I would really like the majority of humanity to think the same way.: a man sat with a smartphone in his hands and put it aside, closing his eyes and just silently allowing his consciousness to gather. Or going out on the balcony to look at the horizon and think about something eternal.
But as life shows, the more developed a person’s intellect is, the less he wants to hear that there are other, higher planes of consciousness above the mental plane.
But in order to get there, you need to dive inside, and our devices and systems do the exact opposite, depriving us of awareness, because where a person’s attention is, there is their consciousness and energy.
I read somewhere that our civilization is already the seventh attempt to lead a person from animal evolution, through the evolution of the mind to the evolution of the spiritual. And every time at the stage when the development of intelligence reached its peak, everything ended in collapse.
We are also at this stage now, and it would be a shame if our civilization did not live up to expectations and forced higher powers to start all over again if they realized that there was no hope because humanity was “stuck in its mind” and was trying its best to destroy itself.
As for the convenience and comfort that technology brings, it’s hard to argue with that. Yes, everything is done faster and with less effort, it would seem that there is nothing wrong with that. But if earlier a student had to think about a problem to solve it, now it’s enough to take a smartphone and find a ready answer in a few minutes.
So what is it, convenience or degradation?
Or take this schoolboy’s dad. After spending a day at his desk, he returned home with neck and back pain, but instead of asking his wife for a massage, he puts an electric massager around his neck that looks more like a horse yoke, plugs into an outlet and sits in his smartphone while the device engages his muscles and joints.
Is it convenient? Of course! Our grandparents could not even dream of such a thing. But where is the physical contact and lively exchange of energy in this? Where are the sensory sensations that allow the biofield to recover and consciousness to be “here and now”?
During the day, his attention was focused on his computer, and in the evening he was replaced by a smartphone and a TV. Gradually, this leads to the fact that a person becomes uncomfortable alone with himself. If the electricity is turned off for some reason, such a person begins to experience discomfort and irritation after a couple of hours, without having access to the usual methods of stimulation.
If I invite such a person to take the opportunity to meditate or just stay in silence, I’m afraid that his non-working TV will end up on my head.
I am not an opponent of progress and I do not urge everyone to throw their computers and smartphones out the window and make a bonfire in the living room. But I see and feel that the more humanity becomes dependent on devices and technologies, the less it wonders about the meaning and purpose of its stay on earth, and this is sad.
I want to end by quoting the preface of a book that opened my eyes to myself and the world around me.
I must warn you that behind the words in this book there is an energy that descends in a gentle downward flow. Therefore, do not be surprised if you feel pressure in your head or a tickle in your throat, it will pass when the energy drops lower.
Satprem
“Sri Aurobindo or The Journey of Consciousness”
The preface.
"The age of adventures is over. Even if we reach the seventh galaxy, we will go there helmeted and mechanized, and it will not change a thing for us; we will find ourselves exactly as we are now: helpless children in the face of death, living beings who are not too sure how they live, why they are alive, or where they are going. On the earth, as we know, the times of Cortez and Pizarro are over; one and the same pervasive Mechanism stifles us: the trap is closing inexorably. But, as always, it turns out that our bleakest adversities are also our most promising opportunities, and that the dark passage is only a passage leading to a greater light. Hence, with our backs against the wall, we are facing the last territory left for us to explore, the ultimate adventure: ourselves.
Indeed, there are plenty of simple and obvious signs. This decade’s [the 60’s] most important phenomenon is not the trip to the moon, but the “trips” on drugs, the student restlessness throughout the world, and the great hippie migration. But where could they possibly go? There is no more room on the teeming beaches, no more room on the crowded roads, no more room in the ever-expanding anthills of our cities. We have to find a way out elsewhere.
But there are many kinds of “elsewheres.” Those of drugs are uncertain and fraught with danger, and above all they depend upon an outer agent; an experience ought to be possible at will, anywhere, at the grocery store as well as in the solitude of one’s room – otherwise it is not an experience but an anomaly or an enslavement. Those of psychoanalysis are limited, for the moment, to the dimly lit caves of the “unconscious,” and most importantly, they lack the agency of consciousness, through which a person can be in full control, instead of being an impotent witness or a sickly patient. Those of religion may be more enlightened, but they too depend upon a god or a dogma; for the most part they confine us in one type of experience, for it is just as possible to be a prisoner of other worlds as it is of this one – in fact, even more so. Finally, the value of an experience is measured by its capacity to transform life; otherwise, it is simply an empty dream or an hallucination.
Sri Aurobindo leads us to a twofold discovery, which we so urgently need if we want to find an intelligible meaning to the suffocating chaos we live in, as well as a key for transforming our world. By following him step by step in his prodigious exploration, we are led to the most important discovery of all times, to the threshold of the Great Secret that is to change the face of this world, namely, that consciousness is power. Hypnotized as we are by the “inescapable” scientific conditions of the present world, we have come to believe that our hope lies in an ever greater proliferation of machines, which will see better than we do, hear better than we do, calculate better than we do, heal better than we do – and finally, perhaps, live better than we do. Indeed, we must first realize that we can do better than our machines, and that the enormous Mechanism that is suffocating us is liable to collapse as quickly as it came into being, provided we are willing to seize on the true power and go down into our own hearts, as methodical, rigorous, and clearheaded explorers.
Then we may discover that our splendid twentieth century is still the Stone Age of psychology, that, in spite of all our science, we have not yet entered the true science of living, the real mastery of the world and of ourselves, and that there lie before us horizons of perfection, harmony and beauty, compared to which our most superb scientific discoveries are like the roughcasts of an apprentice."