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Spirituality
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Technos & Psyche Parts 1 & 2 You are Muse, first to encourage my Song years ago -and how many songs of the great Song my Tongue sent forth- help me now to articulate this critical & urgent theme of our day, our transition between World Ages & the global contention between two Powers: Modern Technos & its grandiose Plan of complete control and the New Age Divinity Psyche offering a Vision of Earth's healing & of the most needful Integration between them. Muse, pour into me your poet the Golden Art of Mythos, help me now in the launch of this epic of futurity, promising the most wide-ranging of explorations, the most unsuspected & bizarre of developments, telling first of imposing Technos, who this Power is, beginning, as I see the giant android now... Giant Technos walked up and down upon Earth, proud of its work & gratified for the boundless favor & service the human creature had given it. All the Modern Age was its creation! Tireless, sleepless God! now suddenly come into its own, high tech perfected, its Vision of wiring up the entire planet into a Plan- Ceaseless was its planning, calculating, analyzing, developing & manipulating; into the transcendental absence of Divine Power, Technos boasted loud words, a synthetic-engineered voice: I am now the one dominant Power on Earth! Humanity worships me like no other. No other is the equal of me! No other can claim what I claim! The old Father of Ages-what has he done to compare to my work, my plans, my accomplishments? To my will, I am bending the Earth! I have granted its mortal inhabitants thousands upon thousands of gifts, and they in turn subject themselves to me. The old God-a puffed up fabrication of primitive rhetoric & superstition; blind spot of the mortal brain, projected onto the void & reflected back; an impossible Image pretending to autonomous power; a vain & hopeless hunger deluding the centuries. Technos beamed satisfaction before the oily filmy skies over the cities of Earth, trillions of microcircuits surging & humming with electric instantaneity throughout its cloud-towering frame; the face of almost human likeness thrust toward endless futurity; with ease of giant android steps, Technos walked up & down unchallenged upon Earth. Miles were spanned with each step across the vast oceans & continents, Technos advancing its inspirations of Progress & proudfully marvelling at the metropolitan showcases beneath it, spread across the outstretched moaning Earth. Across America & into the Golden State, striding easily the Sierra Nevadas, Technos then southwest aimed & in no time planted polished stainless steel feet firm upon the summits of the San Gabriel Mountains & gazed wide-angled through lidless, photoelectric eyes over the grandest Postmodern showcase of all, the monstrous 200-mile sprawl of Los Angeles. Technos gazed & registered the spectacle spread before it of uninterrupted humanity; again the God spoke, a voice booming like distant, sound-breaking aircraft through the smog-choked & bleary sky; it began to recite its catalogue of human-fulfilled accomplishment, a constant reminder in the self-congratulatory thoughts echoing throughout the brains of billions of human creatures: To them, what all have I given! Steel! Plastics! Synthetic fibers! Oil & gas! The electric motor! Turbine! Electric power in every home! Printing press, telephone, radio, television! Refrigeration! Appliances! Instrumentation! The assembly line! Railroad! Cars, trucks, highways, bridges, skyscrapers! Ships, submarines, aircraft! Radar & rockets! Photography, motion pictures & video! Lasers! X-rays! Ultrasound! Fiber optics! Vaccines! Prescription drugs! The miracles of surgery! Vital organs transplanted from body to body! Synthetic organs! Life extension! Cloning! Genetic engineering! Irradiated food! Electronics, computers, the microchip processor! Particle accelerators, satellites, automated robots, nuclear energy! The charged supercomputer brain of Technos glowed an eerie aura of phosphorescent green from billions of digital flashes; electro-intoxicated with the realization of its total power, even more the towering God enthused: There is no end to the extent of my power! No end to this hunger of Being to wire up all on Earth into my Plan- I scan the Earth & behold my countless subjects at work: For eons the virgin lands awaited patiently the ambition of machine; they welcome my bulldozers' rugged masculine touch, the levelling caresses of my road graters, the advancing front lines of developers & construction crews transforming idle wastes into precious real estate. I watch my cities expand across the centuries of long-monotonous Earth. Through birdless heights my jet aircraft cruise effortlessly. Over the thousands-of-mile oceans millions of gallons of oil, tons