I have been searching for something since I was a child. What I was searching for, I didn't know, but I was determined to find it. I suspect I’m not alone in this life-long quest. This abiding need to find the answer is shared by people around the world, some aware of it while others not.
Science fiction has long played with the notion that a futuristic society will have figured out the necessary technology to enable the transfer of a person's mind to a storage device where that person can live forever. Can a person's mind be uploaded into a machine? Is it even plausible to consider such an idea? How would one do it? Can it be done? I'm here to tell you that, yes, it can be done. You can indeed transfer the identity of a person into a computer. In this series of articles I will explain how to do it. Exit From Eden. What The Hell Does That Mean?Explaining in modern language the wisdom of spiritual teachers across the ages. What makes a human being different from the other living creatures on this planet? If an alien spaceship hovered above the earth and studied all mammals, there would be nothing obvious about the human anatomy to differentiate it from other animals. We (mammals) have a head, limbs, two eyes, internal organs, respiratory system, a digestive system, we sleep, etc What the aliens would quickly notice though is that the human species is operating with a different set of rules. The operating system of the human mind is very different from the rest of the animal kingdom. If the aliens were able to probe our minds, which if they can come to earth in a spaceship they surely have the technology to read our minds, then they would discover the ... What The Hell Does That Mean?Explaining in modern language the wisdom of spiritual teachers across the ages.
To "Know Thyself". This quote originates from the Ancient Greeks and is attributed to Socrates. So what the hell does it mean? To "know yourself" refers to knowing your true self, i.e. your essential nature, a.k.a who you truly are. It means you have passed the ego stage of life (what I call Phase I) and have progress into inner understanding. Graduating from external materialistic knowledge to internal knowing (Phase II). The Golden Buddha is currently housed in a dedicated building at the Wat Traimit Temple in Bangkok. It's a large statue of about 10 feet tall (3 meters), weighing 5.5 tonnes and made of gold. It was built around the 13th-14th centuries and is estimated to be worth about $250 million dollars. However, what's remarkable about this statue is its history. Around 1767, the statue was completely covered with a thick layer of plaster to prevent it from being stolen from an invading army. The camouflage worked and the real nature of the Golden Buddha remained hidden from the invaders. However, it remained hidden for so long that the statue's essential nature was forgotten by everyone for almost 200 years. In 1954, while attempting to move the statue to a different location, the ropes broke and the statue fell on the ground. Part of the plaster broke away, showing the gold surface underneath. All the plaster was then removed to reveal the Golden Buddha. I love this story because it so closely resembles the process of building and dismantling our ego. You Are The Golden Buddha With An Outer CrustYou are the Golden Buddha with an outer crust. We all are. Our true essential nature is hidden by a thick layer of ego. The ego is not who you really are, it's a facade, a false-self. When you were born, this outer crust was not present. A baby lives as a true-self but construction of the ego starts very early as the baby grows into a young child. The child begins to accumulate ideas, personas, likes, dislikes, emotions, judgments, false fears, etc. This accumulation is analogous to adding layer upon layer of plaster. When the child turns around 10 years old, his essential nature is completely hidden and forgotten. Throughout the next 30 years, the ego becomes thicker and encrusted with more and more beliefs. This is the first phase of life, the accumulation of the outer crust that is the ego. Each person accumulates different ideas, personas, likes, dislikes, emotions, judgments, false fears... but realize that this is just the outer crust. There is nothing of this ego that resembles what is underneath. The fundamental question of "who am I?" is directly related to the encrusted ego that is concealing who you really are. For many people, the second phase of life begins with the occurrence of a major life event like a divorce, death of a loved one, un-resolvable internal crisis, etc. This new phase of life is the opposite of the first one. Construction of the ego ends and a slow dismantling of the outer crust begins. After some time, the golden surface underneath the ego starts to show itself. You are the Golden Buddha covered in plaster. You are not the outer crust that is your ego, your essential nature is that of spirit. Ego hacking is the process of the second phase of life. “We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a physical experience.” - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin If you want to learn more about ego hacking and what it can do for you then please read Start Here. Science and spirituality are ultimately asking the same fundamental question. Who are we?
However they go about it in completely different ways. Science is about measuring while spirituality is about experiencing. Science uses tools to measure, spirituality uses the body and mind as the tools of experience. Science documents and catalogues in a way to transfer knowledge to future generations. With spirituality, each human being must experience it within one lifetime. Science and spirituality are two parallel lines that are ever so slowly converging and will eventually cross into one single line. This is already begun with science coming to the conclusion that consciousness, a term science has a very hard time to understand and conceptualize, seems to be interwoven into the fundamental fabric of the universe. This is something that spiritually knows well. With science, the answers are in the future with more experiments and more knowledge while spirituality has had the answers for thousands of years, but each person must do the hard work, very hard work, to find it within themselves. Science is a way to answer the question for the masses. Spirituality is an individual's journey for answers. Science will eventually come to understand "who we are" in an intellectual way but ultimately that means nothing because the answer to "who am I?" must be experienced to be known. Inherent in the question of "who am I?" is the intrinsic need for a single human to know. The difference between science and spirituality is analogous to the act of intellectually understanding versus experiencing a blueberry muffin. You can definitely understand a blueberry muffin extremely well by studying the list of ingredients, the cooking process, analyze the molecular components of the aroma, measure the moisture content, etc. However, to really know a blueberry muffin, you must eat one. There's no other way. That's the difference between science and spirituality. Science has a definite role in our world but don't make the mistake to rely on it for spiritual guidance and peace of mind. Even though you can read many books about science and spirituality, the only way to "know thyself" is to experience it. Science is knowledge and spirituality is experience. It just depends on the question you're looking to answer. |