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Thursday, July 4, 2013

The Transcendent Singularity


The human design process will achieve a kind of infinite velocity,
everything becomes linked with everything else and matter becomes mind.
-    Erik Davis (Techgnosis, 1998)

Matter is derived from mind, not mind from matter.
– Tibetan Book of the Dead

We are accelerating inexorably into a crisis point in our evolution.  Our capitalist-industrial culture has poisoned the very earth that we depend for our survival in a search for short-term profits.  Global weather patterns are changing dramatically.  Political and financial systems are falling apart.  The future of the human race doesn’t look too good.  As much as we might try to deny it our world is changing from under our feet.  Impermanence is not an abstract concept these days but a daily reality.
At the same time our technological growth is increasing at an exponential rate.  Scientific discoveries, new ideas and inventions are happening constantly and reshaping our world in ways that our old traditions just can’t keep up with.  This is where the idea of the singularity comes in.  Futurists such as Ray Kurzweil predict that at some point in the very near future that we will have developed machines that are superior to us in intelligence.  Whether or not this is a good or bad thing is open to interpretation.  The question of whether or not a machine can be conscious, or self-aware, is disputable as well.
The singularity is the scientific equivalent of the apocalypse.  It is the end of humanity and the beginning of the “transhuman” era.  By definition we cannot predict what will happen at this point.  As Kurzwel predicts, “By the 2030s, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will predominate.”  The idea is that we will transcend our biology and merge with our machines.  This is really just a new techno version of our age-old impetus towards spiritual transcendence.  As Kurzwel eloquently explains:
“Evolution moves towards greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, and greater levels of subtle attributes such as love. In every monotheistic tradition God is likewise described as all of these qualities, only without limitation: infinite knowledge, infinite intelligence, infinite beauty, infinite creativity, infinite love, and so on. Of course, even the accelerating growth of evolution never achieves an infinite level, but as it explodes exponentially it certainly moves rapidly in that direction. So evolution moves inexorably towards this conception of God, although never quite reaching this ideal. We can regard, therefore, the freeing of our thinking from the severe limitations of its biological form to be an essentially spiritual undertaking.” (The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Penguin Books (September 26, 2006)
Some would argue that the singularity is not just imminent; it has arrived.  Certainly the explosion of technologies such as the internet, cell phones and tablets, world-wide social media etc. have created a world that would be unrecognizable to my grandparents who grew up in an age before automobiles of telephones.  In a very real sense we are already merging with our machines.  It is a love affair, a merging through “bhakti.”  This was evidenced this morning at Starbucks where I looked up from my Kindle to see a pretty young woman gazing raptly into the screen of her smart phone. 
It is evident in perhaps a more sinister way in meta-data surveillance, location tracking and the increasing ability of both business and government to follow our activities and habits.  We may feel outrage and complain all we want but this is part of our brave new world as well.  We all have to be savvy protectors of our “personal identities” as they are revealed through our electronic footprints.  In a sense, like with all love affairs, there is an undercurrent of battle to maintain our personal autonomy. 

Yogis (consistent practitioners of yoga, not cartoon bears) have sought and reportedly found a similar transcendence of the human condition through Samadhi.  Samadhi is a state of consciousness in which one recognizes that one is not body nor mind but pure awareness, pure being.  Yoga is an inner technology of the mind, brain and nervous system.  While information technology holds the promise of “uploading” our souls onto some kind of transcendent mainframe, yoga teaches that there is a deep aspect of ourselves which is already immortal and transcendent.  It is known as the Atman, or Self.  “The knowing Self,” states the Katha Upanishad, “is not born; It does not die. It has not sprung from anything; nothing has sprung from It. Birthless, eternal, everlasting, and ancient, It is not killed when the body is killed.” 
We “know” this inner self when the mind becomes quiet, when we detach ourselves from info-stream of the mind and senses.  According to the Yoga Sutras we are in a state of spiritual ignorance, or avidya, when we are identified with our personal identities.  The personal identity or ego is a temporary manifestation of that greater Self.  Ultimately it cannot be contained as “information.”  Instead it is the formless awareness that cognizes information.  The Self is separate from mind and body and so is separate from their technological extensions.  The yogi considers mind and body as instruments of the inner being.  So too our technologies are tools and toys for us as soul-beings.  The trick as always is to try to remember our true identity in the midst of chaos.
The transformation of our external and internal worlds of experience is a wild ride.  Hang onto your Self!

Here are some links to more information of the singularity concept: