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There exists a tradition that Jesus never laughed, but wept often. Historians, theologians, and others, have long debated this tradition. Currently, it seems that most do not accept this belief. It is argued that Jesus must have had a sense of humor as well as an enormous compassion for the immense suffering of the world, because he was human. This writer does believe this tradition. His belief is based on spiritual psychology. One of the main reasons we laugh is that unhealthy tension has been relieved. Unhealthy, internal tension arises from internal ambivalence, or insecurity. Laughter is then, an expression of internal healing by relieving unhealthy tension. There are even schools of thought that believe one can laugh one’s self into enlightenment. One resolves an ambivalence, or sees through an insecurity, and tension is relieved, and one laughs. Laughter relaxes one even more, and enables one to see through, or resolve, other insecurities and ambivalences, leading to more laughter, and so on until one is inwardly clear and one is enlightened. Enlightenment is not that easy, or there would be more enlightened individuals. Jesus was surely enlightened. During the three-year ministry of Christ-Jesus, Christ was the light of enlightenment. He had no insecurities or ambivalences. There was no unhealthy, internal tension to be relieved and, hence, no laughter.
Most of us, as aspirants, are nowhere near the attainment of Jesus. We sin and err, and are ignorant of many important things. Our inner dialog is often more argument than communion between the higher Self and the personal ego. We contradict our higher values, which leads to tensions, of which we are often unaware. We need to relax, see things clearly, and resolve them. The instructions for the retrospection exercise tell us to relax before beginning its performance. Laughter is a healthy way to begin to relax.
This writer tries to laugh every day. He usually finds plenty to laugh at in the absurdity of some of his notions and actions. However, sometimes self-awareness does not come easily. In those cases he seeks humor outside of himself to prime the pump of laughter. When he does so, he usually goes to YouTube on the internet. It is a rich source for things to laugh at. There are funny animal videos, old cartoons, classic comedy like the Marx Brothers, and comedians of all sorts. This writer is especially fond of wit that exposes one to the silliness of common misconceptions. For example, one wag says “anyplace is within walking distance if you have enough time” another, when he is shown a photo by a friend and told “this is a photo of me when I was younger” responds by saying “Dude!, every photo is a photo of you when you were younger.”
YouTube, which is owned by Google, derives income from advertisements. The more YouTube views there are, the more enticing it is to potential advertisers. Thus, YouTube does what it can to lure one into viewing more videos. It is called “click baiting.” One of the ways it does this is by suggesting other videos one might want to view, after the current video. Most of the suggestions are not random. They are based on what one has viewed previously. Every action takes on YouTube or Google is collected by Google to be studied to benefit Google. There are other entities, governmental and private, that also collect data on a scale almost beyond belief. All phone calls are recorded orscanned. It goes beyond that. Edward Snowden tells of sitting at his desk at the NSA, and turning on the camera on the computer of someone in Indonesia, who is under suspicion, and watching the man teaching his son things on the computer. There are immense storehouses of intimate data.
Data, by itself, is not valuable. If we see someone running towards us, that perception is data. To be valuable, data must be interpreted. We want to determine whether the runner is charging at us with malice, or if it is only a jogger. Data in large data warehouses is interpreted by Artificial Intelligence, AI.
Artificial Intelligence is distinguished from natural intelligence as found in humans and animals. AI is used to perform tasks normally performed by humans, but on a larger scale than humans, alone, are capable of. AI can be used in mechanical activities such as vacuuming one’s living space. Driving an automobile safely has not yet been accomplished satisfactorily. AI can be used to work out complex mathematical problems. Chess programs are now far stronger than human players, and AI can map out complex molecules in minutes, a task which would take months for humans. The more advanced uses for AI are for finding patterns in immense data sets, and learning them. Currently the patterns are interpreted according to algorithms designed by humans. Some AI programs are now capable of making decisions about new, unpreprogrammed patterns, and interpreting them according to past successes. One of the main goals of computer scientists is to teach AI to learn in the way humans learn. When that happens, the concern is, that AI will outstrip humans and take over. The current time line for that possibility is estimated to be around 2050. Many intelligent scientists are concerned about this possibility. The late Stephen Hawking, for one, voiced this concern. One wonders whether mystical aspirants would be wise to be concerned about our evolutionary future with AI.
AI already affects the personal liberty of many people. China leads the world in applied in AI. It has facial recognition data for every one of its approximately 1.4 billion citizens. If someone in China chooses to do something as trivial as jaywalking, that individual would likely be subject to public shaming or worse. Within seconds of the violation of the law, the person might look up and see his/her name and face on a large LED billboard as an offender of society. The government of China is on the verge of knowing the exact location of each of its citizens at any given moment. With whom any given citizen associates is also known. If an individual has a cell phone, the government can know what the individual has been talking about.
Ominous as this seems, mystics do not need to be overly concerned. Why? Because AI has no future. Having no future means that data, and its analysis, is always of the past, in the same way that every photo is a photo of one when one was younger. AI can find new patterns but those patterns are in data from the past. Only to the degree that we are bound by our habits, would we be subject to control byAI. In this respect, future scenari derived from AI, are like the failed scenari of most science fiction. This is because most science fiction, futures are exaggerated extrapolations of the present and past, which do not anticipate new things. The future is new. To not be victims of the past, whether by habit or by social control, we need to recognize what is new, and live by it. As one wit said it, “the stone age did not end for want of stones, it ended because it was superseded by a new outlook.” This means we need to live creative lives in large and small. The Lord who sat on the throne in the book of Revelation said “Behold, I make all things new.” Even the little things of daily life, can be looked at anew, and when we do that, life is is always new and wonderful. It is not meant by this, that we obsess about the minutiae of life. Rather, it means that we live in an attitude of anticipation and expectancy of new things, of intuitions which AI does not have. Even without consideration of AI, we need to do that anyway, as aspiring Christians: “For yourselves know perfectly the day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the night.” The goal of AI is to replicate in software how humans learn. Ultimately, this cannot be done successfully because we only know something its true by intuition. A mathematician, after completing the proof of a theorem, will say something like “we can see this is intuitively true.” The Truth Knower, the spirit, knows by intuition. One cannot put intuition into software or a machine. Perhaps in the Vulcan period, we may be able to bring self-conscious intuition into our creations, but that is a long way off, and we will be divine beings by then.
Most current thinking about AI is inverted. In inversion one sees things upside-down or backwards. This kind of inversion is a corollary of materialism, which is an inversion by thinking everything comes out of matter, rather than issuing from spirit. In materialistic, evolutionary thinking, consciousness is a product of cumulative, collective, material experience. Thus something as insightful as poetry, is the froth of biological grinding, in a blind evolution groping its way through matter. Moreover, according to materialism, improvement is adapting to material conditions accomplished through random mutations. According to Richard Dawkins, the current champion of materialistic evolution, purpose in evolution is a meaningless illusion, a superstition. With regard to AI and the future, this means something lesser can create something greater than itself. It is not difficult for spiritual aspirants to be caught in this illusion. It is easy to get caught, because we do get better. We do aspire to something beyond our current state, something more spiritual. The important truth is, that we were spiritual to begin with. We are passing through this complex, evolutionary creation to develop potential that was in us before the beginning. That purpose is also in the future. It is in the divine intent of the Universal Spirit, the Creator. There is even purpose in the potential that lies asleep in matter. An artist will often intuitively know what he/she wants to say, but cannot say it until it is clarified by interaction with the paints. In the interaction the potential of the painter is realized by realizing the potential of the colors in the paints. Evolutionary progress is a joint activity between spirit and matter, but spirit leads the way.
A counterfeiter produces a perfect $22 bill. He goes out into the hinterlands to find rubes to whom he hopes to pass his fakes. He enters a crossroads general store and gives one of the bills to the storekeeper and asks “do you have change for this?” The storekeeper looks at it and says “sure, do you want two elevens or three sixes and a four?” A counterfeit is only potentially valuable if there is an authentic original. The existence of something counterfeit, or illusionary, or pathological, argues for the existence of something genuine. A lie depends on truth for its existence. This is also true of tension. Much of the tension relieved in laughter is unhealthy. We have produced a chronic state of unhealthy tension, between the higher Self and the lower nature, that is sometimes called neurosis. We are healed when it is exposed and we can laugh in relief. When we seek to heal our souls, we want to be careful to not “throw out the baby with the bath water.” Some tension is necessary. Nay, some tension is divinely benign.
In the 1960s there was a facetious rumor that if one played certain Beatles recordings backwards, one would receive secret messages that led to rewards from the Beatles. This prompted one wit to ask “what do you get if you play country music backwards?” The answer was “you get your wife back, your job back, and you get out of jail.” The next question was “what do you get if you play New Age music backwards?” This time the answer was “New Age music.” Good music requires tension, which some New Age music does not have; it is only a collection of sonorous sounds. Tension is necessary for the construction and function of our physical bodies. Without tension they would cease to hold together and function properly. If one laughs too much, one relaxes too much and urinates involuntarily. True tension, and its relief, is necessary to all creative work, in order to be able to realize it. Without tension, it remains an idle fantasy. Even in the simplest creations there is a joy in realizing them. One can say the happy words “I did it!” Some believe this applies to the creation itself. There is an ancient Chinese belief that the primordial, creative word was a laugh, the ultimate consummatum est.
Have you laughed today?
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Contemporary Mystic Christianity |
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