Indranet » Ramakrishna

The Digitally Divided Self

Ivo Quartiroli — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:21:41 +0000

There’s an unusual but apparent alliance between two philosophies which are barely aware of and rarely come into contact each other, which conjure against the physical reality and the body. The first “philosophy” is represented by what have variously been called Cyberspace, Technopoly, Cyburbia and other names.

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.

Disembodying at broadband speed

Ivo Quartiroli — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 04:39:36 +0000

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Overcoming our identification with the body has traditionally been a mystical path, but that took place after having had a fully integrated body-mind-soul connection and having become aware of the full range of emotions and bodily sensations.

The split between body and mind in our society is still present and is further pushed away by long computer use where our bodies are involved in a minimal way, removing the connection in a premature manner.

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Tradizionalmente, il superare l’identificazione col corpo era parte di un percorso mistico, ma questo avveniva dopo aver integrato completamente la connessione tra il corpo, la mente e l’anima e dopo essersi resi consapevoli di tutta le sfera delle emozioni e delle sensazioni corporee.

La scissione tra mente e corpo è tutt’ora presente nella nostra società e viene ulteriormente ampliata da un uso prolungato del computer dove i corpi sono coinvolti in modo minimale, togliendo la connessione in modo prematuro.

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Our sense of personal identities is much connected to the presence of our body and its feedbacks. Mystics say that when a person becomes spiritually enlightened, the connection with his body/mind is not the same as before since the identification with our limited structures is being replaced by a wider embrace.

When a man falls madly in love with God, who can we call his father, his mother, his wife? He loves God so intensely that he is now crazy for him. He no longer has duties, he’s free from his debts. What is this love frenzy? When a man reaches this state, he is no longer aware of his body to which in normal times is so closely connected. Chaitanya Deva experienced this. He fell into the sea without realizing it was the sea. And many times he fell on the ground. He no longer knew hunger, nor thirst, nor he needed sleep. He had completely lost the awareness of his body (his body awareness). Shri Ramakrishna. L’enseignement de Ramakrishna, 1963.

McLuhan foresaw that the new technological man will lose touch with nature as a direct experience and consequently lose his balance wheel, where “with or without drugs, the mind tends to float free into the dangerous zone of abstractions”. He envisioned a man who sits in front of his “informational control room”, receiving information from any place of the world, blowing up his ego while at the same time becoming schizophrenic, having the body in one place and his mind scattered in many places. This will split the connection with his body and threaten his identity:

A discarnate man is as weightless as an astronaut but can move much faster. He loses his sense of private identity because electronic perceptions are not related to a place. Caught up in the hybrid energy released by video technologies, he will be presented with a chimerical “reality” that involves all his senses at a distanted pitch, a condition as addictive as any known drug. The mind, as figure, sinks back into ground and drifts somewhere between dream and fantasy. Dreams have some connection to the real world because they have a frame of actual time and place (usually in real time); fantasy has no such commitment. At that point, technology is out of control. Marshall McLuhan, Bruce R. Powers. The Global Village. Oxford University Press. New York, 1989

Joseph Weizenbaum portrayed, much before the advent of the Internet, the compulsive programmers as technicians that

work until they nearly drop, twenty, thirty hours at a time. Their food, if they arrange it, is brought to them: coffee, Cokes, sandwiches. If possible, they sleep on cots near the computer. But only for a few hours – then back to the console or the printouts. 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. Joseph Weizenbaum. Computer Power and Human Reason. W. H. Freeman and Company. 1976

Not longer feeling the connection with our bodies in front of the computer is an experience that is shared by the majority of people that use computers for more than little time. This exclusion has their roots in the splitting of body and mind of the judeo-christian culture and is mostly welcomed by men rather then women.

Brenda Laurel, a human-computer interaction expert was interviewed by Susie Bright for her book Sexual Reality (Cleis Press. San Francisco. 1992) and expresses her views on the body and gender orientation around it:

I know from fifteen years experience with computer guys that we have a class of people we call nerds who are radically uncomfortable with their bodies and their sexuality. I’ve had men tell me that one of the reasons they got into this business was to escape the social aspects of being a male in America – to escape women in particular. These are nice guys – not nasty, just shy, dweeby guys. 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. That is a Western industrial let’s-dominate-the-earth kind of mentality. 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. The body is not simply a container for this glorious intellect of ours.

