Religion with its magic and miracle and Science with its technology and progress has not brought us closer to who we are as beings of many worlds but, rather, has distanced us severely from ourselves. Religion ruled and failed, since it was more interested in extending itself than whatever truth it may have possessed and had lost over time through its own corruption and dogma to be imposed upon the faithful. Science and its technology arose as a force in the period of the Enlightenment, bringing the antithesis of religious belief and spirituality, and the truth of the physical world, as if that were all. It had the effect of mechanizing the spirit so that we might see ourselves as organic, fleshy, machines.
It would seem at this point that humans have so identified themselves as such that they believe they will progress quite well as cyborgs, ultimately with all the necessary apps implanted in their brains at birth, and all the necessary tools to keep their bodies intact and healthy and alive for at least hundreds of years. It seems that humans at this point would opt for an existence free of "difficult personal choices," now seen in terms of obsolete "existential dilemmas." One's life will be pleasantly planned out for him or her. In a sense it already is and has been since the beginning: one is born into a social, cultural, familial process that is already churning through its endless cycles. However, now there is still or most recently a sense of personal choice, which is real for those who come to make it as such, and not real for those who only make wishes or who are literally trapped in their lives. Many are either literally or psychological already quite imprisoned, if not enslaved, in the reality they have fashioned for themselves and/or has been fashioned for them by culture, society, and family. We are born into mindsets and their respective realities on all of those levels. And this must first be realized if we are to be able to create in any way something different for ourselves.
Both religion and technology have and do strongly form and continuously inform us. For many, religion as already come and dominated but has lost its hold to technology, which now controls us and with which we now identify as literally an integral part of our own being. We allow it to act for us and to even think for us. Technology is now the body-snatcher; it is the alien that now possesses us. We will not think to question it or ourselves regarding it. We give up our own particular existences in order that we might be able to think like it, becoming part and parcel of its matrix, the web itself. We learn to ably think it and speak it. We are willing to give up what has become the trifle of the human soul in exchange for the endless benefits of being part of the One Mind. It's a very religious and technological attainment for us, but spirit and matter are not joined; spirit becomes as matter and is brought down to the darkness of matter. Spirit is mechanized and put to use like a robot.
One may ask, "So why is this such a problem? So what if I become an efficient thinking, feeling machine?" The problem is that this is not what you are. You are not a machine. You must make existential choices. You have a soul, as it were. There is something within you that is far greater than the machine-world, than the physical world. If you cannot attain contact with that vital element of yourself, you will find yourself very lost and confused when you finally leave the body. Even if there is no afterlife at all and there is not soul to go anywhere, then whatever energy of awareness or consciousness that was you may then be added the the "pool" of all energy. If you have allowed yourself to become identified with only the physical, the mechanical, what will happen to the collective level of energy? Will you be one more monkey-wrench thrown into it? But that's a moot point; nobody particularly thinks about that, or cares.
If one is so identified with themselves as other-than-human, and other-than-spirit, what happens when one is plunged into a world that is not human but of the spirit? If one has no references, just what does one do? What do you do? Or, put differently, what if you suddenly discover that there is no you, but all you know is you? I think it is wiser to prepare for this perhaps ultimate reality. If you end when life ends and there is simply no more consciousness, that's fine and well. But, you must ask, "What if I am thrust into a totally different reality, one that I had every opportunity to seek out, but, given the conveniences of technology (or religion, for that matter), didn't? What happens then?"
The main feature in Dante's Divine Comedy is, to my mind, that those who are suffering grievously in Hell are totally unaware that they are in Hell; they believe they are still alives and living their lives from day to day. That is most interesting. To not even know but to live hellish lives over and over in eternity. Now, of course, that's just a story, but I find it to be philosophically and psychologically quite credible, if not inevitable. For this reason in itself, we are destined to inquire within ourselves to find that which is beyond ourself and our world.
It would seem at this point that humans have so identified themselves as such that they believe they will progress quite well as cyborgs, ultimately with all the necessary apps implanted in their brains at birth, and all the necessary tools to keep their bodies intact and healthy and alive for at least hundreds of years. It seems that humans at this point would opt for an existence free of "difficult personal choices," now seen in terms of obsolete "existential dilemmas." One's life will be pleasantly planned out for him or her. In a sense it already is and has been since the beginning: one is born into a social, cultural, familial process that is already churning through its endless cycles. However, now there is still or most recently a sense of personal choice, which is real for those who come to make it as such, and not real for those who only make wishes or who are literally trapped in their lives. Many are either literally or psychological already quite imprisoned, if not enslaved, in the reality they have fashioned for themselves and/or has been fashioned for them by culture, society, and family. We are born into mindsets and their respective realities on all of those levels. And this must first be realized if we are to be able to create in any way something different for ourselves.
Both religion and technology have and do strongly form and continuously inform us. For many, religion as already come and dominated but has lost its hold to technology, which now controls us and with which we now identify as literally an integral part of our own being. We allow it to act for us and to even think for us. Technology is now the body-snatcher; it is the alien that now possesses us. We will not think to question it or ourselves regarding it. We give up our own particular existences in order that we might be able to think like it, becoming part and parcel of its matrix, the web itself. We learn to ably think it and speak it. We are willing to give up what has become the trifle of the human soul in exchange for the endless benefits of being part of the One Mind. It's a very religious and technological attainment for us, but spirit and matter are not joined; spirit becomes as matter and is brought down to the darkness of matter. Spirit is mechanized and put to use like a robot.
One may ask, "So why is this such a problem? So what if I become an efficient thinking, feeling machine?" The problem is that this is not what you are. You are not a machine. You must make existential choices. You have a soul, as it were. There is something within you that is far greater than the machine-world, than the physical world. If you cannot attain contact with that vital element of yourself, you will find yourself very lost and confused when you finally leave the body. Even if there is no afterlife at all and there is not soul to go anywhere, then whatever energy of awareness or consciousness that was you may then be added the the "pool" of all energy. If you have allowed yourself to become identified with only the physical, the mechanical, what will happen to the collective level of energy? Will you be one more monkey-wrench thrown into it? But that's a moot point; nobody particularly thinks about that, or cares.
If one is so identified with themselves as other-than-human, and other-than-spirit, what happens when one is plunged into a world that is not human but of the spirit? If one has no references, just what does one do? What do you do? Or, put differently, what if you suddenly discover that there is no you, but all you know is you? I think it is wiser to prepare for this perhaps ultimate reality. If you end when life ends and there is simply no more consciousness, that's fine and well. But, you must ask, "What if I am thrust into a totally different reality, one that I had every opportunity to seek out, but, given the conveniences of technology (or religion, for that matter), didn't? What happens then?"
The main feature in Dante's Divine Comedy is, to my mind, that those who are suffering grievously in Hell are totally unaware that they are in Hell; they believe they are still alives and living their lives from day to day. That is most interesting. To not even know but to live hellish lives over and over in eternity. Now, of course, that's just a story, but I find it to be philosophically and psychologically quite credible, if not inevitable. For this reason in itself, we are destined to inquire within ourselves to find that which is beyond ourself and our world.
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