Enlightenment online, Blessings by Webcam - an Era of digital Spirituality

Yesterday I described how Buddhists find their reborn Lamas and when researching I found out that the search was in earlier times limited to Tibet but that now there are even western Lamas. Buddhism seems to go with time, accept globalization and try to make more sense – after all, why would you be again and again reincarnated in the same country? What about other countries? Don’t the souls of the Lamas get passports and visas to travel? So I had the thought maybe they will in future find the reincarnated Lamas through the internet.

Yes, why not? Maybe there will be a website that develops a reincarnation-search-program. Or an application for the iPhone that tells you the exact directions where to search for the next incarnation.

Spirituality is anyway going more and more digital in this modern time. I have seen websites that offer ‘digital bhakti’, blessings through the internet. There are anyway already masters that have meetings with their worldwide followers in web conferences. They don’t need to go anywhere, they see their disciples, their disciples see them and they pass on their blessings through the world wide web.

Maybe you have heard of Sai Baba of Shirdi who is still today worshipped widely across India and Hindus across the world. I have seen a page advertising on facebook: “Share with one click to get Sai Baba blessings.” How easy has social media made everything! Devotion and love is only one click away. Devotion and love is easy and cheap! I don’t know what Sai Baba would have thought about it but now people are competing about donating tons of gold and silver to Sai Baba over the internet, to a man who spent his life like a Sadhu, who was not attached with anything. They have a turnover of billions in the place where he lived. They do proper online marketing, going with the time.

In many temples you can now see web-cameras that broadcast the holy Darshan online so that people can have live temple experiences and don’t even need to go until there. There are already websites on which you can do online poojas and online aarti, a typical fire ceremony. From time to time we get newsletters that say that you can get nirvana online. Isn’t it an era of digital spirituality?

There was a great time, approximate from the 14th to the 17th century, when poets and authors like Kabir and Tulsi lived, and we call it ‘Bhakti Kal’. Maybe this time, which we are experiencing now, will later be called ‘Digital Bhakti Kal’, a time of devotion through digital media.

Application developers will be known like the writers of scriptures because their work, what they put in the codes of programs and software, will be what others will read, learn, take in and pass on.

These applications and programs will not anymore be just like scriptures that you read. They will be so advanced that they will be interactive and they will judge your spiritual progress. There may be levels and you will reach ranks depending on how many marks you reached. Obviously there will be an option to buy a ‘quick version’, too. You pay some money and you will get access to the higher levels and ranks straight away. It will be expensive but those who have the money can get online enlightenment from one second to the other simply via credit card.