I prefer to define it as “The Digitalization of Reality,” wherein more and more human activities are being translated into bytes. Work, communication, media, entertainment, friends, dating, sexuality, culture, shopping, politics and causes are among the growing number of human needs that have gone digital.

While the Internet was something which earlier we mostly visited, now we are inhabiting the virtual worlds full-time and engineer them according to our mental projections. The Cartesian dream of a mind without a body has almost been fulfilled (even though in his old age Descartes, in Passions of the Soul, affirmed that “the soul is jointly united to all the parts of the body”).

This separation has a long history of Western thought starting from the Judeo-Christian separation between body and soul up to people like the transhumanist Hans Moravec, the artificial intelligence researcher Marvin Minsky, or the singularity guru Raymond Kurzweil who want to download the biological human mind to a safer mechanical medium in order to achieve nothing less than immortality.

Technology itself is less and less “embodied” and physical. Technology is going toward Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and various wireless ways of communicating and even wire-free charging for devices. We have made even hi-tech tools withdraw physically from each other.

Weizenbaum, more than 30 years ago in Computer Power and Human Reason, described a typical computer programmer thus:

Bright young men of disheveled appearance, often with sunken glowing eyes, can be seen sitting at computer consoles, their arms tensed and waiting to fire their fingers, already poised to strike, at the buttons and keys on which their attention seems to be as riveted as a gambler’s on the rolling dice…Their food…coffee, Cokes, sandwiches. If possible, they sleep on cots near the computer…Their rumpled clothes, their unwashed and unshaven faces, and their uncombed hair all testify that they are oblivious to their bodies and to the world in which they move.

Brenda Laurel, designer of human computer interaction, notices differences in gender:

We have a class of people we call nerds who are radically uncomfortable with their bodies and their sexuality…When men talk about virtual reality, they often use phrases like “out-of-body experience” and “leaving the body.” These guys are not talking about out-of-body experiences in the way that some Eastern mystic or Peruvian Indian would. They are talking about it in the sense that if you slap a screen over your eyes you won’t have to see air pollution…When women talk about VR they speak of taking the body with them into another world. The idea is to take these wonderful sense organs with us, not to leave our bodies humped over a keyboard while our brain zips off down some network (Susie Bright, Sexual Reality, San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1992).

What was an attitude confined to technicians and nerds became “mainstream,” where most people are in front of a computer, TV or mobile screen for most of their waking lives, distancing themselves from a felt connection with their bodies, living in a purely mental world. Alexander Lowen, in Joy, wrote that in the more than 50 years since he began studying the human condition, he has seen a general deterioration in the bodies of the people who come to him; the bodies are less energized, less integrated and less attractive than those of the patients he used to see earlier. He writes that the old-fashioned hysterical patient that Freud wrote about is almost never seen. While the hysterical person couldn’t handle his feelings, the schizoid individual nowadays – dissociated from his body and living predominantly in his mind – just hasn’t many.

If technology is conducive toward the disappearance of physical reality, there’s a second philosophy which seems allied to the same goal. Several mystical traditions and spiritual teachers of the past and present consider physical reality as a dream – maya – as something to overcome in order to expand our awareness and connect with our deeper soul and with the ultimate. Physical reality is then something to be abandoned while advancing on our path toward spiritual enlightenment.

Shri Ramakrishna, in L’Enseignement de Ramakrishna, said that when a man becomes crazy for God, he becomes unconscious even of his body. Taking Chaitanya Deva as an example, Ramakrishna said that he “many times fell on the ground. He didn’t have any more hunger, or thirst, or even become sleepy. He completely lost the consciousness of his body”.

In Ramakrishna’s description of God’s crazy state we can see some similarities with Weizenbaum’s programmers. Apparently. Mystics abandon the body/mind in order to reach what is beyond the mind, while our society has relegated the body to a marginal role in order to give the mind the superior and controlling role.

Technologically-oriented people and mystics have another common point in saying that the world is unreal, an illusionary state. The former involve neurophysiology and psychology, while mystics talk about their first-hand experience in having reached a state where a broader awareness comes to the forefront, not depending on our body/mind filters any more.

But while virtual reality disconnects us from our bodies to give priority to the mind (considered the ultimate attainment of human beings), the spiritual paths toward awareness need to know, feel and live in the body as a source and object of knowledge before going beyond mind and body. In the spiritual path the body is seen as a whole body/mind entity, observed by a broader awareness. In that journey, both body and mind might be lost for a while, to be retrieved later. David Cooper in The Grammar of Living wrote: “We have to lose our heads to enter our bodies. There is a time for minds, a time to leave our minds and a time to recover them.”

The body in the spiritual path is a fragile bridge toward the ultimate which has to be crossed with respect and care, sensing and feeling it without rushing to overcome it, otherwise we risk falling into the waters, losing our minds prematurely as well. Some religions discouraged or prohibited a close meeting with our bodies, particularly in the monotheistic traditions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Being far from the sinful body was supposed to bring us closer to the divine incorporeal entity. But mystics – even the ones who came from those traditions – could not escape experiencing the body in its fullness.

