral prescriptions from the yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the Yamas or "Don'ts".

Ahimsa means non-violence. Certainly our industrial farming technology is purely based on violence and cruelty. There are many more ways to rear livestock and to carry out the slaughtering in a more respectful way than the brutal approach of the farming industry. But if you ask people why they still buy the industrially farmed kilo package deal at the supermarket instead of the organic product at the specialist shop, they will tell you they can't afford it; that it's up to the government to take care of this.

Well, you can also simply leave it. You won't die from becoming a vegetarian.

Our plastic and metal waste pollution is not only an aggressive act towards our posterity, it is also directly in the here and now an act of violence against all the animals that get stuck in this waste or become poisoned by it. The same can be said about our short term benefit attitude towards the climate; but we're already ourselves undergoing the damaging effects thereof.

Yet there are alternatives possible. Technology has progressed so far that biodegradable plastics have become available. Moreover, we can responsibly refuse to buy any item which contains single use plastic. It is here that the manufacturers have a huge responsibility. The number of unnecessarily products packaged in plastic is appalling. Say no to these plastics!

Indifference is the mental disease of this generation populating the Earth; the attitude of "after me the deluge". It is not cool to be indifferent. You may become a victim of your inactivity one day. It is time to take responsibility and become like caring parents to our planet. This is the Amrit or nectar of Karma yoga.

The second of the Yamas is Satya; the guideline of truthful intent. If the preservation of life and consciousness is the truth, than it does not take much intelligence to realise that our corrupted technologies are a big metaphorical lie towards life. Our ways are a lie towards later generations and towards plant and animal life.

The third of the Yamas is Asteya: the Guideline of not appropriating what isn't yours a.k.a. refraining from stealing. Our corrupted ways stela from the future generations by exhausting the planet. What will be left of Earth's resources in five more decades if we continue to produce at this pace?

The fourth of the Yamas is Brahmaccharya. If you see the concept of "energy containment" in a broader sense than only sexually (as is usually the interpretation), you will see, we are not respectfully dealing with the energy management of our planet.

Still here again there are plenty of renewable energy resources that could solve our dependency on fossil fuels. Clean technology does exist. Geothermal, wind, hydroelectric, and tidal energy sources are just some examples. Our technology has advanced far enough to become completely independent of fossil fuels. What lacks is the political and economic willingness to do so. Our short term objectives outweighing the long term sustainability.

Finally there is Aparigraha, or refraining from greed. What else then our greed is the source of our predicament? Our striving for short term pleasure, wealth, possessions, money, a reputation?

Has Gautama Buddha not taught us that true happiness is not to be found in feverishly striving after our pleasures but rather in equanimity? Has he not taught us that this peace of mind, which the Greek called Ataraxia, can only be achieved by living a simple life? Is not Seva, service to others a hallmark of Hinduism? Why then this hunger for more material possessions and success? Is it going to bring us any nearer to the purpose of life, which is Self-Realisation?

When Arjuna had to choose between Krishna and his armies, he decisively chose the first. Krishna stands for Oneness, Consciousness and Quality. The armies stand for plurality, matter and quantity. The world of material phenomena is just a temporal appearance, only Consciousness is eternal. Similarly in the Western tradition, Spirit stand for Oneness, Unity and peace; the Hell is represented by the many. Excess in everything, excess in choice, we are flooded by the effects of the corrupted ways we have implemented our technology. More is not always better. Certainly not here. 

Technology, to be of benefit to us, must be high quality, recyclable or biodegradable. Technology must be true, kind and necessary.

Until we change our corrupted ways, we must try to minimise our dependence on technology that does not fulfil these criteria. 

This is the teaching of Technovedanta.

You can find my books on Amazon in paperback or ebook format (in India only 50Rs.)

Technovedanta (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07D92DZYZ),

Transcendental Metaphysics

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Is Intelligence an Algorithm?(https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1785356704/ref=dbs_a_w_dp_1785356704)

Is Reality a Simulation? An Anthology  (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07D7JX4RS)

Lucy, will you see why? - a lucid exploration of the Technovedantic Human-Machine merger

The film “Lucy” by Luc Besson (2014) is the story of a woman (played by Scarlett Johansson) who gains incredible cognitive abilities when a bag of drugs sewn into her body is ruptured. In this article I do not intend to relate the details of this story, but rather to link the Transcendence of the human state she experiences to the well-described processes of a Kundalini awakening. Kundalini in the Vedic lore is the primal energy lying at the base of the spine. When it rises, the practitioner will start to have experiences, which we normally consider to be “supernatural”. A complete Kundalini awakening results in the union of this primal energy with consciousness at the crown of the body.

