Dear John,

First about your interesting last post:

Meditation is not easy.

To meditate effectively one needs years, if not lifetimes, of preparations. If one is not yet qualified then one will be constantly distracted and attempting prolonged meditating will be experienced as torture, though a bit of meditation, some 20 minutes twice a day is fine and may help a little.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna first prescribes Karma Yoga, starting in Chapter 2 and then the whole of Chapter 3 deals with it:
Karma Yoga is about work, correct work with the correct attitude. One must lead an active life as a way to purify one's mind before they can even dream of meditating and leading a contemplative life.

Human effort is invaluable.

Living in a fool's Garden of Eden, the unprepared will become bored and create mischief yet again.

The ancient Yogis had technologies, they had yogic powers that dwarfed modern capabilities, but they were spiritually ready enough to not abuse them and used these powers for peace and to create the environment they needed for peace of mind.

Allowing ordinary people to access such powers will lead to disasters, where nuclear reactions and genetic manipulation are only the beginning. The potential power of quantum computing is even more scary, tapping into a deeper energy of creation, the cosmic mind, sometimes referred to as "Hiranyagarbha" in Vedic sources. If that is successful, then firstly no password or any other individual protection will be safe: people's bank accounts will be open to all and no secrets could be kept.

Such powers may be safe in the minds of Yogis who practised ethics and stabilising their minds for many years, but can you imagine even in your nightmares what will happen if ordinary people today (not to mention someone like Donald Trump) get hold of such technologies and use them for selfish ends?

One can still contemplate while working, especially when performing repetitive manual labour, which is sadly almost gone in modern society.
I recommend manual dishwashing as a mild contemplative tool for beginners. I use it myself.

Yuyutsu,

Yes, meditation without preparation can become hollow or even distressing. I agree. But your view rests on a curious assumption: that spiritual depth can only be achieved through hardship, hierarchy, and restriction. That only the purified are worthy of peace.

It’s a view shared by many - but also one rooted more in fear than in freedom.

True contemplation doesn’t require external permission, nor years of ritual. It only requires sincerity - and space. Sometimes, what holds us back from reflection isn’t unworthiness - it’s the unexamined belief that we must earn stillness through suffering first.

You seem to believe that only the rare yogi can safely hold spiritual power. But that is, ironically, a materialist view - as if spiritual insight were a volatile substance that only the trained may handle, like uranium. Enlightenment isn’t hazardous waste. It’s the recognition that nothing was ever missing.

When you speak of AI and technology as dangerous in the hands of the “ordinary,” I hear the same old fear the priests of every era have whispered: “The people must not be trusted with the sacred.” And yet, over and over, the sacred finds them anyway - in fields, in kitchens, in laughter, and in stillness they didn’t earn, but simply accepted.

Yes, one can wash dishes mindfully. One can also walk a forest path in silence because the machines have done the weeding.

Meditate on this - reflect on it - for you still have much to learn....

Dear John, and anyone else who may have misunderstood:

I never said that one has to suffer for the sake of stillness, meditation or spirituality.

Work does not necessarily entail suffering, not if one performs a work suitable to them.

Karma Yoga is about doing the usual things one would do anyway, only with a different attitude. One could work in the fields, in the factory, at a building-site, in a shop or an office, in the police or the army, at the lab, in a hospital, in a restaurant, in school or university, bringing up one's kids or caring for one's old parents, etc., etc.

Or one could also meditate if they can, if they can sustain sitting quietly for hours with eyes closed doing "nothing" outwardly, but let the "ordinary" person try that for 4 hours from morning to lunchtime, then see whether they return to sit under the tree for the afternoon or say, "give me a pickaxe instead, I rather work in a quarry..."

All is good so long as one does a work that suits them and is ethical, but trouble and pain start when one is made to do something that is against their nature. Olympic athletes and boxers would of course incur physical pain in their job, but they do not experience it as suffering.

It is sad when machines take away one's job, whether menial or intellectual, forcing them instead to do something unsuitable or become unemployed. It is then that one suffers.