The body can’t be ignored in our will to expand our awareness. Almaas (the pen name of Hameed Ali) expressed the connection with the body in the spiritual search for the truth in these terms:

As we get more present in our bodies, in our bellies, we can get closer to our essence which is truth, which is what makes us know what is true, what is false, not from logical deduction, or from the unconscious. You just know. You are close to that subtle sense which is truth. (A.H. Almaas. Elements of the Real in Man (Diamond Heart Book One). Diamond Books. Berkeley. 1987)

Eckhart Tolle expressed it in similar terms:

The most powerful anchor for staying present is to inhabit the body. That means to have some of your attention in the inner energy field of the body – to sense, to feel the animating presence that gives life to the body, which ultimately is consciousness itself. The physical body is a temporary expression of that consciousness, but the essence of it is the consciousness itself. So to connect with the physical body, and even as you perceive the world and interact with the world, to have some attention in the inner energy field and to feel the aliveness that is there in every cell and every organ as a single feeling. You are then rooted in your body, which becomes the anchor for staying present and for staying out of the mental noise (from Lynn Marie Lumiere and John Lumiere-Wins, The Awakening West, Oakland: Clear Visions Publications, 2000).

Feeling our presence and connection with our bodies works as well as the needed grounding for keeping our minds healthy in a technology-saturated disembodied schizoid condition. “The person who does not act in reality and only acts in fantasy becomes himself unreal,” wrote Ronald Laing in 1959, based on the observations of his patients, in The Divided Self (London: Tavistock Publications, 1959), while Marshall McLuhan wrote that, “By continuously embracing technologies, we relate ourselves to them as servomechanisms”. Through our technological race toward the digitalization of reality, we risk abandoning our bodies and split our minds as well, without finding anything superior for our soul to join, as is conversely contemplated in the Eastern spiritual paths.

There’s an echo of a deeper truth in the desire of replacing reality with a virtual one: the truth that the world as we see it is not the whole story. But through virtual worlds we might bend the distorting lenses of the mind even more, creating a further layer of illusionary maya. Instead of liberating ourselves from the deceptive mind, we liberate the mind from the “restrictions” of the body, coming closer to fulfilling the Cartesian dream. But the mind without a felt connection with the body doesn’t have support from our embodied intelligence and becomes compulsive in chasing every small bit of information which appears in our already-scattered attention, transforming our mind in servomechanisms of technology. Is it not a case that meditation techniques reinforce our concentration ability, usually giving attention to a part of our body or to our sensations.

However, even without any virtual technological life, the unreal can’t be avoided. Lila, the divine game played by the universal consciousness, has been playing the hide-and-seek game much before the human mind created a new hi-tech version of the game. Many spiritual teachers say that we live in a dream state, looking at reality filtered by the veil of maya which gives the mind many layers of conditionings. Perhaps lila is having fun in hiding even deeper, adding another layer by encouraging the collective mind in building its own virtual representations of reality. Ultimately, lila will become tired of playing and will reveal the true nature of reality, maybe through apparently hiding even more.

“To consider Maya, a deeper Maya is needed,” said Swami Nityananda, while Nisargadatta Maharaj said “Let the dream unroll itself to its very end. You cannot help it. But you can look at the dream as a dream, refuse it the stamp of reality,” suggesting that one be attentive and aware of recognizing the nature of the false. Since the real timeless soul (the atman) can’t be simulated or manufactured, Osho said that, “By going deeper and deeper into the artificial, science helps religion, extending the limits of what can be manufactured and thereby defining what the Atman is not”. What will be left from the limits of the artifice can be no more than the real.

In the Buddhist tradition there’s the metaphor of our illusionary ego as a thorn we have in our skin, where the Buddhist teachings represent a second thorn, useful in extracting the first one. Then we can discard both. Even an illusion can break into the ultimate reality as the Zen story, “No Water, No Moon,” where the nun attained enlightenment when the old pail broke and there was no more water in the pail, no more moon reflected in the water and, suddenly no more mind also distorting reality.

So the technological way of disconnecting from reality could be like the moon reflected in the pail which, once we become aware of the unreality of it (perhaps through the supposed big electromagnetic storm forecast in the next few years, which could block every electronic equipment), can break the mind free from any other obscuration?

I don’t know what the plans of lila are – and maybe there aren’t even any – as when kids are playing, but since the nun was carrying water, not Twittering, chatting, browsing websites, trading online or updating her Facebook page, she was present in feeling her body and her mind was probably empty for most of the time, in a state more receptive to be filled by Truth. In many spiritual paths the students are suggested to make repetitive actions, as cleaning the rice as a way to strengthen our presence and attention, taming the wandering mind. Those tasks would bore us to death, while we prefer instead, paraphrasing Neil Postman, to be amused to death.

Ronald David Laing was a controversial psychiatrist, often associated with the anti-psychiatrist movement. He combined existential philosophy with psychiatry, giving new perspectives on the nature of mental illness.

In his most-known book, The Divided Self, he describes the schizoid person in these terms.

The schizoid individual exists under the black sun, the evil eye, of his own scrutiny…The “self-conscious” person is caught in a dilemma. He may need to be seen and recognized, in order to maintain his sense of realness and identity. Yet, at the same time, the other represents a threat to his identity and reality…He is, therefore, driven compulsively to seek company, but never allows himself to “be himself” in the presence of anyone else…The self is related primarily to objects of his own fantasies. Being much a self-in-fantasy, it becomes eventually volatilized. In its dread of facing the commitment to the objective element, it sought to preserve its identity; but, no longer anchored to fact, to the conditioned and definitive, it comes to be in danger of losing what it was seeking above all to safeguard. Losing the conditioned, it loses its identity; losing reality, it loses its possibility of exercising freedom of choice in the world (Ronald David Laing, The Divided Self, London: Tavistock Publications, 1959).