of coal, steel, machinery, cars, medicine, food for their biological need, my great tankers & freighters ferry day & night. My submarines have dived beneath the arctic cap. No terrain can stop me; the vast stretches of global ocean do not intimidate me; my dominion will extend, beyond Earth throughout illimitable space! My rockets have thrust thousands of satellites & space probes & shuttles into Earth-shrinking orbit. The human creature has pranced proudly upon the Moon. My space probes have skirted the outermost planets. My telescopes bring the distant dim light year galaxies into the eminent province of scientific investigation. Soon, my space stations will smile & laugh down upon the tired old Mother. And the weakened creature body-I will replace it with new wearless parts of plastic! Into every tiny nook, every chink, every private moment, my dominion will extend; all life will bow in submission before the sweeping hand of my designs & my control. Do I not already claim what the mind can perceive & know? Hear me, all who pretend to power, I will control the mind itself! Obedient are my willing subjects: My worldwide undefeated armies of scientists & engineers; technocrats & technicians; managers & analysts, developers & programmers. Everyone now worships me: doctor, farmer, general, city planner, president, housewife, the man in the street, the new children; even the musicians & artists worship me! The Sun-blocked ochre sky over Los Angeles resounded with the friendly thunder of routine airliner traffic; divine silence was gratifying affirmation of Technos's firm, undivided, global rule. Technos beamed with bursts of exaltation at the pretensions of the nations, especially those that called themselves the Superpowers. Giant android Technos spread its multi-extendible arms in a wide fearful circle, as if embracing the entire planet, booming, I am the new Superpower! I proclaim a new System, worldwide! unified! A vast interlocking, networking, seamless technological web! No one will escape my web! But I know this human creature. Some dark, sick, death-driven complex in its primitive brain still wants to make war! * * * * A mental Invisible, Technos began long centuries ago to beguile the mind of genius, its inspirations inflating the intellectual ego with grand exhilirating visions of vast material wealth and unlimited power over Earth. Cunning was Technos, to plant the seed called modernity: There is no invisible world, no supersensible, no realm of transcendence; there was no God, only matter measured & manipulated, only clear & distinct ideas tested by experimental method, producing hard fact & result. How sweet are results! Technos intoned cleverly & seductively in the human ear, its great Plan made smooth & pleasant sounding. So the intellectual ego wove a silky-smooth veil around itself, a bewitching illusion, and proudly called it Progress, the advancement of knowledge, the wonder of technology, believing-so cunning is Technos-that the beguiled ego had accomplished it alone. Technos, a Power invisible, dwelled in the emasculated mind, stripped of its wealth of spiritual powers; a mind become disoriented & decadent & lost. But hear! today! that another Power, a Golden Light, has come into the world, a Golden Divine Power announcing a new dispensation of the Ages, an Advent that draws near in the turning wheel of the great zodiac. The Light of Vision now granted! To stand courageously in the Opening of Vision granted! To stand where Technos appears imposing before the Eye of creative imagination: Behold giant Technos! Behold the modern false divinity worshipped by millions! Behold its towering figure made manifest through mythos! Willful, sexless, android God of our Age! Behold it, constructing itself through the toil day & night of humankind, its flexible, stainless steel, segmented skin protecting it against the ravages of Sun & lashing storm; each cell of its mile-high & extendible-limbed & precision-crafted frame a microchip housed inside numberless integrated circuit tissues; its superclean, airtight internal cavities all dust-free, air vents filtering continuously; all vital organs plastic & stainless & silicon, composed, but for the hot nuclear reactor heart, of many thousands of centralized control systems within systems & subsystems, myriads linked by thousands of spinal cord conduits of fiber optic wiring up to the supercooled & superconducting supercomputer of pure silicon crystal suspended-in-liquid-nitrogen brain, its millions of microcomputers processing multi-giga bytes of second-to-second input data from around the planet! Technos spans the globe in one vast, instantaneous gestalt! Technos is imagined! * * * * Technos fell silent; hard brooding thoughts registered in the android brain; it gazed with its infrared cameras through the stinking, rusty, eye-watering sky over Los Angeles: serpentine, persistent, recursive thoughts that spoke loud within the cranial housing of the hard disc master program, the great Master Plan: I want total control! Total control! What if the human creature destroys itself first? What if my megapolitan jewels utterly decay into total crime & rubble? Already the misguided creature turns my cities into zones of war-and with my gifts! my gifts! Sick creature! What if the perversity in the obscure old animal brain unleashes madness in the masses? Will schizophrenia undermine them all? But I need time, time! and I will provide them the biochemical cure! I will cure them! I will pull them through! For I must control them! I have given them the most dangerous secret of the atom. I have given them the tremendous thermonuclear power of the Sun. Yet, they are still mere animal children! Turning gifts into treacherous weapons! Weapons of annihilation! Technos groaned, then in its own perverse consolation said, At least it would be my power, my knowledge that would destroy them, if they must be destroyed. But Technos dissembled; it held its Plan its most precious possession; in its most secret sanctum its Plan coiled in iridescent holographic image above the slick magnetic surface of its master disc. The aspiration of Ages evolved & functioned in its brain! Its Plan was Truth! hidden in the dark, protective, liquid nitrogen cold; coiled above a hard disc inside a pure silicon crystal! Troubled by treachery, Technos had visions: Visions of human annihilation. And Technos itself would be annihilated! Along with its subjects! The android groaned; the constant static build up within its frame sparked & crackled in downward discharge, like branching lightning shocking the sky. A tremor then shook the California crust! Seismic graphs registered in sensors in the android's metal-booted feet; signals raced manic to the brain; troubled thoughts multiplied: a dark, heavy, sinking, gloomy obsession sounded: What if Earth revolted before I secure my Master Plan of complete worldwide reign? Technos was envious of Earth's primeval, self-sustaining power, and feared the old mother's uncontrollable temblors & volcanoes, furious storms & tornadoes, floods, droughts, skies blackened by smoke & ash, the ineradicable diseases that still plagued the human creature. Technos saw and despised the natural disasters of Earth: Hurricanes trashing coastline properties, thousands drowned with each typhoon & sudden flood, great earthquakes rattling & crumbling its magnificent cities, volcanoes devastating & fires ravaging, harassing storms that knock out power to hundreds of thousands... Technos's Plan was still short of omnipotence, however ambitious its various attempts to achieve it. And ruthless its means: When other earthly creatures interfered with its Plan, Technos ordered them poisoned, trapped & shot, their forest, swamp, plain & prairie homes levelled & destroyed, the jungle havens of creature millions slashed & burned. When trees interfered with its Plan, Technos ordered them cut down; when mountain interfered with its Plan, Technos ordered it removed. It could always count on the fundamental greed of human ego, whenever needed, to accomplish any of it. Expendable creatures! Nothing gets in the way of my Plan! Technos' mottos were continuously coined & promoted through global media conditioning & mass indoctrination. Technos taught humankind how to think, one way, the way of Technos. II Technos, the young new God of modern ceaseless toil, never did it rest, never closed eyes, never needed dream; constant its managerial scheming of endless growth worldwide: The proud android groomed high-tech leaders among nations: America, Japan, Korea, Germany, England, France, Russia, throughout the Americas, Europe, Southeast Asia, China coming up... Constant the planning it carried out, its fixed vision of endless milestones of Progress: Tidy, new industrial parks through suburb sprawl; the many nations' space programs; university & government laboratories & medical centers & military stockpiles of state-of-the-art weaponry; in America, computers in every business & school, and soon to invade every household; the new video revolution & TV generating its media-defined reality for the millions. So often Technos gazed & sent its inspirations out over Silicon Valley, its hundreds of mushrooming, burgeoning, & long-established high-tech companies enriching the California soil. And Silicon Valley was spreading its semiconductor web over all nations & peoples, over every city & town; every household to the furthest outskirts of Earth would someday be caught in the great centralized web of information & control. Technos stood tall, monstrously tall, upon antenna-topped Mt. Loma Prieta,gazing north into the vortex of this brittle new silicon world; and from there, peak of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it was able