Alexander Lowen in his book Joy lamented that through the years he has seen a continuous deterioration in his patients’ bodies in terms of integration and aliveness, where “the old-fashioned hysterical patient that Freud wrote about is almost never seen. The hysterical person couldn’t handle his feeling; the schizoid individual hasn’t many. Most people today are dissociated from their bodies and live largely in their heads or egos. We live in an egotistic or narcissistic culture where the body is seen as an object and the mind as the superior and controlling power.”

Women are naturally more connected to their bodies and could drive men back to their own bodies as well but this connection is being threatened for both sexes through overemphasizing technological life and through a fast stressed lifestyle that does not give space to the slower pace of the body.

The connection with our bodies starts with the connection we had with our mother’s body and how this bond was developed. The productive and competitive society forces earlier mother-infant/child separations through child day care. Babies don’t get enough breastfeeding nor the necessary bonding through prolonged body contact. It has been demonstrated how early separations effect the developing brain in a way that inclines to mental pathologies. If we don’t get enough body contact we can’t get a vibrant connection with our bodies either.

Again, technology in some way seems to drive us towards the spiritual plane, in this case towards the overcoming of the body, but only in a pale reflection, prematurely and in a non-integrated way, with the actual opposite result of inhibiting the soul evolution through bypassing the stage of connecting with our bodies fully.

This is the first generation where people give less and less body contact to children for lack of time and attitude. Furthermore we spend more and more time indoor, on school or office desks, in front of computers with our bodies involved in a minimal way. Apart from the obvious health problems regarding cardiovascular diseases and obesity, our soul lacks the connection with the body in an integrated way.

The body screams for attention but most of what is given in our society is fitness programs and aesthetic surgeries, one more time, technologies.

Virtual worlds and Maya 2.0

Ivo Quartiroli — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 20:09:36 +0000

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The creation of virtual worlds has an immediate fascination over human beings. Second Life. World of Warcraft and other environments are amongst Internet developing tendencies.

The great appeal of these worlds is augmented by the fact that the mind itself is a powerful creator of artificial worlds and it complies with an intrinsic need within the mind.

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La creazione di mondi virtuali ha un fascino immediato sugli esseri umani. Second Life, World of Warcraft e altri ambienti sono tra le tendenze in sviluppo di Internet.

Il grande fascino di questi ambienti è aiutato dal fatto che la mente stessa è una creatrice di mondi artificiali, quindi non fa che assecondare un bisogno instrinseco nella mente.

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Jaron Lanier wrote Are We Trapped in God’s Video Game? for November 2007 Discover Magazine:

There are certain questions about virtual reality (VR) that I’ve been asked a few times a day, every day, for over a quarter century. The e-mails still come in, from a kid in Korea or a grandmother in Australia: Will VR ever get so good that we will no longer be able to tell it’s VR? Is it possible we are already living in VR? [...] The concept of “VR so good you can’t tell” can mean different things. It might mean that a person who started off in natural reality can be fooled by a simulation, or it might mean that a being who was created as part of a simulation can become conscious.

Then Lanier muses on the intersections of virtual reality, cosmology and science fiction. I wish to convey a spiritual perspective on virtual worlds.

Everything you experience is born out of thought, so everything you experience, or can experience, is an illusion. U.G. Krishnamurti

Situationists used to say that within capitalism, emotions become transmuted into market products, and that we have to pay to have them back. Moreover, they claimed that human beings in our society are re-planned to live a life that is a representation of itself. No doubt today society represents the apotheosis of a life lived in a mediated way, experienced through technological devices that keep us detached from the full sudden contact with the depth of our soul even before that happens with our neighbours or with the concreteness of the real.

But the root of the distance from authentic reality is much older than the market society. The latter only reflected a situation already present within the nature of our mind. We already live a created reality on the neurophysiological level, starting with the vision process up to our nervous system which creates, filters and interprets reality. Our nervous system, as well as the totality of our mind, both act as a a barrier towards reality, thus creating structures and worlds which we name “ideas”, “opinions”, “principles”, “truth”, “objectivity”, “good”, “evil”, and so forth.

Finding shelter in a mental world made of images, fantasies, and projections represents an unavoidable defence mechanism during the construction of our ego, a protection against the rise of bad sensations. Whenever this inner world develops excessively and takes up an autonomous life, we start speaking of psychosis and schizophrenias, but as this is a common experience it is just a question of degrees.