Laing thought as well that our inner lives and feelings come mainly from our sense of connection with others and from the knowledge that others have about us. Without this, we suffer from an existential insecurity.

In Laing’s words, I can recognize the attitude of another kind of schizoid: the heavy Internet user, who needs to be connected and seen, through social networks and messaging systems, but up to a certain point, at a safe distance. His profile itself and the people he is connected to are mostly objects of his projections. He will introduce himself in order to be seen by others in a likable and acceptable way.

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Ronald David Laing era uno psichiatra controverso. Spesso è stato associata al movimento dell’antipsichiatria e combinava la filosofia esistenziale con la psichiatria, dando nuove prospettive alla natura della malattia mentale.

Nel suo libro più conosciuto, L’io diviso, descrive la persona schizoide in questi termini:

Lo schizoide vive continuamente sotto un sole nero: l’occhio malevole e scrutatore di se stesso. [...] La persona “cosciente” di sé si trova in un dilemma. Ha bisogno di essere vista e riconosciuta, per poter conservare il senso della sua identità e della sua realtà; e al tempo stesso gli altri rappresentano un pericolo, proprio per tale realtà e identità. [...] Perciò è costretto a cercare compagnia, ma non si lascia mai andare ad essere se stesso in presenza di altri. [...] Le relazioni primarie di un io come questo riguardano gli oggetti delle sue stesse fantasie: questa è la ragione per cui alla fine esso si volatizza. Nel suo timore di affrontare con impegno l’elemento oggettivo esso lotta disperatamente per conservare la sua identità, ma non essendo più ancorato ai fatti, alla realtà contingente e definita, corre il rischio di perdere proprio ciò che soprattutto cercava di salvaguardare. Perdendo la dimensione contingente della realtà perde l’identità, e perdendo la realtà perde la possibilità di esercitare un’effettiva libertà di scelta nel mondo. (Ronald David Laing. L’io diviso. Einaudi. Torino. 1969.)

Inoltre Laing riteneva che la nostra vita interiore e le nostre emozioni derivano in grande misura dal senso di connessione che abbiamo con gli altri e dalla conoscenza che gli altri hanno di noi stessi. Senza di queste soffriamo di un’insicurezza esistenziale.

Nelle parole di Laing posso riconoscere l’attitudine di un altro tipo di schizoide: il forte utilizzatore di Internet, che necessita di essere connesso e visto, tramite i social networks ed i sistemi di messaggistica, ma connesso fino ad un certo punto, ad una distanza di sicurezza. I profili che tale utente compila nei siti e le persone con cui si connette sono più che altro produzione delle sue proiezioni. Egli si presenterà in modo tale da essere visto agli occhi altrui nel modo in cui ritiene di essere accettato e allettante.

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This world of chats, forums, blogs, social networking sites, supports his identity in a very fragile way. Being aware, consciously or unconsciously, of the unreality of that world, he clings to it in fear of losing it. Even his more material possessions (money) are just numbers in an online bank, which can be accessed by a few codes.

The Net and our presence in it have become our basis for constantly extending life activities. On the work level, the communication takes place mainly on the Net; on the creative level (graphics, writing, music), it is almost impossible to make it without technical devices; on the level of personal connections, the communication takes place more and more on the Internet. Therefore, we circumscribe our identities and personal lives, sometimes even sentimental, professional, creative, and financial, in a way mediated by electronic tools and kept by hard disks. The digitalization of reality is applied to every human activity.

One lives predominantly inside one’s own mind, so that the offline reality seems slower, more boring and less subject to our control through a simple click of a mouse. Online, there is only a distance of a click from a desire to its satisfaction.

Our identification with the activity on the Net resembles being identified with the ego. They are both constructions of the mind; both without proper substance and we are dismayed at the idea of losing them.
If our identities are created and maintained mainly in the computer and on the sites, the fear of losing everything is real. A breakdown of a hard disk in the absence of a backup, a virus subtly destroying our data, somebody who appropriates our online identity, are equivalent to a life catastrophe. The magnetic supports themselves last only a few years, and all data accumulated in our digital lives gets transferred to new supports as they change (magnetic tapes, floppy disks of different formats, hard disks, solid state disks, and so on). All this gives the impression of being temporary and fragile.

Alexander Lowen classified people according to the bioenergetic psychological characters. The typology that most closely approaches the attitude described by Laing and who mainly lives online, is the so-called schizoid character. This type of bioenergetics personality tends to reduce the contact with his own body, to live a life essentially on the mental level, to separate thoughts from emotions, to detach from direct contact with people. The schizoid personality is one of the most ancient, formed by emotional deprivations going as far back as the first year or the first months of life, and it is rather common in the advanced capitalist societies where the working rhythms deprive children from the body and emotional contact needed for adequate psychophysical development.

The separation in the first months of life and the construction of a schizoid character which withdraws from the world is compatible with the “single” life where every need is individual, not collective or social, where absolute independence is encouraged.

The schizoid character is not the only one which presents characteristics compatible with a relationship with the world in a “mediated” manner. Luciano Marchino, in the Italian magazine Cyber of January 1993, deals with the psychopathic character in the bioenergetic model of Alexander Lowen.

