Most of us spend several hours on the day relative to a computer, tablet or smart phone. This creates tension but also depletes the mind and can even dull the senses.
On top of this we may be wired up to music for hours. The result is that most of the day we are being bombarded by electrical impulses, fabricated sounds and media images. These electrical impulses stimulate but also irritate our nervous systems, senses and minds. They wire us up and prevent us from finding inner peace.
The media is full of advertising, with political and cultural statements that are often little more than propaganda. Most news stories are one-sided and do not consist of objective reporting but trying to get us to follow a particular point of view. The amount of electronic information we are taking in has increased exponentially in recent years and is bound to grow yet further in the future. Yet we are no more clear as to who we are and what we are doing in life, either at individual or collective levels.
The crucial question arises as to how the new information technology affects our nervous systems beyond any message it may have. To put it simply this digital stimulation is like a drug, what I would call the “digital drug”. Yet on top of these digital stimulations many of us are also taking recreational or medicinal drugs. Our attention is preoccupied externally in quickly changing artificial sensory inputs. We have little time for being in nature, or to look within and connect with our own inner being and the universe within us. We may have a few minutes a day for a Yoga routine, meditation or mantra, but this is usually just a sidelight to the ongoing flow of our increasingly electronic existence, extending to an electronic self-image at times.
Obviously, the human being was not meant to be wired all the time. It is not part of our evolutionary pattern in which we emerged from the world of nature and developed civilization through agriculture. Yet curiously we human beings can easily and quickly adapt to machines, become dependent upon them, or even begin to operate like them and emulate them. The new seeking to develop Artificial Intelligence not only to help us but to guide us is part of this phenomenon. We face an uncertain future in which the machine defines our environment, culture, transportation and even self-identity.
As electronic influences move much faster than our actual senses, we are losing our sensory acuity and capacity for observation and contemplation. Our minds are becoming ungrounded, volatile and hyper reactive. We crave rapid diverse stimulation, which in turn renders us weakened or depressed when these strong stimuli are withdrawn. Many of us have overstimulated and worn out our nervous systems leaving us depleted, unable to cope or handle stress, opinionated and angry.
Psychological, mental, emotional and nervous system problems are increasing, starting with young children. An entire new set of designer drugs has been created to deal with these issues that seem unable to solve the problems and instead cause more addictions and dependencies. The future of public health, including social health and societal psychological well-being seems problematical. We seem to becoming more unhealthy, unhappy and disturbed on both personal and collective levels, and our longevity may be declining.
How to Balance our Minds and Nervous Systems
So how should we handle the digital age? Shutting everything off is not an option, though we should shut everything off every day periodically as well as take vacations away from it. Compensation is the main thing. Taking regular time for our own direct interaction with life and our own inner spiritual practice or sadhana is the key. Without a sadhana to ground us, it is unlikely that we can achieve any real happiness, understanding or higher consciousness. Yoga gurus from India later introduced yoga to the West,following the success of Swami Vivekananda in the late 19th and early 20th century. In the 1980s, yoga became popular as a system of physical exercise across the Western world. Yoga in Indian traditions, however, is more than physical exercise; it has a meditative and spiritual core.
