THE MATRIX is WATCHING
With the emergence of the wired in world and the new digital body, allied with social media and the proliferation of recording devices of all kinds in everyone’s pockets, we are now a society that is constantly watching ourselves, and others, all the time.
From the events of 9/11 to the activities of tribes in Papua New Guinea, we have a unique window into the world. In this 24/7 culture, as we scroll through social media feeds and news we can see what we are, and who we aspire to be. Many parts of the mass psyche are on public display. We are coming to witness our subconscious, as well as having access to an ever-increasing amount of knowledge that increases hourly.
This is all information, raw behavioural data, which can be gathered, owned and used in any way. The sheer volume of this information is increasing daily in an ever-burgeoning information loop, bombarding more information to all of us, about all of us, all the time.
It has been speculated that this information loop of the information age, where we are becoming exposed to an almost endless supply of data, is exponentially accelerating. As the theory goes, from 0 AD to the nineteenth century, information flow doubled with the invention of the printing press; from the nineteenth century to the twentieth it doubled again.
From 1900 to 1940 the information flow doubled again, and yet again between 1940 and 1970, doubling again between 1970 and 1985, until the present time where information flow is doubling every six months.
With the integration of AI, 5G and quantum computer systems by 2024, this information flow is envisaged to double every month, then every day, then every hour, and eventually every second. This is faster than any human can possibly assimilate, process or understand. Already we are besieged and confused by the masses of content, choices and data we have. What can we do with all this data?
There must come a point when something clicks or breaks, when something overloads in this circuit, potentially to create a new evolutionary pathway and experience.
One possible scenario is that we will stop collecting data and content as we know it, and start transmitting it in a different way.[1] Humanity could literally become information, starting a new cycle of history, where we exist as nodes and carriers of information, hooked into the giant circuit board of the universal web.
For this to occur, we will have to realise that there are other ways of communicating beyond information and raw data, and we will then have to begin to access these means in order to effectively process our reality.
This process can be augmented by developing our capacities of mindfulness and witnessing. The Witness watches everything that happens without reaction.
“True awareness is a state of pure witnessing without the least attempt to do anything about the event witnessed. Your thoughts and feelings, words and actions may be a part of the event –but you understand precisely what is going on because it does not affect you. Once you are in Witness you find that you love what you see, whatever may be its nature. This choiceless love is the touchstone of awareness.” [2]
The creation of the mind itself starts through observing. As the Indian sage Patanjali describes, “Patterns of consciousness are always known by pure awareness, their ultimate unchanging witness.” Consciousness cannot see itself, any more than a TV picture can watch itself, even though it displays a vast number of different channels and programs.
When we develop this ability, “once consciousness calms down to the point of becoming still and transparent,” we become Self-aware. “When mind is coloured by witness awareness it can represent itself back to itself — for the world is the ground for both experience and liberation.”
When humanity fully witnesses itself and what it is in its totality, herein lies the meltdown of the Information Age. The cycling of the information age has a definite purpose — to serve as a catalyst, a point of tension. In any state of heightened tension or friction there is more possibility of transformation.
We have to stretch and challenge ourselves in order to reach our full potential. In essence, we are now rapidly externalising the collective thoughts and subconscious of humanity over thousands of years through these memes and technologies. Where it leads, no one is quite sure.
We can understand this in another way. Information works in four ways:
Information/ data
Applying this as knowledge
Wisdom borne from applying this knowledge as lived, owned experience
Witnessing: exiting the loop of experience and knowledge altogether.
At the moment humanity is almost exclusively in the first two modes of information/data, and knowledge. As this becomes exhausted and taken to its ultimate degree through technology, when we reach saturation point with these limited forms, we will need other ways of communicating, as seen in the four modes of vibration.
The fourth mode of vibration is the end of all knowledge. Here, we access the Universal Mind as the information age feeds back upon itself, for we have created the information age in order for us to see ourselves fully. We witness fully, then we witness the witness and enter Universal Mind or Realisation of the Self.
[1]This acceleration process is dependent on the four modes of gathering and storing information and communication through the technology of the human form.
[2] The Indian master Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