Often, when the relationship of a couple does not work, a seductive relationship with the parent of the opposite sex makes a child challenge the parent of his own sex, losing the latter’s support…In order to satisfy the seductive parent and, therefore, to not lose his approval, the “manipulated child” consequently will have to delude himself and the parent to match this task, and at the same time to modulate his own propensity to contact and to an emotional involvement in a way that would not let him be overpowered. This will make him an adult incapable of real contact and emotional participation. He will be imprisoned in his own mind, and the people and the world around him will be nothing more than just images, that he will be able to delete or betray without any scruples because nothing really exists for him.

The so-called generation “Y,” which is most present on the Web, born after 1980, have suffered the highest percentage of divorces between parents. As an inevitable consequence, the number of “manipulated children” has increased, who live with only one parent, often with the mother, with whom the child has of necessity to ally in order to not lose support. Often, a phenomenon happens which is defined as the substitution of the partner, when the emotions and excessive expectations are projected on the child, and which the child is not able to cope with.

The Internet culture is becoming more and more a culture of images and moving images (video). People in social networks and on dating sites have mental constructions which can be manipulated by their creators – and even more by those who interact with them, through their inner projections and fantasies.

In social networks and chats, people come and go, “friends” are created by just a single click and with the same ease they are deleted or ignored. Between people, mostly there is no connection which is rooted in direct contact: through sensuality, through sacrifice or sweat. They are almost only images present in a mental space. These instruments can connect people, but they cannot give the sense of an authentic community.

The attitude of the psychopathic bioenergetics character can be seen in a radicalized way in the pervasive presence of pornography, where the emotional disconnectedness is evident from radicalization of the sex act and from considering the actors as objects.

Coming back to Laing, as a psychiatrist, he was concerned about mental health and the construction of a healthy personality or ego, which the schizoid type can’t build, living primarily in his fantasy world lacking a real connection with others and even with his own body. However, in a broader spiritual perspective, there are other steps. The sense of being ourselves through other people’s eyes and feedback is necessary for the stages of ego construction. Eventually, those object relations have to be abandoned in order for the psyche to find support by a deeper part of ourselves, based not on other people anymore, but on our authentic human qualities.

These qualities manifest in us more and more as our self-awareness is developed. Knowing ourselves will become our source of action, acceptance and support. These qualities will never be lost because they are real: we can lose only what is illusory, so we cling to it in the absence of authentic ones.

Anyway, stages can’t be bypassed and the need to build of an ego personality, though “fake”, is required to go beyond it. For instance, a withdrawn schizoid personality doesn’t get the connection to people needed for mirroring into others, recognizing himself and growing his awareness, while a psychopathic character lacks the empathy to be mirrored into others.

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Il mondo fatto di chat, forum, blog, siti di social networking, supportano la sua identità in un modo molto fragile. Essendo consapevole, inconsciamente o consciamente, della irrealtà di tale mondo, si aggrappa ad esso nel timore di perderlo. Anche i suoi possedimenti più materiali, il denaro, non sono altro che numeri in una banca online, a cui si può avere accesso tramite pochi codici.

La Rete e la nostra presenza in rete è diventata la nostra base per settori di vita sempre più ampi. Sul piano lavorativo la comunicazione avviene perlopiù in Rete, su un piano creativo (grafico, scrittura, musicale) non è possibile fare a meno degli strumenti informatici, sul livello dei rapporti personali la comunicazione avviene sempre più tramite Internet. Quindi ci circoscriviamo le nostre identità e la nostra vita personale, talvolta anche sentimentale, professionale, creativa, finanziaria, in modo mediato da strumenti elettronici e conservati dagli strumenti di archiviazione quali gli hard disk. La digitalizzazione della realtà viene applicata ad ogni attività umana.

Si vive prevalentemente all’interno della propria mente, tanto che la realtà offline risulta più lenta, più noiosa e meno soggetta al nostro controllo tramite un semplice clic del mouse. Online, dal desiderio alla sua gratificazione c’è sola la distanza di un clic.

La nostra identificazione con l’attività in rete ricorda l’essere identificati con l’ego. Entrambi sono costruzioni della mente, entrambi sono senza sostanza propria e per entrambi siamo terrorizzati in caso di perdita.

Se le nostre identità si creano e si mantengono prevalentemente nel computer e nei siti, il timore di perdere tutto è reale. Una rottura dell’hard disk senza la presenza di un backup, un virus che subdolamente distrugge i nostri dati, qualcuno che si appropria della nostra identità online sono equivalenti ad una catastrofe nella propria esistenza. I supporti magnetici stessi hanno la durata di pochi anni e ogni dato accumulato nella nostra vita digitale va trasferito sui nuovi supporti man mano che questi cambiano (nastri magnetici, floppy disk di diversi formati, hard disk, dischi a stato solido ecc..), . Il tutto dà un’impressione di provvisorio e fragile.

Alexander Lowen ha classificato le persone in caratteri psicologici bioenergetici. La tipologia che più si avvicina all’attitudine descritta da Laing e da chi vive prevalentemente online, è il carattere cosiddetto schizoide. Questo tipo di personalità bioenergetica tende a ridurre il contatto con il proprio corpo, a vivere una vita prevalentemente sul piano mentale, a separare il pensiero dalle emozioni, a distaccarsi dal contatto diretto con le persone. La personalità schizoide è una delle più antiche, si forma da deprivazioni affettive risalenti già dal primo anno o dai primi mesi di vita, piuttosto comuni nelle società a capitalismo avanzato dove i ritmi lavorativi deprivano i bimbi del contatto corporeo e affettivo necessario per uno sviluppo psicofisico adeguato.

