Using Technology for Spiritual Progress

Using Technology for Spiritual Progress

There is an anecdote about Shri. Ramkrishna, the great saint of India. A disciple came to him and told him that after 20 years of meditation and penance he had mastered the art of walking on water. To this Ramkrishna replied "Fool, you have wasted your life. I can do the same thing by giving a paisa to the boatman!" Shri. Ramkrishna a great spiritual person, who himself possessed immense yogic powers, understood the value of technology for easing the drudgery of life and hence his rebuke.

Even in Patanjali Yoga Darshan, 55 out of 195 Sutras talk about powers that can be obtained through Yoga. Basically they are about how a Yogi can make his body powerful enough to overcome the impediments of nature, something that we do with technology. These powers are supposed to help him in the path of spiritual growth.

Technology helps humans by making their life easy so that they can focus on larger and more important issues. Surely humans have also used technology for killing other humans and in other non-productive uses. Similarly the powers obtained by Yogis in ancient times have also been used to kill. There are a large number of such examples in ancient texts like Mahabharata etc. Yet the power of technology today helps us to be connected via World Wide Web, to fly at will round the world and generally to get most of the things required for creature comforts.

In ancient times it was a tradition in most cultures to renounce worldly comforts and immerse oneself in meditation for spiritual upliftment. Only a very few great souls succeeded in doing it. Thus the world produced spiritualists like Buddha, Christ, Mahaveer, Shankaracharya etc. but with technology and Internet it may be possible to produce thousands of Buddhas, Christs etc. Recent scientific evidence suggests that human beings are wired to think about spiritual matters once their basic needs are met. I feel that technology allows mankind to take care of its basic needs so that a large number of people can focus on higher and spiritual matters. It also allows very rapid information dissemination, allows debate and hence facilitates the understanding of higher thought.

In coming years technology will allow us to be interconnected so widely and deeply that the international boundaries and differences will melt away. Even today because of the Internet we are getting more and more connected and can feel almost instantaneously, the emotions both good and bad about the unfolding events. It also helps us react to them both individually and collectively and this process may help in evolving a more democratic system world over. Thus a great thought or an invention can be rapidly transmitted, debated, tested and assimilated much faster than previously.

Technological progress also unravels a lot of hidden areas and shows how nature performs its miracles. In doing this, technology helps us understand the power and greatness of nature. For example humans felt that they had invented and developed fiber optics. However, scientists have found that the root systems of plants are excellent optical fibbers – something that has existed in nature for millions of years. This knowledge could only come once we had enough technology for creating fibber optics, lasers etc. Similarly a new science of "copy the nature", is developing where we are finding that nature, which has billions of years of headstart, has far better answers than we have produced and hence dawning of realization that our technological progress will take a quantum leap by copying nature's designs.

Thus as we progress ahead in the technological area, we will discover the great laws of nature and ultimately God. For God is nothing else but this marvelous Universe which follows its own scientific laws. Spirituality is nothing else but understanding ourselves and the laws of universe through the tools of science and technology.

In coming years mankind might follow the maxim "first conquer the earth and then space". Naturally there are many attempts by advanced nations to go into space but these attempts are like the few spiritual leaders of past. Mankind as a whole can make a large-scale attempt at space exploration, only after achieving great technological progress. Thus I feel that when mankind starts the intergalactic travel it will become a very great technological civilization which will also be spiritually evolved. There will always be a section of the race, which will try to use the technology for achieving their ulterior motives, and for harmful purposes. But on the whole the technological progress will follow the bell curve, where the majority of mankind will use the technology for its betterment.

There are quite a lot of people who talk of technology as something of a hindrance in the path to spirituality. This is mostly true of fundamentalist groups all over the world. I think they understand neither technology nor spirituality. Technological progress is a natural evolutionary process for mankind and even if we wish it away it will go on. Similar is the case with spiritual progress. Only those societies that are technologically advanced will also become spiritually advanced. Therefore a necessary condition for large-scale spiritual progress is to have technological progress.

We feel and enjoy this world though the sense organs of our bodies. Getting a human body is the most important gift to the soul. Almost all technological interventions are to enhance this sense-world interaction. In coming years technology will provide us tools to create a much more hospitable planet in which majority of mankind will be able to live comfortably. It will help us repair our bodies and produce designer drugs which will make us live longer with less disease. In fact the whole basis of Yoga according to Patanjali is to make the human body fit for spiritual experience. Our future medicines will allow us to do it. This increased level of physical comfort will allow us a quantum jump in our quest for spirituality.

Nevertheless the next biggest challenge for mankind is to enable two billion people, who live in conditions of utter poverty, become part of this technological revolution. They cannot think of spiritual matters, since their basic needs are still unmet. It is not an easy task to achieve but I feel that mankind has enough ingenuity and resources to do this. With better international cooperation in technological fields it will be possible to provide very efficient and economically viable technologies to developing world. How many years it will take we do not know but I feel optimistic that it will eventually be done.

Today far more people than ever before believe in life after death, in spiritual matters and in extrasensory perception. Popular poll after poll has shown this trend all over the world. I believe this has only come about because of the ability of human beings, through technological progress, to research these areas. For example we can now map the brain with the latest tools of MRI and can even "see" what the brain is doing in a heightened state of spiritual experience. Similarly we can peer through extremely sophisticated telescopes to see the unfolding of the great drama of galaxy formation. It fills us with awe and amazement. Thus we are creating the building blocks of the laws of spirituality by poking deeper and deeper into nature with technological tools.

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