Shadara Chakra: Revolt Against Memory Machines
AI has given us, homo sapiens (wise human), a life time opportunity to actually prove that we are indeed wise. Mind you. It's a lot of work. It requires deliberate play to learn this new life-altering skill.
Here is the hardest part: We must learn to revolt against Memory Machines that is wired to operate without our volition. In a talk on Education in the year 1956, J Krishnamurti talked about this.
"Education today helps only to cultivate memory. We are turning human beings into memory machines. We are turning out mediocres who can retain facts and opinions and draw on them when need arises. We are turning out men whose minds are conditioned by traditions, beliefs, religions, etc.
It seems to me that real education begins when you get beyond all such conditioning factors; when you understand the process of thinking.
Society is not going to help you in your efforts to get beyond the conditioning factors. Society wants to breed mediocres in order to maintain its traditions. You will have to revolt against such society.’"
Here is the fascinating thing.
Society is now offering us a chance (through the rapid growth of AI hype infrastructure, to borrow Sangeet Paul Choudary’s memorable words) to help you in your efforts to get beyond the conditioning factors through conscious, deliberate play of "Artificial Intelligence".
This isn't some fancy idea.
Ever since I got the pro version of ChatGPT, I have been using AI precisely this way to develop and hone this skill.
I have been offloading my conscious memories and patterns (to the extent I have written about) through my writings and notes which date back from 2007.
When ChatGPT has complete access to my memory machine, I am discovering the power to keep my memory at a distance and access them only as a tool when I need it.
It gives me a liberating feeling (for brief moments) to not let them condition me and my thinking.
After all, I am not my memory.
Much like the food that has built this body of 68 kgs weight, this memory has built this baggage called "Venky/Venkat/Venkataraman/Kumar". It is this baggage that I painstakingly carry and strut around as if I am someone.
Today, when AI helps me offload some part of this memory, I discover pattern imprinting behaviours wired in my psyche.
When every conscious, written memory of you is indexable, you get glimpses of the workings of your inner memory and how it metabolizes energy like sugar on your pet desires and pet hates.
Observing this pattern imprinting behaviours is hard.
We are programmed to keep the memory machine alive. The baggage of memory keeps the albatross of identity alive through a cycle of our identity fueling our pet desires and pet hates which in turn fuel the identity structures alive.
Patanjali Yoga Sutras calls this memory machine cycle as "Shadara Chakra". To step out of this memory machine is to experience death consciously and get in touch with the corest essence of our identity " I am not THAT".