Rationality itself, even if it is an achievement towards the search for truth, often represents a trick of the mind that further deceives us making us think capable of”seeing things as they are” in an “objective” way. So rationality often transforms itself into its opposite, into a self defence mechanism against the awareness of what is true, and at a collective level, the most adequate instrument to plan and employ technological devices thus enabling the creation of artificial worlds.

Technology is the apotheosis of the rational. Therefore rationality becomes a sort of defence mechanism at a social level, which allows for the creation of more and more sophisticated technological tools designed to create a kind of communication between human beings mediated by screens, keyboards, ponting devices and web sites’ operating procedures.

Spiritual realization paths involve coming back to reality and contacting the real, free from mental and interpretative make-ups. Often, in western countries, spirituality is believed to be in opposition with the real, whereas it is rather a course towards a dimension which is truer and more immediate than any other, a dimension which pierces through the system of filters that obscure our full perception and the immensity of the true.

The full awareness of living in a created and illusory reality is what is called “enlightenment”. Speaking of its realization, Nisargadatta Maharaj said “I used to create a world and populate it – now I don’t do it any more”.

Shri Ramakrishna stated that “according to the Vedanta, the state of wakefulness is as unreal as the dream’ one”, then he used to narrate that:

One day a spiritually sharp lumberjack was awaked by an annoying man, right in the middle of a beautiful dream. “Why did you wake me’” – said he bitterly – I was a king and a father of seven children, all skilled in different sciences. I was sitting on my throne and reigned over my country. I was so happy! Why, why did you wake me?”. “This is of no importance, answered the man, it was just a dream!”. “Shame on you, he replied, don’t you understand that I was a king for real, just exactly as I am a lumberjack? Because as it is true that I’m a lumberjack, it is also true that I was a king”. Shri Ramakrishna. Alla ricerca di Dio. Roma 1963. The original: L’enseignement de Ramakrishna.

The ordinary mind lives in an unstable equilibrium between the quiet beatitude of enlightenment and the chaos of psychosis. When the mind exceeds in its ability of creating worlds and most of all of identifying itself with them, reality is pushed so far away that all is left are just the fanciful constructions of the mind. Said Ronald David Laing in The Divided Self (Tavistock Publications. London, 1959) “the person who does not act in reality and only acts in fantasy becomes unreal himself.”

The illusory world created by the mind within the Indian tradition is called maya, a condition similar to the dream one.

But the world of maya shouldn’t and mustn’t be avoided. The path is to enter the illusion with awareness, acquire consciousness of the true and thereby go back to the illusory world which at that point becomes one of the many manifestations of the true.

It is through lila (divine game) that you should open your path up to nitya (eternal, true). And so it is from nitya that you must come back to lila, who is then no more unreal, but an expression of nitya for your senses. Shri Ramakrishna. L’enseignement de Ramakrishna, 1963.

Osho, was asked: “Your teaching looks different to me: to be committed in the world even whilst transformation is in progress. If it is so, how can I avoid the diversions maya puts on my path before succeeding in seeing reality clearly?

He answered:

There is no need to avoid anything. Each effort addressed to the renunciation is generated by fright. Live, don’t just avoid. Live maya, and you’ll get to discover reality, because this maya is a hidden reality. Even all that seem is part of reality. Let me say it again: even all that seem is part of reality. Don’t run away from it, because by doing it you would escape the reality too. Get deeply into it. Live it, with joy, don’t you run away. Brahma’s coat is callled maya by Hindu people, his dress, don’t avoid it. If you avoid my dress and escape, you will escape from me too. You must accept my dress, you must get closer and closer, just then you’ll may know me, all what is hidden behind the dress. God is hidden within maya. Maya shows His magic. God is hidden inside His own magic. The word “magic”is derived from maya. God is hidden in these flowers, in these trees, in these rocks, within you, within me. He observes the world from each eye, it is His fragrance spreading around from every flower. This is His way to be. His manifestation. If you avoid it you’ll avoid Him too; get inside it, enter the fragrance of the flower, just then you will find God’s fragrance hidden in the inside. Osho, from Come Follow Me Vol. III

With virtual worlds, such as Second Life, a further Maya layer seems to be in making, laying on top of the already existing one of ordinary reality which in turn becomes lived illusorily. With virtual worlds the artifice and the unreality of such environments becomes evident, but at the same time, it is also evident how our reactions and emotions are basically the same both in “real” life and in online worlds that could now be called Maya 2.0.