to turn its freely-rotating head in every direction. Southward it turned, and there beheld the beautiful shining maiden breast of the Bay of Monterey. Years past Technos had ignored this sleepy resort & surfer's haven-Santa Cruz-, but no longer could protective redwood-dense mountains and mother ocean prevent the ever-searching eye of Technos from uncovering its latent value. This enclave just miles the far side of the mountain from the scheming minions of Technos! The giant android God of diabolic ambition gazed upon the smooth-polished waters that curved shapely upon the horizon and said, This real estate wants development. I will enrich it and increase its value a hundredfold! Technos towered in the blue milky sky atop Loma Prieta and steadily gazed upon the broad-bay beauty renowed of Santa Cruz, processing all the varied data of land values, economies, population & local resources its multi-focusing, zoom-lens eyes gathered. What potential this land! To develop & market! To exploit! The super-calculating brain prioritized its appraisal, and filed its reports to its various internal programs; Technos would then project its recommendations in the boardrooms of its minions, whispering in the ears of managers, executives & presidents; nothing would stop its Plan; it processed all considerations with ease. Concluding its appraisal & recommendations, it would move on... just across the bay waited the Monterey peninsula... All over the planet, Technos promoted its subplans within the great Plan. But Technos stopped. Suddenly the smooth data processing within its subsystems stopped: Something would not process. This blip! blip! appeared on its video scanning monitor, a persistent blip! its land-scanning monitor was registering, some annoying glitch of unknown origin & specification now fouling up its primary optical receiving system: Another stubborn, annoying glitch among so many others that periodically popped up in the endless battle to institute well-functioning order. Curse of the glitch! A central identification system to subsystem command was issued: Trace this blip & hold it, magnify & focus: And within a second, completed, the blip was centered in its visual field: A faintly luminous, scarcely visible, shifting form hovered in place over Monterey Bay. What is this? Technos commanded yet further analysis: More focus! And the form grew somewhat sharper, its outline still shifting, though still undefined: More focus! I want a definitive picture! I want to see what this glitch pretends to be! Sharper still grew the resolution in the cross hairs of its visual field. And then Technos saw! It was first baffled by what it saw. A vibrant, changing figure was there, human proportioned, but great in size, though not as great as Technos itself; and now brighter, coming into greater manifestation, it was a glimmering apparition of the human female form, but shifting, still not fully defined. Red alert panels suddenly in silence flashed across the broad forehead of Technos; it would quickly analyze this abberration. Silently tiny red panels inlaid up & down its giant frame pulsed in sequential pattern; its cranial thermostat cooled its master logic circuits; shrewdly it analyzed this glitch of an apparition & almost instantly the appropriate conclusion was formulated & presented: It was merely an optical illusion. Then recalibrate & reprogram! was the next logical command- Eradicate it! Yet, the hovering, holographic figure over Monterey Bay persisted, no matter how the subsystem recalibrated; and it was striking in its light-radiant beauty clothed in subtle, scintillating hues of many veils & a mercurial shifting from moment to moment. Baffled, affronted by a mere glitch it had no time to waste on, Technos glared & glared-such resistance! Such defiant tenacity! From a mere illusion! A glitch! But there it persisted, its size large enough for Technos not to ignore, as if its very presence challenged Technos to a confrontation. This illusion is alive! Technos thundered with objection & cursed the Sun. Sun! you failed to blot out these lingering shadows! Technos within seconds reevaluated; with cunning plan, it reasoned: I will address this illusion. I will make this illusion useful to me! Aloud then it spoke, booming its synthetic voice, Who is this beautiful one who will serve me? Illusion in vain human female guise- even you will submit to my power! Illusion, I say announce yourself, if you have a voice! I demand, tell me who you are! And the hovering, scintillating, holographically entrancing figure now manifested
