For some time, critical theorists have declared that we have entered a new evolutionary period, that they refer to as the Anthropocene era, meaning that our biological fate is now dominated and determined by the human species, which has gained the capability not only to despoil our natural environment and bring about massive poisoning effects due to noxious geo-engineering, atmospheric pollution, genetic modification, and pharmaceutical genocide, but to cause the extinction of all life on our planet (assuming we are even on a planet).
However, this theory is now passé, overtaken by newer technological developments that have been made public. The instrument that has brought us into this latest era of our seemingly aberrant historical journey is the invention of what is generally referred to as artificial intelligence (AI). The effects of this digital development began with robots and chatbots, not to mention sexbots, that can seem realistically human and actually deceive people as to their status. But now, the unfoldment has gone much further, with the advanced capacity for producing deep fake videos. Once upon a time, people believed that photos don’t lie. But now, photographs and videos can no longer be trusted to be authentic representations of real people. Not even AI can detect for certain whether a video is made by AI. Therefore, no apparent evidence of an event not personally witnessed can be trusted. We may be constantly deceived by deliberately manipulated delusions. Therefore, I am ‘christening’ our new era as the Deceptocene.
This technological development has exponentially increased the ability of the agencies that control the mass media to censor alternative interpretations of reality and to produce convincing displays of seemingly conclusive and settled facts that in fact are false.
Recent examples of such malicious tendencies that have been uncovered—or at least apparently so—range from the strange case of the disappeared princess Kate Middleton, around whom extreme conspiracy theories abound, due to the revelation of manipulated photographs, mislabeled photos and videos of bad look-alikes claimed to be of her but depicting another person, and the latest video of her sitting on a park bench that a number of credible experts in the field have declared to be a deep fake, with many aspects of the video that seem to prove that. Nonetheless, other seemingly objective analysts say they cannot be sure, but that they lean to thinking the video is authentic. Of course, the scandal that this has aroused has damaged the entire royal family, but Kate has not made any appearance in front of a sufficient number of living witnesses to put the embarrassment to rest.
Even more recently, an apparently fake attack by Israel upon Iran has taken place. It seems that Israel had to save face after being hit by ballistic missiles from Iran, which was a retaliation for Israel’s bombing of the Iranian embassy in Syria. Since Israel did not want to suffer yet another, more destructive counter-attack by Iran, they chose to fly only a few harmless drones over Iranian territory, but then to use faked photographs of missile strikes, combined with news reports on all the mainstream US news channels announcing a massive strike on Iranian military and nuclear facilities. According to Iran, nothing like that happened, no damage occurred, no missiles were even launched toward them, and therefore, there was no reason to strike back.
In such a case, it could be argued that the fake news prevented a catastrophe, and therefore was justified. But the effect on people’s trust in the news media was collateral damage that may be even more harmful—although, again, it could be asserted that it is long overdue that people stop trusting the news.
So, the Deceptocene is in full flower. Once we add to the deep fake infamy a few other emergent theories, we can see that this goes much deeper than simply an artifact of AI. One example is the work of Mauro Biglino, a renowned translator of the Bible, who has demonstrated that all the translations of that text are faulty, and that the scroll is not about God at all, but is a description of an ancient alien invasion of Earth. That would be too mind-boggling to be believed, except for a plethora of other evidence both ancient and modern confirming the reality of extraterrestrial flying vehicles, crashes, interference with human military activity, abductions, animal mutilations, reverse engineering of super high-tech craft, materials, and equipment, and infiltration of governments.
We could add to the list of anomalous phenomena the seeming glitches in the matrix that witnesses attest, the often persuasive evidence of the reality of the Mandela Effect, and the apparent revelation of the fraudulence of much of our accepted history, according to the highly sophisticated theory of Anatoly Fomenko, as well as other ‘phantom time’ theorists. To top it off, many leading physicists now accept that not only is matter an illusion produced by quantum wave functions that become collapsed, or frozen, by acts of consciousness, but that neither time nor space is fundamentally real. Some scientists go even further, declaring that the entire cosmos is a simulation.
Of course, none of the above is certain. Probably an equal number of self-claimed authorities would debunk them all. Welcome to the Deceptocene! The Beatles long ago sang the anthem of the age: “Nothing is real! Strawberry fields forever!” But don’t eat the strawberries—they are covered with pesticides, if they are not entirely made of plastic.
The question that arises in curious minds is: Why is all this happening now? What is the significance, if any? As might be expected, Sat Yogis have a simple answer. Let us begin with the understanding that the earliest ontological theory, which has been accepted in written texts from the beginning of recorded history (to use a now debunked concept) including the Vedas and carried forward in the Upanishads and is implied in the oldest agamas and yogic sutras: the theory that the world is nothing but Maya, meaning illusion. Indian philosophy, including the Buddhisms that spread throughout Asia, declare that the world lacks essential reality. It is, as the current crop of physicists now echo, only a simulation. Reality is empty of reality. Thus, we have come full circle. At the end of time, the concept that history began with is finally confirmed with overwhelming evidence that cannot be denied. Even if all the evidence is false, that too confirms the Maya theory. The very concept of evidence is evidently falsified. Once all of our beliefs unravel in this way, we start to lose trust in our capacity for reason itself. Even our logic has no foundation if this is a simulation, or a dream in some unknowable infinite Mind.
But what if there is still one true element that cannot be denied? That is awareness itself. Even if our thinking is delusional, can pure awareness be doubted? Even to doubt it confirms it. Presence is ineffable, but is the very foundation of the capacity to doubt. We cannot know anything—except that presence, awareness, simple nonconceptual consciousness, somehow abides. According to the ancient yogic theory of Maya, nothing is real but quality-less absolute impersonal unmanifest presence, presence that can only be conceived as absence. At the end of time, we must return to the beginning, and to know that time never began at all—there is only timeless presence. But this presence has the creative intelligence to deceive itself into imagining itself as myriad forms of becoming in wild worlds of its own superconscious imagining, to get lost in amazing adventures in hells and heavens that no human novelist or dramatist could have conjured, even with the help of the highest doses of the most powerful psychedelic substances.
But the yogis go even further: This Infinite Intelligence that is dreaming us all is not, in fact, unknowable. Simply by disengaging from the obscuring mental chatter of the character one is identified with, and coming back to silent presence, opens the portal to re-absorption in the Absolute Self. And this is the entire point of the whole creation—to awaken, to realize the eternal ultimate Self while still present in the dream field and able to act through one’s icon in the matrix. This alone has always been the goal of yoga. And the attainment of the goal brings an Aloneness that no ego still in ignorance of the Real can bear. The intensity of the Bliss of the God-Self is too much for anyone but God.
And That is what You are.
Namaste,
Shunyamurti