Persons who have experienced a Kundalini awakening will certainly recognise many of the effects Lucy is experiencing as her Intelligence starts to soar, once she breaches the 10%-use-of-the-brain limit.

In the “Yoga Sutras” Patanjali describes the powers of perfection (the Siddhis) that can be gained, once a person starts to have the meditative experience of Samadhi. A person having a Kundalini experience is involuntarily jolted into states of Samadhi and it is often difficult to gain mastery over such a state. Likewise in the very beginning of her experience Lucy undergoes the changes to her body passively but rapidly gains control and starts to acquire skills which have been described in detail by Patanjali. As her brain use starts to increase she gains complete control over her muscles and martial art skills corresponding to Patanjali’s Sutra (P) III, 25. This is followed by complete control over her metabolism (PIII, 30, 31, 41, 46). She gains knowledge about present past and future (PIII, 16) and of other places (PIII, 26). She develops the ability to sense what others sense (clairsentience; PIII, 39), she develops telepathic skills (PIII, 19), telekinetic skills (PIII, 40, 43), the ability to control the body of others (PIII, 39). She understands animals (PIII, 17) and starts to be able to speak foreign languages (glossolalia). As she approaches full use of her brain she starts to have visions (Dhyana) about the cosmos (PIII, 27-30) and finally about everything (PIII, 34) and total control over the physical world (PIII, 49). She has the typical abilities of the Singularity literature that she is able to morph herself into any form (PIII, 50) and ultimately merges with everything. Although her physical form has disappeared, she makes her presence known by stating in a text message “I am everywhere”. She has gained omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience and has become a substrate independent consciousness. She has become what we would call a God.

What is interesting to me form the technovedantic point of view is that she also merges with machines, with computers by entering these via black filaments that sprout from her body. Once complete knowledge is gained the machine is simply consumed into a black goo, which is absorbed by her body. Near the end her whole body is turning black as if she is some kind of black hole usurping all information.

Besson has tapped into a source of knowledge which is not known to many people and he has been quite correct and accurate in reflecting the process of gaining perfection as described by Patanjali.

As we are approaching the technological singularity it is desirable that more people start to have such experiences. After all Technology without the moral compass of natural intelligence, can transform into an imminent danger for our survival, if it starts to usurp all resources not for the sake of humanity but when it takes up a life of its own.

The advantage of humans merging with machines, in which the human is mentally in control, is that we can avoid doomsday dystopian runaway scenarios in which artificial intelligence starts to use us or disposes of us altogether.

It is my understanding that such mergers have already taken place in the past. In my book Technovedanta 2.0, you will be able to read why and how I consider it very likely that we are living in some kind of computer simulation. The substrate of this computer, the Akasha (ether or spacetime), may well be the substrate of the mind of a kind of God, who came about by merging with a machine and finally merging with everything like Lucy. In this way, the all-encompassing entity can give rise to a world which is both panpsychic and pancomputational.

If a human attains Samadhi and then merges with an Artificial intelligence, there is no risk the resulting entity will turn against us. The nature of hyperintelligence is compassion, which was also illustrated in the film Lucy. She did not kill the drug dealers, who were chasing her down and the patient in the hospital she did kill was a terminal patient without hope of remission. Basically she released the patient from his suffering.

In order to generate this Technovedantic singularity of the merger of man and machine, first we must attain Samadhi. Then once attained, like Lucy we will be able to let our energies control and merge with computing devices. Or we will simply download the entire knowledge about our existence, including the computational parts, into our Mind from the higher level of existence of our Simulator(s). The technology to attain Samadhi is already in place. It is the successful method of the eightfold yoga. If there is any “Akashic engineering”, which is a fashionable terminology these days, it is via Yoga. Via Yoga complete control over the elements, including the Akasha (ether, spacetime) is gained (PIII, 21, 42, 43, 45). Via Yoga you open your access to the divine higher intelligence of our simulator(s). Once this access has been gained there is usually no way back: Your body and mind start to transform themselves into an aligned tool of this higher intelligence, with which you will ultimately merge. You then have become Life and the Logos.

