maya - n., Hinduism. The transitory, manifold appearance of the sensible world, which obscures the undifferentiated spiritual reality from which it originates. [Sanskrit , maya.]
There comes a time in every eon where people have a choice.
There were at least two ancient cultures that chose spiritual advancement over material ease. These were the Incas of South America and the Tibetans of Asia. At some point in unrecorded time, there was a deliberate choice not to use the wheel for mechanical purposes.
The edifice known as Machu Picchu still stands at one of the highest elevations of the Andes. We do not know exactly what it is, except that it must have been some kind of grand spiritual community. Its buildings are made of stone brought from much lower elevations, and its location has no natural source of water. Yet the Incas built it without the use of the wheel. The edifice itself is a spiritual statement that still speaks to us today--and maybe that was its purpose.
The ancient Tibetans made the same choice. Their religion, a combination of shamanism and Buddhism, is filled with the language of the wheel: the Wheel of Dharma, vehicle of enlightenment, and prayer wheel. Yet there was not a single wheeled vehicle or machine in all of Tibet until the Chinese invaded in 1958.
To our jaded eyes, the lack of the wheel in these cultures, and a simplicity of daily life bordering on the childlike, appears uncivilized, even antediluvian. We call such cultures underdeveloped. But these were not primitive cultures.
Many ancient cultures not only rejected materialism, they seemed to understand the eventual consequences of choosing the mechanical path. In prophecy and scripture, including the Bible, we find the warnings. Warnings of such events as the degradation of the environment, causing natural catastrophe. Warnings of wars and rumors of war that threaten the entire planet. Warnings of human beings so alienated from their own humanity that they become automatons, or "anti-christs."
Another feature of the antediluvian cultures is the status of what, in the industrial age, we call fools, madmen, or "the mentally ill." In the ancient cultures, there was no such thing as mental illness. In Tibet, right up until the middle of this century, mental derangement was considered the easiest of all problems to cure. Remedies included herbal medicine, environmental arrangements, and spiritual practice. Indeed, in Tibet as in the other ancient cultures, what we call "psychosis" was often considered either a sign of spiritual promise or a phase of spiritual transformation.
People who experienced extreme altered states--including prophecies, visions, and nightmares--were not considered pariahs in their community. Rather, they were recognized as persons of spiritual talent. They were valued for this ability, and were given teachings and trainings by the wisest of the elders, and great care and respect from their community. They were called shamans, medicine men, wizards, prophets, seers, soothsayers, tulkus, oracles, mystics, healers, messiahs, and incas.
We do not have such people in our culture. Our prophets have been dead for over 2000 years, and our soothsayers are persuaded to accept consensual reality through massive doses of psychiatric drugs.
Now at last we are beginning to recognize that our planet is in very deep trouble. Our wonderful and beloved automobiles have enabled the Haves to move away from the primary community to the suburbs, where they are alienated not only from the Have Nots, but also from each other. Meanwhile, exhaust fumes from their cars are eating away our atmosphere. Meanwhile, the Have Nots are getting crammed tighter and tighter into their deteriorating cities, and their rage is boiling over.
The healing sciences have become so advanced that even medicine has become mechanized. We are led to believe that once there is a cure for cancer and heart disease and other diseases, then there will no longer be any cause for death. Meanwhile, all the lives saved by mechanized medicine have produced more lives, proliferating across the planet. Already there are not enough jobs for all of these people. Soon there will not even be room for the people. We have created a "science" that worships life, but disregards human beings.
The first nightmare gridlock occurred in the movie Nashville. Cars and people stretched for miles, unable to move. That was fiction. Now New York and other large cities experience gridlock for real, on a regular basis. Now grocery stores are a thing of the past, with shoppers expected to travel long distances (in their cars, of course) to reach mega-supermarkets which are already crammed with people waiting in line behind other people they do not know.
All of this brings us to the Information Superhighway. Technical advances have made it possible to bring a virtually unlimited number of telephone or cable signals into the home. We are promised that with a flick of a button (either TV or computer) a vast array of information will be at our disposal. This will be in the form of files, databases, bulletin boards, and lists; electronic shops, movies, game shows, and classrooms. The Information Superhighway promises that we can alleviate some of the wheeled travel that is currently clogging the asphalt highways. Everyone can just stay at home and watch movies, order groceries, do paperwork, and learn facts. The specter is that the world will become peopled by invisible entities, total couch potatoes whose lives are spent at home in vicarious entertainment and virtual work.
During my first manic episode 30 years ago, I experienced--as many people do--an altered mental state that enabled me to see the world as it is, described in the dictionary as "undifferentiated spiritual reality." I also experienced numerous prophetic visions, so many that they overwhelmed me. In the years since, I have seen all of these prophecies come true, from the civil rights movement to the rise of rock music to the renaissance of Native American culture.
My last vision was of the end of the world. As I interpreted it, the end was not one of physical destruction and horror. It was one of transformation. The world as we perceive it--a world of cars and stores and automatons--was going to end. The new world would be the same Earth, and yet changed. I saw this change coming about through a new spiritual path. In many religious traditions, one is expected to make a spiritual journey in order to reach enlightenment. It is a lonely journey, traveled by a single individual on a narrow way. But the path that I saw was so wide that it could be called a road, even a highway. It was big enough to accommodate all people everywhere.
But it was not an Information Superhighway, and it had nothing to do with data. I called it Broadway, because it was available to everyone, and because it was traveled by entertainment. It could hold ("-tain") the self in a state of suspension or between-ness ("enter-"). And it is this state of entertainment that allows one to recognize "undifferentiated reality." It was also interactive--a very important point--because anyone can communicate with all the other people on this path, and travel it with them.
This is the real promise of Cyberspace. It is the promise of true communication, communication without preconceptions or emotional obstructions. It is, to be trite, "people talking to people." One can make friends, and give and receive human contact, more effectively than any other way except physical contact, and sometimes more effectively than that. In a few weeks I have "talked" with people in Washington State, California, Florida, England, and Bosnia. I am constantly amazed at the way the essence of a person comes through the wires, even when I have no idea what they look like. This is all accomplished without the wheel, for electronic devices have no moving parts.
The summit of Tibetan teachings is the practice known as Kalachakra. It is a teaching from the Shambhala tradition, a teaching about enlightened society. The goal of the practice is to escape the vicious cycle of pain and conflict that have characterized human society since beginningless time. Kalachakra means "Wheel of Time." It represents the various cycles of human progress, which up until now have resulted in endless repetitions of pain and suffering. At the end of each eon, each cycle, humanity starts again, still caught in the Wheel. Only by creating an enlightened world community based upon goodness can the Wheel of Time be stopped, and the wheel be left behind.
The new electronic media open up to us at least two paths. One is the path of spoon-fed data and material comfort, and the other is the new path of human interaction. The first path creates a class of experts who manage the data that is fed to others. It creates another class of Haves and Have Nots. It is reinventing the wheel.
The second path creates a medium -- Cyberspace -- that is open and free, an arena for interaction, and for entertainment in the spiritual sense. It is something that we can all Have. Can this be Broadway?
It is the people's choice.
