Sunday, December 17, 2006

The world wide web is an outering of the collective mind

The age of sacrificial smoke? (responses to Debashish's questions concerning technology) by Rich on Sat 16 Dec 2006 11:42 AM PST Permanent Link I don’t think that the substance of Deb's questions concerning technology were ever really addressed in our first go round. I will restate these questions below:
"Today, the virtual universalization of satellite technology, telecommunications and intercontinental travel have effectively non-localized our experience of the world, we can almost be "present" at any point on the earth at any time. Is this not Omnipresence? The proliferation of electronic archives and incredible information density of storage systems are making all the history of textual and multimedia expression and discursivity of the earth available to the access of all human beings at the push of a button. Is this not Omniscience? And Technology today makes it possible to give life and take life universally - we are on the verge of being able to overcome every natural deterrent to food production and to regenerate human organs and we can blow out the world at the push of a button. Is this not Omnipotence? So where did we go wrong or did we? And is there anything else that Sri Aurobindo can give us here - or is this indeed also the Aurobindonian mythos, the terrestrialization and universalization of Supermind as the Vedic Cow of Human Plenty?"
I’ll attempt a bit of collage to re-juxtapose Deb initial question with Deshpande’s response referencing the “true samjana” using The Future Poetry as a hermeneutic vehicle. First let's begin with imagination where Sri Aurobindo writes about "the poet:"
To arrive at that word is the whole endeavour of poetic style. The modern distinction is that the poet appeals to the imagination and not to the intellect. But there are many kinds of imagination; the objective imagination which visualises strongly the outward aspects of life and things; the subjective imagination which visualises strongly the mental and emotional impressions that have the power to start in the mind; the imagination which deals in the play of mental fictions and to which we give the name of poetic fancy; the aesthetic imagination which delights in the beauty of words and images for their own sake and sees no farther. All these have their place in poetry, but they only give the poet his materials, they are only the first instruments in the creation of poetic style. The essential poetic imagination does not stop short with even the most subtle reproductions of things external or internal, with the richest or delicatest play of fancy or with the most beautiful colouring of word or image. It is creative, not of either the actual or the fictitious, but of the more and the most real; it sees the spiritual truth of things,—of this truth too there are many gradations,—which may take either the actual or the ideal for its starting-point... (FP p7/8)
Now lets unpack this passage a bit: To arrive at that word is the whole endeavour of poetic style. The modern distinction is that the poet appeals to the imagination and not to the intellect. The modern distinction which appeals to imagination one guesses is the turn of poetic vision in the early 20th century toward the imagistic; a trend which at least in English language poetry has, along with the proliferation of images, intensified over the past century. (Whether Sri Aurobindo anticipated that this trend would intensify and continue after he wrote the The Future Poetry is open to question.)

The modern distinction is that the poet appeals to the imagination and not to the intellect. But there are many kinds of imagination; the objective imagination which visualises strongly the outward aspects of life and things; the subjective imagination which visualises strongly the mental and emotional impressions that have the power to start in the mind.

I also take some liberty to postulate that applied "objective imagination" fashions technology, while the "subjective imagination" gives one the first inklings of a more sublime sense mind and an empathic contact with the things of the world, and if one follows this thread one would eventually access an occult range of phenomenology.

The essential poetic imagination does not stop short with even the most subtle reproductions of things external or internal, with the richest or delicatest play of fancy or with the most beautiful colouring of word or image. It is creative, not of either the actual or the fictitious, but of the more and the most real; it sees the spiritual truth of things,—of this truth too there are many gradations,—which may take either the actual or the ideal for its starting-point...

The true poetic imagination does not rely on form or feeling but rather on vision which grasps the graduations (“differance”) of Truth The vision is an ordering principle in itself Sri Aurobino tells us that “the Kavi ( the poet seer) who saw the truth found in a subtle truth hearing the inspired vision of his word” (FP p27)

I read this to mean that the truth orders reality by the very expression of its truth.

Now of course the interior and exterior visions achieved through becoming attuned to “true samjnana” and by wielding technology are qualitatively very different orders of Seeing, and although they cannot be equated with one another, it is however quite striking to acknowledge that humanity has collectively managed to exteriorize (or reflect) at least certain aspects of what is interiorized in the individual as the psychic vision or “true samjnana” And here I am using Deb’s example below:

"Today, the virtual universalization of satellite technology, telecommunications and intercontinental travel have effectively non-localized our experience of the world, we can almost be "present" at any point on the earth at any time. Is this not Omnipresence? The proliferation of electronic archives and incredible information density of storage systems are making all the history of textual and multimedia expression and discursivity of the earth available to the access of all human beings at the push of a button. Is this not Omniscience? And Technology today makes it possible to give life and take life universally - we are on the verge of being able to overcome every natural deterrent to food production and to regenerate human organs and we can blow out the world at the push of a button. Is this not Omnipotence?"

In my reading of the Future Poetry I would hazard to guess that Sri Aurobindo would most likely consider the imagistic turn in poetry over the last century to be an exteriorization of the inner vibrancy of true poetic expression, which looses some of its potency in its translation or outering. Because even if the image may serve a stronger intellectual vision it does not speak with the same authentic living vision of the Kavi but annunciates the vision of the lesser prose deities.

It may even make such a free or rich use of images as to suggest an outward approximation to the manner of poetry; but it employs them decoratively, as ornaments, alamkara, or for their effective value in giving a stronger intellectual vision of the thing or the thought it describes or defines; it does not use the image for that profounder and more living vision for which the poet is always seeking. And always it has its eye on its chief hearer and judge, the intelligence, and calls in other powers only as important aids to capture his suffrage. Reason and taste, two powers of the intelligence, are rightly the supreme gods of the prose stylist, while to the poet they are only minor deities. (FP p14)

I interpret this to mean that the exteriorization of the inner revelation of the word steps us down a notch from the original vibratory intensity of its “living vision”, it removes us from its mantric potency.