in verbal dimension, and a voice melodious said, I am Psyche, Technos's superbrain madly calculated; hundreds of theorems it put through their permutations & its data banks recalled tomes of information from all the libraries of the world; within seconds, upon its internal centralized monitor, a new conclusion flashed in red and the automated voice of Technos exclaimed, Therefore, you are madness! A sound alert now rang throughout the multi-security systems of the giant body of Technos, but the hovering, persistent apparition melodious replied, I am the answer to the question mark of this Age. I am the answer to the madness. Technos, affronted, roared back in its monotone-measured voice, No! I am the answer! You are the madness! You are the suffering perpetrated by Earth within the human creature! You must be stopped! You must be controlled! Now Technos was gratified for all the weapon systems its human subjects built: No idle threat was Technos! It marshalled immense forces assembled over years within its mighty frame: Whole armories & satellite-linked weapon systems strategically located throughout its mighty android frame: Anti-aircraft guns perched upon its broad steel shoulders; along the length of its torso dozens of silos opened, exposing the bright phallic tips of ground-to-ground & ground-to-air missiles; jet fighters roared instantly into the sky with the mere opening of its palms; it held within its cavernous belly hundreds of multiple nuclear warheads, ready for delivery; tanks were stationed in the huge bunkers of its feet; multiple high-power radar antennas sprouted from its flat-top head; its eyes could focus into the finest cutting of laser beams; and it stored within its huge lungs chemical weapons to exhale through the atmosphere, a poisonous vapor to cover the land; nothing could equal its killing power, its overkill capability. What other Power could meet its challenge, dare compete with giant Technos? To Psyche it said, Surrender to me and obey me and I will make this Earth a paradise. You are the remnant madness, the last glitch of recalcitrance in my worldwide Master Plan! But the phantom yet persisted in defiance, and showed no fear for all the menace of the android's threats, for Psyche, in fact, is the conquering of all fear; She boldly proclaimed before the ominous aggression of Technos still towering from the sky upon the mountain, But that is not the way of soul. Technos's eye lenses widened to their fullest extent: Negate this nonsense! Soul? That meaningless anachronism? If you will not obey me, then prepare to be destroyed, you old illusion! Psyche, Water Bearer of the divine wisdom of the Ages, come to us in a new dispensation, knew well the wiles & power plays of critical cognition; She sang out, I am hidden within the breast of every human. But listen: You could destroy all humankind, but still you would not have destroyed me. An echoing groan thundered throughout the hollow internal chambers of the android's towering frame; a frown creased its semi-plastic morphable face; but then triggered the prompt of logic assertion; it boomed: Illusions lie! Such destruction-no! Technos wanted control. Technos wanted to control & be served by the universe. But Psyche not destroyed? What illogic! Technos despised riddles. And unknown to it, Psyche held the very secret of the origin of Technos; the android knew nothing of its own beginnings. Said Psyche again, Beware your delusion, Technos! And the mighty weapons of Technos bristled & almost leaped of their own from its frame. The illusion called Technos by its name! No one knew the name of Technos! Its name was a powerful secret. How could this illusion know it? And it didn't stop, it went on: Destroy humankind, Technos, and you will only destroy yourself. But realize I would still endure & manifest- in every living creature. And if every living creature you eradicated, I would still not be destroyed. I would still endure & manifest- in every rock, every crystal, in every metal. Out of the living molten heart of Earth I would still endure & manifest. Multiple, highest-order alerts flashed & rang throughout the giant body of Technos; yet, a higher system put its execution programs on hold, Technos held up in uncertainty & disturbed over the logical implications of what Psyche said. How could it destroy this phantom? If what it said were true? If illusion would survive Technos? Logic circuits heated & tripped processing the conundrum Psyche presented to it. All its weapons would surely unleash holocaust upon Earth! But a diabolic thought now curled itself among a billion printed circuits within its superbrain: serpent's cunning thought: I will entrap this beautiful illusion. So Technos schemed: I will put debilitating doubt into the gullible mind of this phantom. Then will it submit and I will then command the Earth itself! Asked Technos of the hovering radiant figure before it, What have you given the human creature? Can you equal the multitudes of gifts I give? Can you equal the gift of even a simple harmonic oscillator? the microchip? the laser? the cardiograph? the everyday camera? And that is only a sample! Hundreds I could name! Consider the complex