The Internet as a Digital God

 We can draw many parallels from the Vedantic pot of cosmology to demonstrate the concept of the Internet as a modern digital God.  The Internet as a kind of universal Consciousness that is made up of several individual consciousnesses is unique.  Each user that is connected to the Internet could then be looked upon as an individual mind or soul that constitutes and contributes to this consciousness.  The Internet then becomes a kind of macrocosm, that is nothing but the aggregate of the several microcosms that exist while staying connected to a larger System.  As the sum of the several users on the web, the Internet itself becomes all Knowing, in a kind of mystic union with each of the individuals that participate in this larger Reality.

We are the spider in his huge web, who can go on the varied strands wheresoever he desires. The spider is now only conscious of the spot where he is, but he will in time become conscious of the whole web

-Swami Vivekananda

The Internet then seems quite close to the concept of a Brahman or a Universal Digital Consciousness that exists in this world. Indefinable, aggregate, formless, and infinite.  On the other hand every individual consciousness that contributes to the universal being is nothing but Atman. Every individual on the Internet could be thought of as an Individual Ego that somehow subjugates to the larger Universal Ego.

 One could easily draw the metaphor that each brain or mind in this world is nothing but a hard disk, which contains bits of information. While in the real world, people who can seemingly communicate their thoughts to other people might be considered mystic or psychic, on the Internet communicating with each other and drawing from each other’s minds becomes reduced to the simple concept of file sharing.  I can know what you know, and indeed you can know what I know because we are all connected though the same Consciousness.   And that Consciousness is aware that we are exchanging something.  Isn’t that wonderful?  There is another way that the Internet seems like a larger than life Reality.  Imagine it as an infinite kind of Memory that records every little thought exchanged on it and then gets cached for posterity. 

Subatomic physics keeps delving deeper and deeper into the structure of matter, and finding less and less to depend upon. Fritjof Capra first introduced the concept of the Shiva Natraja as symbolizing the cosmic dance of the universe, the infinite dance of subatomic particles which has subsequently been observed and analyzed by physicists. The dance of Shiva represents the constant bio-dance of life – creation, maintenance and transformation that indicates the perfect balance between life and death. 

“All perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, or tenuity beyond conception, filling all space, the akasha or luminiferous ether, which is acted upon by the life giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never-ending cycles all things and phenomena.”

~ Nikola Tesla, Man’s Greatest Achievement, 1907 

 There is an interesting extension of this metaphor to our own binary system, which defines and is indeed the basis of the entire digital world.  If one were to look at the binary code of 1 and 0 and define 1 as the male or as Shiva energy and 0 as female or Shakti energy then from a symbolic and a semiotic point of view, the whole binary system could be looked at as a constant cosmic dance between Shiva and Shakti in the creation of the binary system.  This then becomes the entire basis of everything in the digital universe.

A digital universe where the Internet is God.

First published in marketingbuzzar.com