La separazione dei primi mesi di vita e la costruzione di un carattere schizoide estraniato dal mondo è compatibile con la vita da single dove ogni esigenza è individuale, non collettiva o sociale e dove si incoraggia l’indipendenza assoluta.

Il carattere schizoide non è l’unico a presentare caratteristiche compatibili con un relazionarsi col mondo in modo “mediato”. Luciano Marchino sulla rivista Cyber del Gennaio 1993, tratta del carattere psicopatico nel modello bioenergetico di Alexander Lowen:

Spesso, quando la relazione di coppia non funziona, il rapporto seduttivo con il genitore di sesso opposto porta il bambino a “sfidare” il genitore del proprio sesso perdendone l’appoggio. [...] Per soddisfare il genitore seduttivo e quindi per non perderne l’approvazione, il “bambino manipolato” dovrà quindi illudere se stesso ed il genitore di essere all’altezza di questo compito, ed al tempo stesso modulare la sua propensione al contatto ed al coinvolgimento emotivo in modo tale da non farsi sopraffare. Ciò farà di lui un adulto incapace di reale contatto e partecipazione emotiva. Egli sarà imprigionato nella sua mente e le persone ed il mondo intorno a lui non saranno che immagini, che potrà cancellare o tradire senza scrupoli perché nulla realmente esiste per lui.

La cosiddetta generazione “Y”, quella più presenta su web, nati dal 1980 in poi, ha vissuto la più alta percentuale di divorzi tra genitori. E’ inevitabilmente aumentato di conseguenza il numero di “bambini manipolati”, che vive perlopiù con un solo genitore, spesso con la madre, con cui il bambino si deve per forza alleare per non perderne l’appoggio. Spesso avviene anche ciò che si definisce come la sostituzione del partner, un proiettare sul figlio affettività ed aspettative eccessive che il bambino non è in grado di gestire.

La cultura di Internet è sempre più una cultura di immagini e di immagini in movimento (video).  Le persone nei social network e nei siti di incontri hanno la natura delle costruzioni mentali che possono essere manipolate dai loro creatori ma anche e soprattutto da chi le riceve, tramite le sue proiezioni interiori e le fantasie.

Nei social network e nelle chat la gente va e viene, si creano “amici” con un solo clic e con altrettanta facilità si cancellano o si ignorano. Tra le persone perlopiù non vi è un legame che si è radicato nel contatto diretto, nella sensualità, nel sacrificio o nel sudore, sono poco più che immagini presenti in uno spazio mentale. Questi strumenti mettono in connessione le persone ma non possono dare il senso della comunità autentica.

L’attitudine del carattere bioenergetico psicopatico si può vedere in modo radicalizzato nella presenza pervasiva di pornografia dove la disconnessione emotiva è evidente dall’estremizzazione degli atti sessuali e dal considerare gli attori come oggetti.

Ritornando a Laing, come psichiatra egli si preoccupava della salute mentale e della costruzione di una personalità o ego sani, che lo schizoide non è in grado di realizzare, vivendo prevalentemente nel suo mondo fantastico, carente di una connessione reale con gli altri e anche con il suo stesso corpo. Tuttavia, in una prospettiva più ampia, vi sono altre fasi. Il senso di sentirci noi stessi tramite il feedback altrui e attraverso gli occhi altrui è necessario per le fasi di costruzione di un ego. Ad un certo punto, questi oggetti di relazione devono essere abbandonati affinché la psiche possa trovare supporto da parti più profonde di noi stessi, non più basate sulle altre persone, ma sulle nostre autentiche qualità umane.

Tali qualità si manifestano in noi parallelamente allo sviluppo della consapevolezza di noi stessi. La conoscenza di noi stessi diventerà il motore dell’azione, dell’accettazione e del supporto di noi stessi. Tali qualità non potranno mai essere perse perché sono reali: possiamo perdere sono ciò che è illusorio, quindi ci aggrappiamo a queste in mancanza delle autentiche.

Comunque, le fasi non possono essere scavalcate e la costruzione di una personalità per l’ego, per quanto falsa, è necessaria per poter andare al di là dell’ego. Ad esempio, una personalità schizoide chiusa in se stessa non riceve le connessioni necessarie con le persone per specchiarsi negli altri, per riconoscere se stesso ed espandere la sua consapevolezza, mentre un carattere psicopatico manca di empatia per potersi specchiare negli altri.

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Spiritual teachings often affirm that the ultimate knowledge is to be found beyond words and concepts. If silence can convey the next higher level, after silence, words are the medium for consciousness processing.

The world of words and concepts can’t be bypassed; it’s necessary that that world is fully integrated in the human experience. Historically the Net valued words as a medium, but the trend is toward visual media.

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Negli insegnamenti spirituali si afferma spesso che la conoscenza definitiva si trova al di là delle parole e dei concetti. Ma dopo il silenzio, la parola è il medium più vicino all’elaborazione della consapevolezza.

Il mondo delle parole e dei concetti non si può bypassare ed è necessario che vengano incorporati nell’esperienza umana. La Rete ha valorizzato storicamente il medium della parola ma la tendenza è verso il canale visivo.

