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''or Evolving Magico-Spiritual Techniques of Consciousness-Making'' by Manie Eagar

''or Evolving Magico-Spiritual Techniques of Consciousness-Making'' by Manie Eagar

*'''Abstract''' -  With the expansion of consciousness comes new ways of seeing reality. The hypercontextual  pretexts,  contexts  and  subtexts  created  by  the  new technologies of virtual, immersive and cyber realities create boundaryless experiences that are analogous to the archaic techniques evolved through shamanic journeys designed to transcend all human boundaries.  

'''Abstract''' -  With the expansion of consciousness comes new ways of seeing reality. The hypercontextual  pretexts,  contexts  and  subtexts  created  by  the  new technologies of virtual, immersive and cyber realities create boundaryless experiences that are analogous to the archaic techniques evolved through shamanic journeys designed to transcend all human boundaries.  

The magico-spiritual imagination, far from disappearing in our supposedly secular age, continues to feed the utopian dreams, apocalyptic visions, digital phantasms, and alien obsessions that populate today’s ‘technological unconscious’.  The  language  and  ideas  of  the  information  society  have slipped into and even transformed the myriad worlds of contemporary spirituality. What is emerging is a networked framework for grappling with some of the impulses that are currently tearing us apart: spirit and the machine, modernity and nihilism, technology and the human. ‘We find ourselves  trapped  on  a  cyborg  sandbank,  caught  between  the  old, smouldering campfire stories and the new networks of programming and control’ (Davis 1998: 131). We are ‘beached’ between the archaic sea of our magico-spiritual ancestors, freshly emerged from our proto-modern past, and spawned into the postmodern reality of fragmented selves, networked options, downloadable digitized consumerware and ‘technologies of ecstacy’.  

The magico-spiritual imagination, far from disappearing in our supposedly secular age, continues to feed the utopian dreams, apocalyptic visions, digital phantasms, and alien obsessions that populate today’s ‘technological unconscious’.  The  language  and  ideas  of  the  information  society  have slipped into and even transformed the myriad worlds of contemporary spirituality. What is emerging is a networked framework for grappling with some of the impulses that are currently tearing us apart: spirit and the machine, modernity and nihilism, technology and the human. ‘We find ourselves  trapped  on  a  cyborg  sandbank,  caught  between  the  old, smouldering campfire stories and the new networks of programming and control’ (Davis 1998: 131). We are ‘beached’ between the archaic sea of our magico-spiritual ancestors, freshly emerged from our proto-modern past, and spawned into the postmodern reality of fragmented selves, networked options, downloadable digitized consumerware and ‘technologies of ecstacy’.