#9 Practical Approach — Rajayoga

The Goal in Architecture PART.I Goal — 4.4 A Spiritual Practice — Sahaj Marg/Heartfulness

This is an additional article about spiritual practice.

The resulting culture of the 'industrial revolution', as experts in history call it, is ongoing since roughly the past 100 years. It includes the First and Second Machine Ages, (which is the term that Rayner Banham uses for our period), we have Modernism, and many call our time the Anthropocene due to the intensity of our influence on the planet. These are not new in essence and characteristic of our antecedents. The 'industrial revolution' marks the beginning of the end of about 600 years of materialist development. Rather than a beginning, we can say that it's the end functionality of a stage of humanity's development that has become profoundly dangerous and ruinous at scale.

With the radical transformation of human activity in the Machine Ages through material and power acquisition with technological culture and the massive increase in human population, (and the corresponding extinction of wildlife), it seems clear that new impulses for how we live in the world must come. The scientific and technological transformation now in place demands more and deeper change that will match the foundational value that the thinking that Descartes represents and the isolation of science from natural philosophy. It seems that not enough people grasp that we are heading for very big change, whether we guide or intend them or not. This coming change should not be to turn away in opposition, but to evolve forward in how we take responsibility for our place in the life of our planet and beyond. It is a call for understanding humanity’s role in the world.

I picture a beach with thousands of children puttering in the sand beside each other, as children below a certain age tend to play . Allegorically, some are puttering with DNA, some are making new chemicals, some are stockpiling wealth, some are developing AI, etc. Like children we are all experimenting with our hands and minds. Unlike children, some are trying to stop the tide from coming in (e.g. CO2 sequestration, geo–engineering, protests, Greenpeace, for example), others are trying to kill each other more efficiently and effectively (i.e. automated warfare), some are trying to take over more beaches (Russia vs Ukraine/NATO, the Moon and Mars). A few are trying to get the kids to come in off the beach and some are entrapping each other in slavery. In short, in my opinion, we are not working together at an effective level while the sum of human activity has an immense and growing affect.

My own view corresponds with those who feel that we are not responding adequately to needed adjustment. The need for change is facilitated by the excesses of this activity now; the imbalance of vast uncontrolled undesirable change and ongoing damage to the life of the planet and humanity and the damage already done. We are in a battle with the activity of our lower selves that seems to sum up powerfully. We need to evolve our higher selves and to unify to be able to conquer and transcend this stage of evolution.

How we operate in the world is influenced by our awareness. There are many ways of naming its component qualities. They include our clarity that is dependent on feeling contentment, peace, courage and compassion. We can question how we can attain peace in the world without first mastering peace within ourselves and in our own lives. How can someone expect a compassionate world if they are unable to be compassionate? We can strive to make our actions higher value and we can aspire to attain inner spiritual evolution, which guides and underpins such character and behavior.

How can the architect comprehend the human sphere when all their work is on buildings? Of course our experience with each other and our cultural context grows with time, but if we are not peaceful, contented, compassionate, really, how can we provide these and the entire realm of consciousness, and understand how to prepare presencing mind in environments?