# Technology and meditation

[Technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology), in its broadest sense, is a combination of artifacts, people, and knowledge. A couple of quotes from the linked-to Wikipedia article:

> Technology can be most broadly defined as the entities, both material and immaterial, created by the application of mental and physical effort in order to achieve some value.

"W. Brian Arthur defines technology in a similarly broad way as "a means to fulfill a human purpose."" Other [definitions](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/technology), in addition to those from the above Wikipedia article, include:

1. the branch of knowledge that deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society, and the environment, drawing upon such subjects as industrial arts, engineering, applied science, and pure science.
1. the application of this knowledge for practical ends.
1. the terminology of an art, science, etc.; technical nomenclature.
1. a scientific or industrial process, invention, method, or the like.
1. the sum of the ways in which social groups provide themselves with the material objects of their civilization.

Meditation consists of specific techniques in order to achieve practical ends, such as the ability to concentrate better so that one can be more productive and solve problems more effectively; to be a happier, more peaceful person. It also enables an individual to function at a higher level of consciousness, acting more creatively, effectively, and efficiently, and thus meditation acts as an enabler for creative, disruptive innovation. While meditation has not been as visibly disruptive as the great inventions of history—the steam engine, electricity, telephones, radio, cars, the Internet, etc., it has had a steadily growing influence on civilization, particularly since around 1600 AD—the beginning of the transition to the age of Dwapara Yuga from the Kali Yuga age.

Dwapara Yuga is the Atomic or Electrical Age—a period of 2400 years of development of the intellect in which man develops greater understanding of the subtler, finer forces in creation. Kali Yuga is a period of 1200 years, in which man's comprehension is limited to gross material creation. The Yugas are explained in more detail in [Swami Sri Yukteswar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swami_Sri_Yukteswar_Giri)'s "[The Holy Science](https://bookstore.yogananda-srf.org/product/the-holy-science-ebook/)" and is also outlined in [this Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holy_Science).

Because of the use of specific techniques to achieve practical ends (arguably the broadest definition of technology), meditation is a form of technology. There are definite scientific techniques of meditation, such as kriya yoga, which result in direct, personal communion with infinite, ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new bliss. Kriya yoga meditation is the highest technology known to man, as it brings the permanent removal of suffering and the permanent consciousness of bliss. In his book, "[The Science of Religion](https://bookstore.yogananda-srf.org/product/the-science-of-religion-ebook/)", [Paramahansa Yogananda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramahansa_Yogananda) gave these two motives—the permanent removal of suffering and the permanent consciousness of bliss—as the eternal essence of religion, and the two most fundamental motives of every human being. Meditation has existed in art form in India for five millennia, indicating that it has existed for millennia before that.* Hence, it is a likely candidate for the oldest technology.

> \* "India’s tradition had reached a certain point of maturity even at the time of the Indus Valley civilization that flourished five thousand years ago,” said Lakhan L. Mehrotra in an article published in Self-Realization magazine. “The two most prominent artifacts of that ancient
civilization are those representing the Mother Goddess—Shakti, personifying the intelligent creative life force, and the Maha Yogi—Shiva, sitting cross-legged with the symbol of the spiritual eye of wisdom in his forehead. Now, if that spiritual tradition of yoga and meditation could find expression five thousand years ago in an art form, then it must have originated several thousand years before that….
> “Looking at the great major centers of civilization that flourished in those ancient times, we find four: (1) along the Nile in Egypt, (2) along the Tigris and the Euphrates in the Middle East Mesopotamia, (3) along the Yangtze (Ch’ang) and the Yellow River (Huang Ho) in China, and (4) along the Indus in India. What has happened to all these civilizations?… And yet, in the land of the Indus and the Ganges, that perennial, ancient stream of wisdom still flows with the same vigor.
> “In each century India has given birth to lofty spiritual personages. Though she has reached great heights in every field of culture, when that tradition declined somewhat in material terms, its spiritual luster was nevertheless upheld by these luminaries who appeared, one after another, upon the Indian scene.”
> At the time India was conquered by Western colonial powers, according to historian Dr. J. T. Sunderland, she was the wealthiest nation on the globe: “This [material] wealth was created by the Hindus’ vast and varied industries. Nearly every kind of manufacture or product known to the civilized world—nearly every kind of creation of man’s hand and brain, existing anywhere and prized either for its utility or beauty—had long, long been produced in India. India was a far greater industrial and manufacturing nation than any in Europe or any other in Asia” (India in Bondage, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1929).
> “Let us remember,” wrote the eminent historian and philosopher Will Durant (in The Case for India, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930), “that India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages; that she was the mother of our philosophy, mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics, mother...of the ideals embodied in Christianity, mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.”
> World religions authority Huston Smith recalls that in the 1950s the eminent British historian Arnold Toynbee predicted that in the 21st century “India the conquered would conquer her conquerors.”
> “He didn’t mean by that that we would become Hindus,” said Smith in an interview in the San Diego Union-Tribune, April 7, 1990. “What he meant was that basic Indian insights would find their way into our Western culture, and, because of their metaphysical and psychological profundity, our way of thinking in the West would be influenced by Indian thought just as Indian technology has been influenced by ours.” (Publisher’s Note)
—"[God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita](https://bookstore.yogananda-srf.org/product/god-talks-with-arjuna-the-bhagavad-gita-ebook/)", by Paramahansa Yogananda, published by Self-Realization Fellowship, 1995, eBook, footnote 25 on p. 898