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Spiritual teachings often affirm that the ultimate knowledge is to be found beyond words and concepts. A spiritual researcher works mainly in deconstructing the mental structures, predominantly made by thoughts, words and concepts, which form a dense net that overshadows the truth and the reality.

Osho said:

It is said that at the beginning there was the Word. I deny it firmly: at the beginning there was silence and, there will be silence even at the end. Silence is the substance which the universe is composed of. [...] Meditation means living without words, living nonlinguistically. Sometimes it happens spontaneously. When you are in love, presence is felt not language. Whenever two lovers are intimate with one another they become silent.

And Almaas:

Human reality is completely linked to language. Our world exists through the language we use. The less we are caught by this language, the less we are attached to our beliefs about how things are, the more we see the whole of reality as one solid, immense clarity, pervading everything through and through. We see that words appear and create appearance, a very thin layer over reality. When we take that layer to be the whole thing or the real thing, there is trouble. That trouble will not disappear as long as we take our skin to be the whole thing (A. H. Almaas, Indestructible Innocence (Diamond Heart Book Four), Diamond Books, Berkeley, 1990).

We can identify ourselves with words and concepts and these can become heavy structures in our consciousness that can make us mistake the map for the territory, living life according to conceptual maps instead of living the immediacy of the true. Children around the end of the first year learn to voluntarily let go of objects from their hands and at the same time start to talk. This suggests to me that children can let go of attachments to physical objects because they are being substituted by attachments on the conceptual plane, even though the latter are still in their rudimentary stage.

If silence can convey the next higher level, after silence, words are the medium of processing of consciousness. The world of words and concepts can’t be bypassed; it’s necessary that that world is fully integrated in the human experience. The same spiritual teachers affirm:

To bring somebody beyond words it is necessary to use words, there isn’t any other possibility (Osho).

Words are as much a barrier, as a bridge….The mind shapes the language and the language shapes the mind. Both are tools, use them but don’t misuse them. Words can bring you only up to their own limit; to go beyond, you must abandon them. Remain as the silent witness only (Nisargadatta Maharaj).

There is nothing you can ultimately say, but you have to exhaust all the words (Almaas).

Barry Sanders in is A Is for Ox: The Collapse of Literacy and the Rise of Violence in an Electronic Age states that reading, writing and the associated words are both cognitive and social acts. He observes how there’s a growing number of young people in the Western world who do not reach the least levels of literacy and he shows how the electronic media are changing cognitive and social development in dangerous ways. The omnipresence of images, videos and electronic sounds to mediate experience gives space to a return to illiteracy, and further, through frustration and the alienation of electronic images, to rising youth violence.

Words are the basic medium of individual consciousness, representing the tool that connects with our inner life. Images (whether static or in motion) and sounds can become internalized and translated into an inner speech. Words are the bricks where consciousness is being constructed.

Reading is the most creative among the forms of acquisition. Reading a book is an interactive process between our own inner life and the book’s contents. It is an enriching and soul-transforming process. Differently from a visual medium where inputs come to consciousness in modalities and with a pace we don’t determine, we control our acquisition and reflective rhythm through reading.

This stopping and slowing down allows us to treasure the read words and to absorb them. A book can go into depth since its approach is gentle and respectful. Reading and writing means listening to ourselves, as an inner act.

Television at the beginning was seen as a tool for the spreading of knowledge and somehow represented the entrance to the modern world for a part of the population. Now we know how the massive use of television brings attention deficit disorder and diminished literacy in kids. This happens apart from the contents broadcast: the medium itself brings a passive and frustrated mental state.

The Internet at the beginning was a mainly textual medium. For many years, the low availability of bandwidth and of advanced technologies of data transmission limited information to text. The Internet was mainly about reading and writing, often offline reading after having downloaded the text. Even writing had a more reflective quality. The most-used communication mode was e-mail, mostly written offline to be sent to the destination once connected to the Net. That allowed more introspection and reflection.

There are massive misunderstandings with e-mail, since in this medium non-verbal information such as posture and voice are missing, so in order to convey our intention the right words have to be chosen. Therefore, we need a prior interiorization act.

E-mail shared some of the features of a traditional paper letter. With “always on” connections to the Net, e-mails are being gradually substituted by instant messaging systems and by social networking sites, which convey most of the textual communication between people. Further, graphics and videos are more common in Web spaces, giving less space to words.

Words are kept alive in blogs, but even those are adjusting themsleves to the general visual tendency; blog contents rarely go into depth, following the tendency toward small information bites which can breach the information overload barrier of the Net. Microblogging, the leaving of quick textual traces, goes toward the direction of textual minimalism by integrating SMS culture with textual culture.

Words are a bridge between the body sensitivity and consciousness. Alexander Lowen writes about his experience in observing patients.

Through the right words we see and know ourselves. We can consequently fully express ourselves. Using the right words is an energetic function because it is a function of consciousness. It is the awareness of the exact fit between a word (or sentence) and a feeling, between an idea and a sentiment. When words and feeling connect or dovetail, the energetic flow that ensues increases the state of excitation in the mind and body raising the level of consciousness and sharpening its focus…I believe that the energetic charge associated with the feeling excites and activates the neurons of the brain involved with word formation. When these neurons respond appropriately to the sense of the feeling, the proper fit occurs, and a light seems to flash in one’s head (Alexander Lowen, Bioenergetics, Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, New York, 1975).

