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Would you let these tech companies into your dreams?
It’s been around for a few years now, but these days, the technology is leaping into overdrive. Lucid dreams: the playground of occultists and “psychonauts” for millennia, they’re an occasional — not always enjoyable — experience for some of us and a market opportunity for a few plucky startups. But can mere money explain why technological advancement is being pushed in this direction — into the strange and bizarre recesses of our consciousness?More than a new market, more than a new economy, more even than a new way of life, the goal is a new creation in the sense of leaving behind what God himself wrought with the human being.Spoiler alert, no. Consider the sales pitch offered by the tellingly named PropheticAI, which bills itself as “pursuing answers to the ultimate questions.” According to the company’s website, “Humanity has a rare opportunity to expand consciousness and reimagine the human experience. Prophetic is pioneering the way.”Simply slip on a ring-shaped headset — revealingly called “the Halo” — and ...induce lucid dreams through dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activation during naturally occuring dreams by utilizing emerging technologies such as transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) and generative transformer architectures, along with established technologies like electroencephalogram (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).But wait, there’s more. Researchers at a separate firm called REMspace have announced that two test subjects could mentally communicate mid-dream through their proprietary tech. “Two individuals successfully induced lucid dreams and exchanged a simple message with specially designed equipment, claimed the company,” according to a report. “The research demonstrated that lucid dreams could unlock new dimensions of communication and humanity’s potential, according to REMspace.”Add two and two, and what do you get? A whole new market around shared lucid dreams — basically the dream of psychedelic-worshippers like Timothy Leary, who himself believed computers held out the prospect of collective hallucination and its, ahem, spiritual benefits. This brings us to the real point of this particular line of research and development. More than a new market, more than a new economy, more even than a new way of life, the goal is a new creation in the sense of leaving behind what God himself wrought with the human being. Engineering collective hallucination — the better to eventually create a kind of Minecraft of the mind — isn’t simply an add-on or augmentation of our given human complement. It flouts the received wisdom of millennia concerning not merely the danger of dreams but their ultimate irrelevance — due to the truth about how we can really achieve collective consciousness in a way as sacred as our given human being. Holy men from St. Ignatius on down testify that, as delusion is both a possibility according to our freedom and a temptation according to the Fall, attempting to interpret, decode, or take the counsel of our dreams is to gravely risk spiritual confusion, degradation, and even destruction. In his humility, the watchful Christian even declines to entertain what seem to be blatantly “good dreams” — even or especially prophetic ones. Spiritual history offers sad examples of faithful who, striving for purification and enlightenment, were misled by demons into thinking with grandiose pride that God had singled them out for special treatment and a glorious destiny. Instead, as mania and madness set in, they swiftly lost what grace they thought they had and found themselves servants of evil. The Christian testimony, including St. Hesychius, John of Damascus, and Nicodemus, shows that sad stories like this are actually illustrative of the onset of sin in general. Without proper training and devotion, we typically fail to notice that a spiritually sickening thought has entered our mind until it has not only entered but set up shop and ascended to the “throne” of our heart — where it is not dislodged without tremendous effort, suffering, humility, and repentance. Bottom line, it’s a really bad idea to try achieving a healthy and fruitful collective consciousness by technologically invading the deceptive and dangerous realm of dreams, a place where evil spirits can obviously have a field day. That means an even worse idea is to get rich off of people by convincing them that it’s actually a great idea, perhaps the only way they can find spiritual peace or deliverance. In fact, it’s a distinct spiritual crime, the sin of simony — named after Simon Magus, the sorcerer who, as recounted in the Acts of the Apostles, offered to buy access to the Holy Spirit off of Peter and John. Notably, Simon wasn’t doing this (or so he claimed) for selfish reasons but to lay hands on others as the Apostles did so that they might receive the Holy Spirit. Even this motive wasn’t enough to make it right, of course. But Peter told him that he might well be forgiven if he repented and prayed for forgiveness. All of this spiritual history is incomplete, however. The kicker to the story is really its heart. We know that sorcery, occultism, and simony are bad ways to strive toward healthy and fruitful collective consciousness because there is a good, pure way — laid out by Christ and his Apostles and the saints who sacrificed all they could of worldly things to pursue it with all their heart. Ah, but this is so hard! It demands so much patience, so much humility, and suffering! Who has the time? Who has the energy? Intriguingly, it is often today’s best technologists who most understand that successful engineering demands intensely rigorous patience, humility, and suffering to achieve feats at the highest degree of difficulty. If only they took one more step in an uncomfortable direction, they might realize that what is true of discipline, asceticism, and athleticism in material things is all the more valuable and precious when applied to the spiritual realm. And just as an engineer does not make stuff up on the fly to advance, so does the successful spiritual journey demand faithful reliance on the hard-earned wisdom born of the experience of its past adepts.Imagine how different our technological research and development trajectory could be if more engineers took that approach!And ask yourself why so few seem willing. Because forcibly escaping the bounds of our God-given humanity is not the only motive behind the tech that promises shared lucid dreaming. There is another, more practical, perhaps even more lucrative one: war.
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