A renowned British physicist, Professor Stephen Hawking, once said that advances in Science and Technology could lead to the end of the world.

His predictions for the nightmarish scenarios were based on human aggression combined with technological advances in nuclear weaponry.

A new factor has been added to this equation, information. Today, the natural world is being transformed not only by using matter and energy, but also by information, leading to a new explosion of productivity. In one way, virtualisation is the increased substitution of matter by information.

This substitution has profound consequences for the relations of humankind to nature, between humans and other humans, and between humans and machines. This new layer of information is becoming increasingly prominent as virtualization intensifies.

In the past, the credo of science, the industrial world, and materialism was simply "if I can’t touch it, it is not real”. Today, it is nearly reversed to the point where it could be said "if you can touch it, it’s not real.” Information has become more important, in political, economic, social, and philosophical terms, than material objects.

This alteration has affected leisure time. Many find watching nature documentaries on television more preferable than real walks in the woods.

This process has been intensified by new cyberspace media. For many, the Internet is not just a continuation of traditional mass media, but a new shift. The Internet, unlike other media, represents a new collective mental space.

Over the long term of human existence, our pre-historic ancestors existed principally in a natural environment. Civilized humanity occupied an invented architectural environment.

Our descendants may principally live in a digital environment, where they will spend a great deal of time, working and playing. If this digital revolution is altering civilization, it will also impact our metaphysical imagination, the basic building blocks of our experience.

Now, what are the reactions of spiritual schools of thought towards this digital revolution? If spirituality may be defined as the means through which mankind finds meaning in its relationship to the totality of the external world, one can then examine the most basic human activities and decipher their relationships to man’s place in the universe.

Hence, man’s technology, and especially the current cyberspatial phase, can be seen from one view as a ‘Luciferian’ God Project, an attempt to usurp ‘God’ and to liberate man from all limits imposed by Nature. Alternatively, technological advances can be viewed as the means to spark the evolution of mankind towards higher levels of collective consciousness.

Early mankind, in this perspective, was more developed spiritually than current civilization. It is argued that the first ruling classes were primarily spiritual and over time corrupted into the military and merchant classes.

Support for this spiritual loss is also based on an interpretation that many sacred texts argue for a gradual loss of consciousness over time. This continual loss of spirituality culminates in world destruction.

In fact, there clearly is a divorce between those who subscribe to a belief in an Absolute or Supreme Being, those who accept the existence of non-material realms and beings, and those in the rationalist or scientific camps.

Within the camp of the spiritualists, there are many great differences in terms of methodology and approaches. In very general terms, we can distinguish paths based on ‘the concepts of "belief” and "faith,” and those based on concrete experiences.

Metaphorically, one can safely say that technology perhaps started mythically when Adam ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. At that moment, mankind said "we can do it on our own and we want to understand the meaning of it all!

The very first tools enhanced our mastery over Nature rather than encouraged our harmony with it.

For spiritualists, there are two ways of approaching knowledge, one which will lead to holiness or wholeness, the other to a false, arrogant, and destructive mastery over nature.

The first approach is based on the idea that mankind is created in an image of God. By discovering our inner being, we discover our God-like aspects. Spiritual practice will, therefore, give us aspects of the powers of the divine.

On the other hand, it is said that technology is simply a crude substitute for spiritual powers.

Indeed, technology is a magic and its objects remains a puzzle that will be hard to unlock in regards to human experiences!

oscar_kimanuka@yahoo.co.uk