NO.25 BIONIC SPIRITUALITY

Blog 25:    3^rd Feb. 2010

Bionic Spirituality

-          Laibl Wolf, Dean, Spiritgrow - The Josef Kryss Wholistic Centre, Australia

Man is becoming increasingly G-d-like. Artificial intelligence machines and bionic engineering point to our ingenuity. We are trying hard to mimic components of life itself.  Surgically rerouted nerves provide arms or legs to replace limbs blown away by road bombs. Modular prosthetic limbs are miracles to the victim of negligent driving. Electronics circumvent damaged light receptor cells providing sight to those injured in drunken bar brawls.  Motorized springs allow an artificial ankle to push off, simulating real leg movement for the player injured by foul play. It is not inconceivable that we will be engineering skin that senses temperature and touch for those burned by deliberately lit bushfires. 50% of our inventiveness is G-d-like.  The other 50% is the product of human frailty – poor choices, fear-drivenness, and ego centrism.

We are clever – even prophetic. Much science fiction of the past 70 years anticipated the world of today and even tomorrow. Where we seem to fail miserably is how to be wise with the external mechanical forms that we ‘create’. Will the merger of man and machine produce bionic warriors instead of healing the blind? Will the immensity of power latent in the micro energy fields of inner matter become agents of destruction? Will greed and power corrupt our cleverness producing pain in the place of wholeness?

In truth the gap between man-made bionic engineering and the perfection of divine wisdom remains infinite. We can mimic external elemental forms but cannot create even the smallest living microbe, let alone the ‘particle of wisdom’.

But we are potentially G-d-like in one very real way: we exercise choice. We can choose to master the limb to strike our fellow human in pugilistic ‘entertainment’ or to embrace the stranger. The same limb, the same intricate bionic ‘machine’, perfectly crafted by the divine craftsman, can kill or save.  We humans play with the toys of matter and have achieved noble success, but it is the arena of mastery and wisdom that defines our progress or regress.

We have colleges, universities, institutes of technology, all feverishly working towards discovering arrays of sophisticated gadgetry with patent potential, thereby lining the institutional coffers to cope with surging administrative and employment costs. But where are the higher halls of learning that equip our scientists, technologists, healers, participators in social mechanics, with the mastery of their bodies guided by the wisdom of their choices? We teach our children to read, write, add, and subtract – right through to the sophistication of quantum physics and Shakespeare sonnets. But where are the courses on how to harness the power of speech to create comfort zones and esteem, to manage body behavior to be congruent with a sensitive nature, to live consciously and compassionately in the moment of provocation – the other person’s weakness?

The pathway to mastery and wisdom holds the key to the future impact of our bionic adventures. The skills needed to exercise choice wisely require wisdom-masters and mastery-coaches. The tools of meditation, introspection, change-practices, positive thinking, and empathic postures - these are the real measure of society’s progress. If mechanics outstrips wisdom we are doomed. We are becoming increasingly powerful in manipulating the energies and matter of creation. But are our mechanical successes handicapped (if not rendered, ironically, self-destructive) by the foolishness of poor choice, absence of mastery and wisdom, and stricken though myopic fear and egocentrism.

All of us need to embark on ‘the road less travelled’ – self-understanding and self-mastery, which flow from wise and guided contemplative and practical meditation. A wise one with awareness once said:  we have discovered the enemy and the enemy is us. The ancients in Kabbalah taught: rather than destroy the enemy, transform him into a friend. To be a friend, know yourself – and practice change.

(Your comments are invited: Click on reception@spiritgrow.org and let me have the benefit of your insight) 

    Laibl’s web site: www.laiblwolf.com                                                                                                                                                                      - Laibl’s blog site: www.laiblwolf.com/blog/                                                                                                      – Spiritgrow – The Josef Kryss Wholistic Center, Australia site    www.SpiritgrowJosefKryssCenter.org