Most probably in the worlds online we will use parts of our psyche more than others, but basically our way of interacting will reflect our mental structures and the conditioning we received during our life. Therefore, even if when we are online we use parts of us which are less visible when we are offline, the procedures remain unaltered. The difference is that our online experience could give us the opportunity to question the reality of our presence and to involve our very mind in the dream. In these terms, Swami Nityananda’s words “To consider Maya, a deeper Maya is needed” (from Voice of the self) seem just written for Web architects. An illusion might then open a way into the truth.

If we turn our attention of 180 degrees from the screen to our own inner life we stand the opportunity not to lose ourselves passively in the medium and to question the reality of all of the Maya layers.

In eastern traditions there are tales where incidents happen thus causing the immediate awareness of the real, as for instance the tale of the nun who became enlightened when the sudden disappearance of an illusion took her to enlightenment.

The nun Chiyono studied for years, but was unable to find enlightenment. One night, she was carrying an old pail filled with water. As she was walking along, she was watching the full moon reflected in the pail of water. Suddenly, the bamboo strips that held the pail together broke, and the pail fell apart. The water rushed out; the moon’s reflection disappeared – and Chiyono became enlightened. She wrote this verse:

This way and that way I tried to keep the pail together,
hoping the weak bamboo would never break.
Suddenly the bottom fell out.
No more water; no more moon in the water
emptiness in my hand.

Osho remarked accordingly: “Suddenly, the water rushed out and there was no moon. So she must have looked up–and the real moon was there. Suddenly she became awakened to this fact, that everything was a reflection, an illusion, because it was seen through the mind. As the pail broke, the mind inside also broke.”

An incident that all of a sudden makes the illusion of the moon reflection fall… maybe the crash of our hard disk?

See also:

Disembodying at broadband speed

Heavenly Technology

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

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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Jaron Lanier ha scritto Are We Trapped in God’s Video Game? (“Siamo imprigionati in un video game di Dio”?):

Ci sono alcune domande sulla realtà virtuale (RV) che mi sono state poste diverse volte al giorno, ogni giorno, per oltre un quarto di secolo. Le email arrivano ancora, da un ragazzino Coreano o da una nonna Australiana: potrà mai la RV diventare talmente abile che non saremo più in grado di dire che è RV? E’ possibile che stiamo già vivendo nella RV? [...] Il concetto di “RV talmente abile che non puoi dire che” può significare diverse cose. Potrebbe significare che una persona che si trova nella realtà naturale può essere ingannata da una simulazione, oppure potrebbe significare che un essere che è stato creato come parte di una simulazione può diventare conscio.

Poi Lanier riflette sull’intersezione di realtà virtuale, cosmologia e fantascienza. Vorrei dare una prospettive spirituale ai mondi virtuali.

Tutto ciò di cui puoi fare esperienza nasce dai pensieri, quindi tutto ciò di cui fai esperienza, o puoi farne esperienza, è un’illusione. U.G Krishnamurti

I Situazionisti dicevano che nel capitalismo le emozioni vengono tramutate in prodotti di mercato e che dobbiamo sborsare denaro per riprendercele. Inoltre, affermavano che gli esseri umani nella nostra società vengono riprogettati in modo da vivere una vita come rappresentazione di se stessa. Senza dubbio la società attuale è l’apoteosi della vita vissuta in modo mediato, tramite mezzi tecnologici che ci distanziano dal contatto immediato con la nostra profondità interiore prima ancora che con il prossimo e con la concretezza del reale.

Ma la radice della distanza dalla realtà autentica è molto più antica della società di mercato. Questa ultima non ha fatto altro che rispecchiare una situazione già presente nella natura della mente. Già a partire dal piano neurofisiologico viviamo in una realtà fabbricata, iniziando dal meccanismo della visione fino al nostro sistema nervoso che filtra, interpreta e fabbrica la realtà. Il sistema nervoso e la mente nella sua totalità agisce quindi da barriera verso la realtà, creando strutture e mondi a cui diamo il nome di “idee”, “opinioni”, “principi”, “verità”, “oggettività”, “bene”, “male” e così via.

Rifugiarsi in un mondo mentale di immagini, fantasie e di proiezioni è un meccanismo di difesa inevitabile durante la costruzione dell’ego, una protezione per l’insorgere di sensazioni spiacevoli. Quando questo mondo interno si sviluppa eccessivamente e prende vita autonoma parliamo di psicosi e schizofrenie, ma è solo una questione di gradi, essendo un’esperienza comune.

La razionalità stessa, pur essendo un’importante acquisizione verso la ricerca del vero, spesso rappresenta un trucco della mente che ci illude ulteriormente di poter “vedere le cose come stanno” in modo “oggettivo”. La razionalità si trasforma così spesso nel suo contrario, in un meccanismo di difesa personale nei confronti della consapevolezza del vero, e a livello collettivo lo strumento più adeguato per progettare ed utilizzare l’artificio tecnologico che consente la creazione dei mondi virtuali. La tecnologia è l’apotesi del razionale. Quindi la razionalità si trasforma in una specie di meccanismo di difesa a livello sociale, che consente la creazione di strumenti tecnologici sempre più complessi che progettano la comunicazione tra esseri umani mediata da schermi, tastiere, mouse, procedure di utilizzo dei siti web.

I percorsi di realizzazione spirituale sono un ritorno verso la realtà e verso un contatto col reale libero da strutture mentale ed interpretative. Spesso in occidente vi è la credenza che la spiritualità sia in contrapposizione al reale, mentre è piuttosto un percorso verso una dimensione più vera e immediata di ogni altro, che attraversa la rete di filtri che oscurano la piena percezione e l’immensità del vero.

La piena consapevolezza di vivere in una realtà costruita ed illusoria è ciò che viene chiamato “illuminazione”. Parlando della sua realizzazione, Nisargadatta Maharaj diceva “Avevo l’abitudine di creare un mondo e di popolarlo, ora non lo faccio più”.

Shri Ramakrishna affermava che “secondo il Vedanta, lo stato di veglia è irreale quanto quello del sogno”, quindi raccontava che:

Un boscaiolo spiritualmente raffinato fu svegliato un giorno da un importuno, nel bel mezzo di un bel sogno. “Perché mi hai svegliato? – esclamò egli con rammarico – ero re e padre di sette figli, tutti versati in scienze diverse. Seduto sul trono regnavo sul mio paese. Ero così felice! Perché, perché mi hai svegliato?”. “Ma questo non ha alcuna importanza, gli rispose l’importuno, il vostro era soltanto un sogno!”. “Pazzo che sei, replicò l’altro, non capisci che ero re veramente, così come veramente sono boscaiolo? Poiché se è vero che sono un boscaiolo, è ugualmente vero che ero un re”. Shri Ramakrishna. Alla ricerca di Dio. Roma. 1963. Originale. L’enseignement de Ramakrishna.

La mente ordinaria vive in un equilibrio instabile tra la pacata beatitudine dell’illuminazione e il caos della psicosi. Quando la mente eccede nella sua capacità di creazione di mondi e soprattutto di identificarsi con essi, la realtà diviene talmente distante che rimangono solo le costruzioni fantastiche della mente. Diceva Ronald David Laing ne L’io diviso (Einaudi. Torino. 1969): “Se una persona non agisce nella realtà, ma solo nella fantasia, diviene essa stessa irreale.”

Il mondo illusorio creato dalla mente viene chiamato maya nella tradizione indiana, uno stato analogo a quello del sogno.

Ma il mondo di maya non va e non può essere evitato. Il percorso è quello di entrare nell’illusione con consapevolezza, rendersi coscienti del vero e da lì ritornare al mondo illusorio che a quel punto diventa una delle tanti espressioni del vero.

E’ attraverso la lila (gioco divino) che dovete aprirvi il cammino fino a nitya (eterno, vero). Così è da nitya che dovete tornare indietro fino a lila, che allora non è più irreale, ma una manifestazione di nitya per i vostri sensi. Shri Ramakrishna. Alla ricerca di Dio. Roma. 1963. Originale. L’enseignement de Ramakrishna

Osho, alla domanda “Il tuo insegnamento mi sembra diverso: essere impegnati nel mondo anche mentre avviene la trasformazione. Se è così, come posso evitare le distrazioni di maya prima di riuscire a vedere chiaramente la realtà?”

rispose:

Non c’è bisogno di evitare nulla. Ogni sforzo diretto alla rinuncia è generato dalla paura. Vivi, non evitare. Vivi maya, e arriverai a scoprire la realtà, perché questo maya è una realtà nascosta. Anche ciò che appare fa parte della realtà. Lasciamelo ripetere: anche ciò che appare fa parte della realtà. Non sfuggirgli, perché così sfuggiresti anche la realtà. Entraci profondamente. Vivilo, con gioia, non scappare. Gli hindu chiamano maya il mantello di Brahma, il suo vestito: non evitarlo. Se eviti il mio vestito e scappi, scapperai anche da me. Devi accettare il mio abito, devi avvicinarti sempre di più, solo allora potrai conoscere me, quello che si nasconde dietro l’abito. Dio è nascosto in maya. Maya indica la sua magia. Dio è nascosto nella propria magia. La parola “magia” deriva da maya. Dio è nascosto in questi fiori, in questi alberi, in queste rocce, in te, in me. Da ogni occhio egli osserva il mondo, da ogni fiore è la sua fragranza che si diffonde. Questo è il suo modo di essere, la sua manifestazione. Se la eviti, eviterai anche lui; entraci, entra nella fragranza del fiore, solo così troverai la fragranza di Dio nascosta all’interno. Osho. Tratto da Come Follow Me, Vol. III

Con i mondi virtuali quali Second Life sembra che si stia creando un ulteriore strato di Maya sopra quello già esistente della realtà ordinaria che viene a sua volta vissuta illusoriamente. Con i mondi virtuali diviene evidente l’artificio e l’irrealtà di tali ambienti, ma nello stesso momento è anche evidente quanto le nostre reazioni ed emozioni siano di base le stesse sia nella vita “reale”, che nei mondi online, che potrebbero essere chiamati Maya 2.0.

Probabilmente nei mondi online utilizzeremo maggiormente alcune parti della nostra psiche rispetto ad altre, ma fondamentalmente le nostre modalitò di interazione rifletteranno quelle che sono le nostre strutture psichiche e i condizionamenti ricevuti durante la nostra storia. Quindi, anche se online utilizziamo parti di noi che sono meno visibili nella vita offline, i meccanismi rimangono gli stessi. La differenza è che la nostra esperienza online ci potrebbe dare l’opportunità di mettere in discussione la realtà della nostra partecipazione e di includere la nostra stessa mente nel sogno. In questo senso, le parole di Swami Nityananda “Per prendere in considerazione Maya, si necessita un Maya più profondo” (da Voice of the Self) sembrano scritte per gli architetti della Rete. Quindi una illusione può aprire alla verità.

Se si sposta l’attenzione di 180 gradi dallo schermo alla propria interiorità si ha la possibilità di non perdersi passivamente nel mezzo e di mettere in discussione la realtà di tutti gli strati di Maya.

Nelle tradizioni orientali vi sono dei racconti ove avvengono degli incidenti che provocano la consapevolezza immediata del reale, come ad esempio il racconto della monaca che si è illuminata quando l’inaspettata scomparsa di un’illusione l’ha condotta all’illuminazione.

La monaca Chiyono aveva praticato anni di meditazione. Una notte stava trasportando un vecchio secchio pieno d’acqua e mentre camminava, osservava la luna piena che si rifletteva nel secchio. Improvvisamente, le canne di bambù che sostenevano il secchio si ruppero e il secchio cadde. L’acqua a sua volta cadde a terra, il riflesso della luna scomparve e in quel momento Chiyono si illumin e scrisse questa poesia:

In un modo o nell’altro
ho cercato di sorreggere il secchio
sperando che il debole bambù
non si sarebbe mai spezzato.
Improvvisamente il sostegno si è rotto.
Non più acqua,
non più luna nell’acqua,
il vuoto nelle mie mani.

Secondo il commento di Osho, “All’improvviso l’acqua fuggì in tutte le direzioni, e non vi era più alcuna luna. A quel punto, deve aver guardato in alto – ed ecco la vera luna! Improvvisamente si risvegliò al fatto che ogni cosa era un riflesso, un’illusione perché era vista tramite la mente. Allorché il secchio si ruppe, anche la mente andò in frantumi.”

Un incidente che improvvisamente fa cadere l’illusione della luna riflessa…. magari il crash dell’hard disk?

Vedi anche:

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Tecnologie divine

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

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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