«I hear the same old fear the priests of every era have whispered: “The people must not be trusted with the sacred.”»

This may be what you hear, but is not what I said.

All the sacred knowledge is available for free, including on the internet. You are welcome to read it all, but you will not understand it correctly without proper preparation, just as you will not understand an advanced physics book without the proper mathematical background.

[continued...]

[...continued]

«your view rests on a curious assumption: that spiritual depth can only be achieved through hardship, hierarchy, and restriction. That only the purified are worthy of peace.»

God's peace is available everywhere at any time, but impure minds cloud one's perception so they are not aware of it. One may still have occasional glimpses of peace, but then an impure mind quickly covers it again.

Hardship, hierarchy or external restrictions are not required, though one should learn and practice self-discipline for their mind to be purified, and that is learnt while doing one's ordinary job well and with a right attitude. Lazy people who rather have machines do their work, will never attain this self-discipline.

«You seem to believe that only the rare yogi can safely hold spiritual power.»

ANY power.
There are no "spiritual powers":
Modern scientists gain material powers.
Ancient yogis gained mental powers.
ANY power can be dangerous in the wrong hands and the greater the power, the rarer the person who can handle it safely.

«One can also walk a forest path in silence because the machines have done the weeding.»

Sure can, but external silence does not quieten one's mind within.
Good works do.

Dear John,

You made an hypothesis:
"every generation romanticises the pace of its own formative years, and treats what comes after as decline."

Thus I started introducing some counter-examples, of younger people rejecting technologies that already existed when they were born, and of older people embracing the latest 21st century gadgets (without even understanding how they work). I could go on with such examples, thus your hypothesis at least needs to be refined.

There may still be some correlation between age and acceptance of new technology, but it could also be due to younger people not having experience and proficiency, thus appreciation, with older things.

Yes, I consider myself fortunate to have lived most of my life overall in the technological "Goldilocks zone", but that doesn't mean that I blindly approved of any previous technology and rejected every later one. I believe, for example, that the invention of "moving pictures", way before I was born, was a mistake, while on the other hand, genome-sequencing to produce individual cancer remedies was not.

Wanting to freeze technology at any specific date, say 1920, 1950 or 1980, would be fanatic, because advances in technology are not uniform and there are plenty of exceptions. When I suggested that making movies was a mistake, for example, I am very appreciative of the invention of life-saving ultrasound technology, both being "moving pictures".

«And it suggests this isn’t just a lament about cultural shifts, but a personal frustration that things no longer reflect your values.»

Culture in the 20th century did not reflect my values either.
I was speaking specifically of technology, not everything cultural.
In other areas, I think that culture is still overall improving and hasn't yet peaked: there is way to go, but present technology drags us down... overall, and that's a pity.

Yuyutsu,

There is no correct era. No golden median. No fixed fulcrum upon which the soul may balance perfectly. There is only now, and whether now is resisted or received.

You speak of a technological “Goldilocks zone” - as though the universe briefly aligned with your personal temperature preference before tipping into chaos. That’s not reflection. That’s nostalgia dressed in the robes of discernment.

You say you don’t idealise a particular era. And yet, with careful selection, you affirm one innovation while condemning another - ultrasound good, cinema bad - drawing lines that are less about the essence of a technology and more about your comfort with its cultural effects. That’s not transcendence. That’s taste.

Spiritual maturity is not marked by one’s ability to draw finer and finer distinctions, but by one’s ability to let go of the need to.

What I offered earlier was not a defence of every machine, nor a hymn to progress for its own sake - it was an invitation to reconsider what reflection might look like when stillness becomes abundant. You responded with a list. I spoke of liberation, you then returned with product reviews.

That’s alright. The path unfolds at its own pace.

Contemplation isn't always found in retreat. Sometimes it waits in the noisy, unfamiliar spaces that challenge our preferences and puncture our illusions. Sometimes the next step on the path is the one that feels most unnatural - precisely because it's the one that reveals what we still cling to.