In fact, the exteriorization of images does define our current age, in which a person alive today views as many images in a day as one did in a lifetime when Sri Aurobindo was a young man. Actually our sensory experiences are increasingly becoming exteriorized. If we play with Marshall McLuhan's notion that technological advances serve to turn the human consciousness inside out and contrast this with the perspective of integral yoga on the future evolution of consciousness please consider:

• Cloths are an outering of the skin
• The wheel the outering of the foot
• Print an outering of the word
• Electronic media an outering of the collective central nervous system

(and If I can extend this to the current day:)

• The world wide web is an outering of the collective mind
• Cloning an outering of the individual DNA

It appears with each step forward we exteriorize a more subtle truth or physical element of our being. I think one can discern this from what has transpired since Sri Aurbindo's conversation with Pavitra, as posted by Vladimir…

Now with the tapping of nuclear energy well underway by the scientific enterprise, I believe one could say that Science has now some real knowledge of solar fire. And moreover, as Ervin Lazlo (chairman of the Club of Budapest) posits in his latest book, Science and the Akashic Field, the Akasha could be scientifically explained in terms of quantum gravity.

So although science is still an instrument of the grosser physical planes it continues to explore ever subtler worlds and through its technological instrumentation is increasingly able to exteriorize their respective environments. Moreover, Sri Aurobindo admits in The Life Divine that one day science may even parse the hidden reality of consciousness force underlying nature:

It is not an impossibility that "man should aid nature consciously also in his own spiritual and physical evolution and transformation." [my emphasis] The urge to do it is already there and partly effective though still incompletely understood and accepted by the surface mentality; but one day it may understand go deeper within itself and discover the means, the secret energy, the intended operation of Consciousness-Force within which is the hidden reality we call Nature. ( LD 1949 p843/ 844)

In short he seems to be saying here that one day science may catch up to the great occult knowledge of past ages, revealing their mysteries through its instrumentation. But of course this outering of the hidden forces of nature solves nothing for the yogi or for one cultivating “true samjana”, for the yogi the challenge is to outer the psychic being (e.g bring it to the front of our being). And for this purpose the inner technologies of choice are tapasaya, aspiration, sincerity, silence, surrender.

So if the objective imagination is the inspiration for technology and one of the uses of technology is to turn us collectively inside out, what does this reversal of senses do to the cultivation of our interiority of our individual experiences of samjnana? Does this reversal of consciousness follow some law of inverse proportion whereas to the extent one presences in our collective awareness the other disappears?

In The Future Poetry Sri Aurobindo extols the mantric voice for expressing the true revelatory power of “the word.” In this sense the word aligns itself with the creative force in nature or the god; it is Logos. But what happens, as Kathrine Hayles suggests, when Code replaces Logos as the chief vehicle of (global) expression.

More then ninety nine percent of all encoded messages circling round the planet are now that of machines addressing other machines, the other one percent is the encrypted communication of human subjects addressing one another, and even this human to human address occurs – as per this communication – more and more through machinic mediation.

Our use of code to communicate with technology has become almost completely ubiquitous, beyond a point of no return, sensory experience mediated increasingly through chemistry and electricity slowly is stepping up organism to the vibratory level of electro-magnetic fields. Like a frog in a vat of increasingly hot water code works us over imperceptibly.

I’ll end this first part of this paper by re-phrasing Deb’s question and RYD response into a new question: In an age when ever subtler physical and even occult truths are becoming increasingly exteriorized, what is the effect upon our ability to cultivate the experiences of true samjnana through the development of our inner psychic vision?

And lets be very clear Sri Aurbindo considered the Epoch in which one lives as an essential constituent of one individual consciousness. At the very least the age in which one lives determines ones powers of expression, and even success in calling down the Grace.

Therefore it is not sufficient for poetry to attain high intensities of word and rhythm; it must have, to fill them, an answering intensity of vision and always new and more and more uplifted or inward ranges of experience. And this does not depend only on the individual power of vision of the poet, but on the mind of his age and country, its level of thought and experience, the adequacy of its symbols, the depth of its spiritual attainment. A lesser poet in a greater age may give us occasionally things which exceed in this kind the work of less favoured immortals. (FP p34)

He also seems to suggest this in The Hour of God: There are moments when the Spirit moves among men and the breath of the Lord is abroad upon the waters of our being; there are others when it retires and men are left to act in the strength or the weakness of their own egoism. The first are the periods when even a little effort produces great results and changes destiny; the second are spaces of time when much labour goes to the making of a little result. (HG)

But then he adds.
It is true that the latter may prepare the former, may be the little smoke of sacrifice going up to heaven which calls down the rain of God's bounty.

So is this age of the “Regime of Computation” (Hayles 2006), in which the digital mantra of the code supersedes the ordering power of the word (Logos), in which our senses and subtle physical truths are rapidly becoming exteriorized, the epoch of the sacrificial smoke? Is the current era a preparation for the descent of the supramental or a precursor to the post-human era of an “ubermensch” far differing in kind than we imagine (from our mentalized extrapolations of Sri Aurobindo’s vision) to be born in the hour of the unexpected?
by rjon on Sat 16 Dec 2006 02:19 PM PST Profile Permanent Link Bravo Rich! Such an intriguing analysis. — I'll say more when time permits. ~ ron

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