“There are a thousand paths that have never yet been trodden…. Humanity and humanity’s earth are still unexhausted and undiscovered. Watch and listen, you solitaries! From the future come winds with a stealthy flapping of wings; and good tidings go out to delicate ears”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
It is clear today that the level of human/machine interaction is greater than at any time during recorded history, and that the emergence and expansion of the Internet and cellular telephone networks have linked people in ways that were difficult to conceive of just ten or twenty years ago. The ability to communicate with so many people virtually instantaneously, regardless of physical location, seems unprecedented. We find ourselves joined in an unimaginably vast web of mind-to-mind interconnections. I believe that the interlinking of people through technology has created new neural pathways for us. But what we do not realize is that technology is a means, not an end in itself.
In his Autobiography of A Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda describes a world of extraordinary supernatural feats, including routine examples of mind-over-matter. It may be hard for modern Westerners to believe his story, but we must consider that those events occurred in what was in many ways a pre-technological society in late 19th and early 20th century India. The yogis made use of the tools that were available to them–the techniques of metaphysics. Is a man reading another person’s thoughts or levitating really more remarkable than talking by cellular telephone to someone halfway across the world or cloning a human embryo?
What would happen if the Internet and global telephone networks suddenly went off-line, unplugging the Earth’s population from the vast ocean of digital interconnections? It is my belief that hundreds of millions of people would develop increased intuitive faculties and heightened perceptions, in many cases reaching the level of telepathy.
You can easily test this theory for yourself. Conduct a day-long technology fast (or perhaps two or three days or more) in which you avoid using telephones or computers. You can expect to experience heightened creativity and a deeper connection to the physical world around you. I am considering making this a regular practice for myself.
I am not suggesting we reject technology. It has played, and will continue to play, a very important role in awakening us to the possibilities of expanded consciousness, which I will write more about in future articles.