Languages which have a detailed diversification of words connected to our inner or emotional experiences give those experiences more possibilities to reach our awareness, otherwise those would be left as unacknowledged sensations, nebulous and disconnected from our inner semantics.

Awareness and words are intimately connected in the human path toward wisdom. Then at a certain point of the evolution of the soul words become superfluous even though they can be used in yet deeper ways. Words can carry our consciousness beyond words. Written words as a medium and “technology” still have a lot to teach us.

See also:

The Tao of Google ranking

Facebook and the sorcerer’s apprentice of the Net

Neural reflexes and reflections on meditation

Disembodying at broadband speed

Heavenly Technology

The Tibetan watch: how a spiritual teacher learned about technology in the West

Virtual worlds and Maya 2.0

Bytes and bites of the net

Computer addiction as survival for the ego

Programming and self de-programming

Metabolizing information

Mental territories

Is Internet empowering us?

Wireless communication and reality mining as a reflection of pervasive consciousness

Multitasking to nothing

Biotech as an information system

Virtual worlds, mirror worlds, Second Life: backing up the messed planet

Mechanisms, mysticism and Amazon Mechanical Turk

Zen archery and computers

Lifelogging

The heart of the binary code

Downloading our life on Internet

Google, privacy and the need to be seen

Personal consumer

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Negli insegnamenti spirituali si afferma spesso che la conoscenza definitiva si trova al di là delle parole e dei concetti. Un ricercatore spirituale lavora prevalentemente nel decostruire gli schemi mentali, composti prevalentemente da pensieri, parole e concetti, che formano una fitta ragnatela che offusca il vero e il reale.

Si dice che all’inizio ci fosse la parola. Lo nego in maniera categorica; all’inizio ci fu il silenzio e ci sarà il silenzio anche alla fine. Il silenzio è la sostanza di cui è composto l’universo. [...] La meditazione significa vivere senza parole, vivere non linguisticamente. Qualche volta avviene spontaneamente. Quando sei innamorato, viene percepita la presenza, non il linguaggio. Quando due amanti sono in intimità, diventano silenziosi. Osho

La realtà umana è completamente legata al linguaggio. Il nostro mondo esiste attraverso il linguaggio che usiamo. Meno siamo presi dal linguaggio, meno siamo attaccati alle nostre convinzioni su come sono le cose e più vediamo la realtà intera come una immensa e solida chiarezza che pervade tutto. Vediamo che le parole appaiono e creano apparenze, uno strato molto sottile sopra la realtà. Quando assumiamo che tale livello rappresenti tutta la realtà o la realtà vera, nasce il problema. Quel problema non scomparirà finché scambieremo la nostra pelle per l’intera realtà. A.H. Almaas. Indestructible Innocence (Diamond Heart Book Four). Diamond Books. Berkeley. 1990.

Alle parole e ai concetti ci si può identificare e queste possono diventare pesanti strutture nella nostra coscienza che ci fanno confondere la mappa con il territorio, facendoci vivere la vita in accordo alle mappe concettuali invece che all’immediatezza della realtà.

Il bambino alla fine del primo anno impara a lasciare andare gli oggetti volontariamente dalle mani e nello stesso periodo inizia a parlare. Ciò che mi suggerisce è che può lasciare andare l’attaccamento agli oggetti fisici in quanto vengono sostituiti da attaccamenti sul piano concettuale, seppur si tratta di concetti ancora rudimentali.

Se il silenzio può trasportare le consapevolezze più alte, dopo il silenzio, la parola è il medium più vicino all’elaborazione della consapevolezza. Il mondo delle parole e dei concetti non si può bypassare ed è necessario che venga incorporato in pieno nell’esperienza umana. Gli stessi insegnanti spirituali affermano:

Per condurre qualcuno al di là delle parole bisogna usare le parole: non esiste altra possibilità. Osho

Le parole sono tanto una barriera, quanto un ponte. [...] La mente plasma il linguaggio e il linguaggio plasma la mente. Entrambi sono strumenti: usali, ma non abusarne. Le parole possono condurti solo fino al loro limite; per andare oltre, le devi abbandonare. Rimani solo come il testimone silenzioso. Nisargadatta Maharaj

Non c’è alcuna cosa definitiva che puoi affermare, ma devi esaurire tutte le parole. Almaas

Barry Sanders is A Is for Ox: The Collapse of Literacy and the Rise of Violence in an Electronic Age states that reading, writing and the words associated are both cognitive and social acts. He observes how there’s a growing number of young people in the western world that do not reach the least levels of literacy and he shows how electronic media are changing in dangerous ways the cognitive and social development. The omnipresence of images, videos and eletronic sounds to mediate experience gives space to a coming back illiteracy. Furthermore, through frustration and the alienation of electronic images, to youth violence.

Le parole sono il medium fondamentale della coscienza individuale, lo strumento di connessione con la nostra vita interiore. Le immagini, statiche o in movimento, e i suoni, possono essere interiorizzati o tradotti tramite una verbalizzazione interiore. Le parole sono i mattoni su cui si costruisce la nostra consapevolezza.

La lettura è la forma di acquisizione che risulta più creativa di altre. La lettura di un libro è un processo di interazione tra la propria interiorità e i contenuti della lettura. E’ un processo di arricchimento e trasformazione dell’anima. A differenza di un medium visivo dove gli input arrivano alla coscienza in modi e tempi che non determiniamo, con la lettura controlliamo il ritmo di acquisizione e di riflessione.