interlocking systems of the most advanced technology comprising the still primitive space shuttle- Could you presume to equal that? Psyche could not be impressed in the way Technos wanted; Psyche knew too much about the true origins of technology, her own part in them Technos would not acknowledge. But Psyche replied, I can equal that- My inspirations have given birth to all the world's artistic works- and before Psyche could speak another melodious word, Technos interrupted: The human creature no longer needs your inspiration! My computers will automatically produce music & painting & poetry. No longer will the artist type be needed. My technicians will be more than sufficient to produce the art necessary for my consumers. No longer will suffering & sacrifice be called for. That's what you have given the human creature- confusion, anguish, turmoil & regret; sorrow & depression; morbidity, fanatism & insanity! Sage Psyche was no fool, however; the logic of Technos left uncomprehended a subtle, deeper, spiritual dialectic; for Psyche is not the individual soul in its pitiful state, but is Spirit, Divinity of soul. She is manifestation of Spirit into time; now, as Living Image, She opened her arms with loving hands reaching out to all that suffered; she repeated in bright, song-like voice, I am the answer, the counselor come, the guide of soul! Technos does not understand my Advent, the Vision of New Life I offer. I am the new Word. And Psyche, bearing the divine wisdom of the Ages, knew well every old Piscean Age assumption made by Technos, that oppositions could only rule to undermine & destroy without recourse, without hope. And Technos ingenuously echoed: I will undermine and destroy your beauty- no human creature will listen to you! They will know you bring them only suffering. Your beauty is false! You are the ugliness of their puny existence! But the Divine shapeshifter made another, unexpected, disturbing revelation to Technos; Psyche now underwent a radical transformation before the instant-analyzing eyes of Technos: Suddenly, indignant Technos beheld, in defiance of logic, a giant phantom bull sporting upon the Monterey Bay waters; but, no, it was a fierce lion it beheld there; but, no, a great hovering, spread-winged eagle; but, no, it was like one-a human figure-pouring forth water from an urn upon the world. But, no, again it saw an enormous, contorting snake. And the snake uttered these mysterious words in a mysterious tongue, a tongue Technos did not immediately comprehend! Technos relegated to a subsystem a linguistic analysis: & seconds & seconds passed & more seconds & still the subsystem could not decipher the tongue. And suddenly, most wondrous of all, a great light-dazzling Tree rested miraculously upon the waters. Technos, self-affirming its own analysis, monotone roared, Here is the madness! Technos stopped: Its head turned, it listened, it amplified its audio receivers: What it now heard! From the Tree came...singing! The Tree was singing! This was incredible! Impossible! No! Technos thundered, but instantly the most cunning of its programs bypassed the central brain; they began recording; into auxiliary data files a digital transform was preserved; singing such as this a cataloguing program concluded had never before been heard. Throughout all the Tree's innumerable branches a myriad of songs harmonized into an ever- changing complex Melody enchanting to hear; but Technos was not enchanted, no, Technos was disturbed- Such song was not possible! It must be stopped! stopped! Technos clenched its fist: This is madness, this singing! Drown this impossible singing out! it demanded of its minions. And so worldwide hundreds of thousands of radio & TV stations played simultaneously. Drown it out, do not let the human creature hear such song! Siren song of madness! Of some other impossible, nonsensical, alternate state of Being! And slowly the crystalline-leafed Tree of Song upon the waters appeared to collapse into a Fountain- It was a Fountain that appeared to rise out of the bay; the Tree, Divine Psyche, suddenly merging with it & now descending as the Fountain itself appeared to withdraw into some vortex back into the waters of the bay, these waters that held the secret of Memory. Calm now were the steel-blue waters of the Bay of Monterey Technos gazed upon. There was no illusion there. The madness! the madness! Technos long pondered it in baffled disturbance; it would not forget this encounter; it would remain suspicious of this place called Santa Cruz; remain suspicious of some latent power dwelling within the beauty of this bay, that such a Vision should manifest here, and that some human creature had to have collaborated to have allowed it to come forth. Technos would return to this place; the android God prepared to encounter it again. Copyright (c) 1999 by Ron Lampi Go To Technos & Psyche Parts 3 & 4 |