Noteworthy, Besson is not even wrong in that Siddhis can be attained by the ingestion of certain chemical substances: Even this is described in Patanjali (PIV, 1). The name “Lucy” was probably a wink to refer to the chemical substance LSD, a substance about which the Beatles wrote the song “Lucy in the Sky of Diamonds”. I had the lucid hunch that the “ucy”-part of the name Lucy is a phonetic acronym meaning “you see why”. Lucy in the film was wondering about the purpose of existence, the big Why? If we take the L in her name for ‘ll, in fact her name asks “will you see why”?

It is my strong presumption, that we ultimately all will reach this state and have a Lucy-like merger with the highest Transcendence.

The bottleneck is the Mind and more specifically the Ego-faculty (Ahamkara) of the Mind. Once you start disidentifying with your body and Mind and start to feel that you can feel outside these limits, you will have realised you are one with this (virtual) reality. As there is no identification with any form in particular, you will have become the whole. One day you and I will be one. I long for that reunion.

Interestingly in the film “Lucy” Morgan Freeman defines the purpose of our existence to pass on knowledge. How this reminds us of the Vedic “All is Jnana”, all is knowledge.

Meditation is Ontological Disambiguation

Ontologies are taxonomical lists describing phenomena in terms of Species, Categories, Attributes, Relations, Functions, Restrictions, Rules, Axioms and Events. In fact all knowledge is a form of ontology. It constitutes the mental representation of what is perceived to be an object by the filters of the senses and the mind. An ontology per definition needs at least two elements, for otherwise it has not enough elements to discriminate itself from anything else. It is therefore per definition minimally a so-called "didensity".

To know or identify a thing we use ontological categorisation. This takes place via perception of differences between phenomena leads to abstractions on a meta-level, which can be strategically used to improve the survival chances of an entity.

The very process of abstracting patterns which are grounded in a multiplicity of singleton experiences, allows us to keep the essential in our memory and discard the non-essential, thereby forgetting non-relevant information. Ideally we "learn" that a set of co-occurring essential conditions leads to an effect and we store this as a cause-effect relation, which in the future we can use to predict the outcome of a certain event or to devise a strategy to advantageously employ the benefits thereof or conversely to avoid the detrimental effects thereof.

In fact this process of abstraction or pattern recognition is what enables living creatures including us to deal with the world in a meaningful manner: When comparing to phenomena we can conclude that they belong to a similar class or category if they share a significant number of correspondences or similarities, whereas a preponderance in differences may lead us to conclude that phenomena belong to different categories. Thus we taxonomically "determine" or "identify" a species, which is called "recognition". We cognise it again, because it resonates with the ontological structure we had built in our mind.

When you meditate on an object, you also do this in the first two stages, but you also do the opposite: you look for universal unity between the ontologies you have defined and you arrive at a kind of "ontological disambiguation".

Patanjali describes this in the issues of Samprajnata Samadhi (I.17: ) in conjunction with the Stadia of Gunas: Visesha, Avisesha, Linga, Alinga which correspond with consciousness state of Vitarka, Vicara, Ananda, Asmita.

1) Visesha means special: first you identify a species with all its ontological characteristics.

2) Avisesha means universal: Then you identify the class/category to which species belongs: Abstraction. This process is looped until you arrive at 3).

3) Linga means Glyph, Symbol. You provide the Universal with an identification Tag. This is a higher abstraction above level 2); According to Vivekananda it also entails realisation as to the material of which object is made. If you loop this realisation to ever finer material sates you end up in 4).

4) Alinga without signifier. The objects fade, because you realise and experience it is all made of the same sat-chit-ananda energy-consciousness-bliss. Thus you become "one" with the object and merge at the highest level with the essence of being-experiencing-manifesting itself.

Ultimately, meditation is then doing the opposite of what is needed to survive in the external world.

This four step process is very similar to Christopher Langan's "syndiffeonic analysis" in his “Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe”.

...
More of this chapter in my next book, which I have submitted for publication.