The Digitally Divided Self: Relinquishing our Awareness to the Internet. Ivo Ph.D. Quartiroli
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fundamental for developing reasoning and judging abilities, and for long-term planning. The instant gratification of computer use can weaken our capacities for broader vision and planning. Poorly-developed frontal lobes are also typical of schizophrenia.
The Immortal Mind
Through technology and the Net we crave divine as well as ordinary powers. So people like Raymond Kurzweil (2005) appeal to us with a future where technological advances will bring us nothing less than immortality – through downloading our mind to the computer. In the history of Western science, he is not the first to apply messianic and religious terms to technology. After all, humanity has already been saved by the technology of Noah’s Ark, so there will surely be a “hack” even for mortality.
What Kurzweil and others are suggesting to drive our evolution through computers and biotechnology is a reflection, confined to the biological and mental levels, of the spiritual quest to elevate awareness beyond our mind. But since the quest is activated through mind-created technology, we can only remain on the same plane as the mind, however expanded and sophisticated it becomes through external supports and enhancements.
Kurzweil claims that “eventually, we leap beyond the boundaries of our planet, and every bit of matter in the entire universe becomes intelligent. . . . This,” he concludes, “is the destiny of the universe.” Sure, but this is already what the universe is, with no need for any contribution of technology. Enlightened spiritual teachers know that the universe is permeated by a brilliant Consciousness which cannot be grasped by ordinary mind, but which can be experienced through advanced states of consciousness as a result of spiritual inquiry.
Since our culture associates human beings mainly with their minds’ contents, then immortality means preserving that information. But if we jump to another level of identification, then the project of preserving our mind is seen as nothing more special than keeping our kidneys functioning by machines in a laboratory. Awareness and the essential human qualities are not a Cartesian matter of a purely mental state. They are a part of the soul which we perceive through our capacity of inner observation. I use the term soul to designate the overall entity of the body-mind, the psyche, and spiritual states. As Almaas says about those essential qualities:
Each of the different ways that Essence appears has recognizable properties and characteristics that differentiate it experientially from the other aspects. Because Essence is not a physical substance, we do not actually perceive its presence with our physical senses, but it can be clearly perceived and recognized through the functioning of subtle inner capacities that correspond to physical senses (2002, p. 250).
Those subtle inner capacities require our awareness of our whole body-mind. We can’t transfer essential qualities to the Net and bring them with us on the techno-immortal journey.
Inner Prostheses and Amputations through Technology
Many technical advances are being made without asking the basic questions about what drives us into technology and what technology really does to us. The time spent talking about technology is concerned with how it works, not with its ends. The implicit belief is that any technological development which seems to expand our options is going to have a positive impact.
McLuhan wrote that “any invention or technology is an extension or self-amputation of our physical bodies, and such extension also demands new ratios or new equilibriums among the other organs and extensions of the body.” We tend to look only at the extended parts, not at the shifting equilibriums they trigger. We prefer to look at our extensions rather than the amputations, because our mind has developed to be more comfortable looking outside than within.
We project externally on technologies, which in turn mirror our self-images. But the amputations hinder recognition. The more we transfer our own qualities to technology, the less we are aware of what’s missing, having weakened the inner tools of self-awareness. We are, like drunks, in denial of our condition.
Translating reality into information is very attractive to the ego-mind. The ego can thus consider the world as a huge information system to be understood, catalogued, and controlled through software – itself an extension of the mind. The mind becomes then a supreme king.
Minds and digital technologies have much in common. Both can simulate almost anything, and both try to incorporate everything into their domains. The mind and the thinking process are the most cherished entities in our culture. But that is not the whole story.
Beyond the Mind
There are states beyond the mind which can be reached through awareness. There exists a condition of “spiritual enlightenment” which can elevate human beings to the divine and to global Consciousness. Spiritual teachers of every age have pointed to such a state, however difficult it is to communicate through words what is beyond mind.
Words, dual in themselves, are the tools at hand to describe the non-dual state of union with the whole, called spiritual enlightenment, satchitananda (the merging of existence, consciousness and bliss), being a Buddha, God Realization, and Ultimate Understanding.” I have a faint echo of this from the glimpses of higher states my own journey has offered.
But the words of spiritual teachers are the map, not the territory – and my experiences could be no more than delusions. Actually, some teachers say that any experience is not yet that, so a Zen master would probably hit my head with a stick. The truth is that neither I nor anyone has a way to prove the existence of such a state, since every “proof” would stay on the level of the mind itself. All in all, it’s a matter of faith. And even science has its own axioms or postulates, truths which are taken for granted.
The word faith has been associated with the monotheistic religions, with fundamentalism and in opposition to an open quest for the truth. Much blood has been spilled in the name of faith. Faith has been used, as well, to mean not acknowledging scientific truths. I am not talking about that faith.
Where my faith comes from is a mystery. Maybe I was touched by reading, maybe I felt an echo of something larger than the mind or I recognized higher states of being in my spiritual teachers.
If I would add anything more than plain faith to the existence of spiritual enlightenment, then trouble would ensue. For instance, when instead of saying “God exists,” we say “God is goodness,” we are already in a dualistic perspective that can easily slip into “Who doesn’t believe in God is evil.” Also, if the postulate that spiritual enlightenment exists were extended into “I know the only way toward enlightenment,” then we would fall into fundamentalism. The mind wants to pull into its purview even what can never be known by it.
Words are products of the conceptual/dual mind, and nobody can avoid the risk of building structures and dogmas when talking about no-mind. But what’s important is to keep an open-ended attitude at the root of any inquiry, whether scientific or self-inquiry.
The Fragility of Beliefs and Information Technology
Science cannot conceive anything beyond the ego and the mind – not even in human sciences such as psychology (with the exception of transpersonal psychology). Thus, abandoning our mind’s contents seems like total defeat. In the West, nihilism is often knocking at the door, since what the mind creates – by its ephemeral nature – the mind itself can destroy. Without acknowledging a spiritual dimension, one is tempted to say that there’s nothing solid – and ultimately that there’s no sense in anything.
A culture which has been developed on the foundation of “I think, therefore I am” will cling to thinking and will produce tools to keep the mind busy all the time. But for the spiritually-oriented person there’s a plan B. The abandonment of the ego-mind is equivalent to the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly.
The ephemeral nature of the mind becomes clear when, in meditation, we try with titanic effort to observe our thoughts and sensations, instead of clinging to them as they carry our mind away. We can see then how weak our skills are to concentrate on a single object, how short-lived