E’ questo fermarsi e rallentare che ci consente di far tesoro e dei contenuti letti e di assimilarli. Un libro può entrare in profondità perchè il suo approccio è gentile e rispettoso. Leggere e scrivere è ascoltarsi, è un atto interiore.

La televisione agli esordi veniva vista come uno strumento per la diffusione della conoscenza, e in qualche modo ha rappresentato l’entrata nel mondo moderno per una fascia di popolazione. Ora sappiamo come l’uso massiccio della televisione porti al deficit di attenzione e alla scarsa alfabetizzazione nei ragazzi. Questo a prescindere dai contenuti della trasmissione. Il medium stesso porta ad un certo stato mentale passivo e frustrante.

Internet agli esordi era un medium fondamentalmente testuale. La scarsa disponibilità di ampia banda e di tecnologie avanzate di trasmissione dei dati hanno limitato le informazioni ai testi per diversi anni. Internet era perlopiù lettura e scrittura, spesso una lettura offline dopo aver scaricato il testo. Anche la scrittura aveva una qualità più riflessiva. La modalità di comunicazione principale era l’email, che veniva soprattutto scritta offline per poi essere spedita una volta connessi alla rete. Questo consentiva maggiore riflessione e introspezione.

Pur se è stato dimostrato che le incomprensioni via email sono enormi, poichè in questo medium mancano le informazioni non verbali quali la postura e il tono della voce, si devono trovare le parole adeguate per convogliare le nostre intenzioni, quindi si deve fare atto di interiorizzazione.

L’email condivideva alcune delle caratteristiche di una tradizionale lettera su carta. Con le connessioni alla Rete “always on”, le email vengono gradualmente sostituite dai sistemi di instant messaging e dai siti di social networking, che convogliano la maggior parte delle comunicazioni testuali tra le persone. Inoltre, i medium visivi e i filmati stanno entrando sempre più negli spazi del web, dando meno spazio alle parole.

La parola viene mantenuta in vita nei blog, ma anche questi ultimi si stanno adattando alla tendenza visiva generale; i contenuti dei blog raramente vanno in profondità, accontentando a loro volta la tendenza verso piccoli bocconi informativi che riescono a far breccia temporaneamente nella barriera di sovraccarico infomativo della rete. Il microblogging, la tendenza di lasciare veloci tracce testuali, in questo senso è uno sviluppo verso il minimalismo dei testi nella direzione di integrare la cultura testuale con quella degli SMS.

Le parole sono un ponte tra la sensibilità del corpo e la coscienza. Alexander Lowen nella sua esperienza di osservazione dei pazienti scriveva:

Attraverso le parole giuste vediamo e conosciamo noi stessi, e di conseguenza possiamo esprimerci appieno. L’impiego delle parole giuste è una funzione energetica perché è una funzione della coscienza. E’ la consapevolezza dell’esatta corrispondenza fra una parola (o una frase) e una sensazione, fra un’idea e un sentimento. Quando le parole sono connesse o combaciano con le sensazioni, il flusso energetico che ne risulta fa aumentare lo stato di eccitazione della mente e del corpo elevando il livello di coscienza e migliorando la messa a fuoco. [...] Ritengo che la carica energetica associata con il sentimento ecciti e attivi i neuroni cerebrali che partecipano al processo di formazione delle parole. Quando questi neuroni rispondono in maniera appropriata al senso del sentimento si verifica l’accoppiamento adeguato e pare che nella mente si accenda un lampo. Alexander Lowen. Bioenergetica. Feltrinelli. Milano. 1983.

Nelle lingue che hanno una dettagliata diversificazione di parole relative alle esperienze interiori o affettive, queste stesse hanno maggiori possibilità di arrivare alla consapevolezza, in altro modo rimarrebbero come sensazioni non riconosciute, vaghe e non connesse con la nostra semantica interiore.

La consapevolezza e le parole sono intimamente connesse nel percorso umano verso la saggezza. Poi arrivati ad un certo punto le parole sono superflue, tuttavia possono continuare ad essere usate in modo più profondo. Le parole possono veicolare la nostra coscienza oltre alle parole. La parola scritta, vista come medium e “tecnologia”, ha ancora molto da insegnarci.

Vedi anche:

Il Tao del ranking di Google

Facebook e gli apprendisti stregoni della Rete

Riflessi neurali e riflessioni sulla meditazione

Rendendoci incorporei a velocità di banda larga

Tecnologie divine

L’orologio tibetano: come un insegnante spirituale venne a conoscenza della tecnologia in Occidente

Mondi virtuali e Maya 2.0

La morsa e i morsi della rete

La dipendenza da computer per la sopravvivenza dell’ego

Programmazione e de-programmazione di sè

Metabolizzare le informazioni

Territori mentali

Internet aumenta davvero il nostro potere?

La comunicazione senza fili e il reality mining come riflesso della consapevolezza globale

Il multitasking: strafare per niente

Le biotecnologie come sistema informativo

Mondi virtuali, mondi specchio, Second Life: fare il backup di un pianeta nel caos

Meccanismi, misticismi e Mechanical Turk di Amazon

Il tiro con l’arco Zen e i computer

Lifelogging

Il cuore del codice binario

Download della vita su Internet

Google, la privacy e il mettersi in mostra

Personal consumatore

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