INDRA

 So, I thought, what if you made a computer network that required human brains to run on? 

It wouldn’t make sense to kill us. 

It wouldn’t want to kill us. 

But what it might do is organize us more efficiently.

— Grant Morrison

Joseph Campbell – The Story of Indra from the Brahmavar Upanishad

 

 Swervin’ back to Brave New World. One other thing I liked about that show was the AI system called Indra which must be a reference to the concept of Indra’s Net.

GM: And as you know the drug in the show is Soma, which is Huxley’s creation. I just figured if Huxley named the drug Soma… if he had predicted AI, which is one thing he didn’t predict, I think he would have stuck with the Sanskrit and called it Indra.

Indra was my notion for explaining a lot of stuff that didn’t make sense in Huxley’s book. 

Why are there Epsilons? 

Why does the World State need a labour force? 

The book is about the consequences of capitalist mass production, mass consumption, mass destruction, because Huxley had moved to Hollywood and he’d seen the consumer society in full flood and witnessed the world of glamorous unreality — the talkies — which was happening. The whole thing is his attempt to deal with the impact of Ford and Hollywood. As I said, the one thing he didn’t think of was AI. So, the question became how could you make sense of a lot of the things he didn’t make sense of? 

And the idea came up of having a computer network that ran on human brains. We have all those neurons and all that capacity there. So instead of having a central server, the computer is a distributed network that runs on the brains of everyone in the World State. That was designed to solve the problem created by Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking who were both terrified that AI was going to rise up and take over, steal our jobs, and occupy our homes in a kind of immigration nightmare gone sci-fi.

So, I thought, 'What if you made a computer network that required human brains to run on?' It wouldn’t make sense to kill us. It wouldn’t want to kill us. But what it might do is organize us more efficiently. So that might explain a lot of the stuff Huxley didn’t bother to deal with.

The network starts to self-organize and it creates this homeostatic caste system, like a hive. It stratifies people and what it gives them in return is happiness. 

In Brave New World, the ultimate commodity is happiness. There’s no love, no money, but if you could make everyone happy even if they’re up to their necks in shit, then you’ve won. That was the idea. To create a computer network that doesn’t want to kill people. 

So, the reason why there are Epsilons — the reason people do jobs and manual labor, is because the computer needs its components to be fit and healthy. Rather than mechanize them, with everyone just slobbing out, it needs citizens to be super fit. 

So, they are always having sex, they are always playing sport, they are always working. They have pointless jobs that encourage them to be fit and healthy. That was the idea. The Indra network solved a lot of problems and I think it was one of the elegant additions to Huxley’s original.

Then who created the network in the story? Who gave birth to the AI?

GM:  Well, that was the original ten Controllers who started the World State. In Huxley’s book, there’s an anthrax pandemic that kills 2/3 of the world population and there’s only a couple of billion or whatever left. 

And everyone else gets together and forms a world scientific, anti-religious state because the killer plague was largely caused by political and religious conflict. So suddenly the World State arises to ensure that people won’t screw up so badly ever again. In our version, America is the only country that secedes from the World State. In Huxley, the Savage lands is just a Santa Fe reservation, a pueblo culture. 

In this version, the Savage Lands is all of North America. The idea was to imagine America 300 hundred years after The Fall. 

People are sick, and the environment is fucked and there’s been six presidents in the last five months, and it costs three thousand dollars to buy a Mars Bar! America’s decision not to join the World State has brought the country to the brink of ecological, economical, and societal collapse. In this version, I think we got a richer background than even the original.

Is The Machine Going to Crush Humanity, or Serve Humanity?

I think that Star Wars is a Valid Mythological Perspective. 

It shows The State as a Machine and asks: 

"Is The Machine going to crush Humanity, or Serve Humanity?"

And Humanity comes not from The Machine, but from The Heart.

DARTH VADER: 

Luke. Help me take This Mask off.

LUKE SKYWALKER: 

But you’ll die.

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: I think it was in The Return of the Jedi when Skywalker unmasks his father. The father had been playing one of these machine roles, a state role. He was the uniform, you know? And the removal of that mask, there was an undeveloped man there, there was a kind of a worm. By being executive of a system, one is not developing one’s humanity. I think that George Lucas really, really did a beautiful thing there.

BILL MOYERS: The idea of machine is the idea that we want The World to be made in OUR Image, and What We Think The World Ought to Be.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, the first time anybody made a tool, I mean, taking a stone and chipping it so that you can handle it, that’s the beginning of a machine. It’s turning outer nature into your service. But then there comes a time when it begins to dictate to you. I’m having a bit of struggle with my computer, actually.

BILL MOYERS: Your computer?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: I just bought one a couple of months ago, and I can’t help thinking of it as having a personality there, because it talks back, and it behaves in a whimsical way, and all of that. So I’m personifying that machine. To me, that machine is almost alive. I could mythologize that damn thing.

BILL MOYERS: There was a wonderful story about, I think, President Eisenhower, when the computer was first being built. You remember that story?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Eisenhower went into a room full of computers, and he puts a question to these machines, “Is there a God?” And they all start up and there’s all those lights flashing and wheels turning and things like that, and after about 10 minutes of that kind of thing, a voice comes forth, and the voice says, “There is Now.”

Well, I bought this wonderful machine, IBM machine, and it’s there. And I’m rather an authority on gods, so I identified the god, and it seems to me an Old Testament god with a lot of rules, and no mercy.

BILL MOYERS: It’s unforgiving, isn’t it.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Catch you picking up sticks on Saturday and you’re out, that’s all.

BILL MOYERS: But isn’t it possible to develop toward the computer, the computer you’re wrestling with at this very moment, isn’t it possible to develop the same kind of attitude of the Pawnee chieftain who said that in the legends of his people, all things speak of Tirawa, all things of speak of God. It wasn’t a special privileged revelation, God is everywhere in his works, including the computer.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, indeed so. I mean, the miracle of what happens on that screen, you know, have you ever looked inside one of those things?

BILL MOYERS: No.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: You can’t believe it. It’s a whole hierarchy of angels, all on slats, and those little tubes, those are miracles, those are miracles, they are.

BILL MOYERS: One can feel a sense of awe.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, I’ve had a revelation from my computer about mythology, though. You buy a certain software, and there’s a whole set of signals that lead to the achievement of your aim, you know. And once you’ve set it for, let’s say, DW3, enter, if you begin fooling around with signals that belong to another system, they just won’t work, that’s all. You have a system there, a code, a determined code that requires you to use certain terms.

Now, similarly in mythology, each religion is a kind of software that has its own set of signals and will work. It’ll work. But suppose you’ve chosen this one. Now, if a person is really involved in a religion and really building his life on it, he’d better stay with the software that he’s got. But a chap like myself, who likes to play with -

BILL MOYERS: Cross the wires?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: - the various softwares, I can run around, but I probably will never have an experience comparable to that of a saint.

BILL MOYERS: But do you think that the machine is inventing new myths for us, or that we with the machine are inventing new myths?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: No. The myth has to incorporate the machine.

BILL MOYERS: A pagan deity?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Just as the old myths incorporated the tools that people used, the forms of the tools and so forth are associated with power systems that are involved in the culture. We have not a mythology that incorporates these. The new powers are being, so to say, surprisingly announced to us by what the machines can do. We can’t have a mythology for a long, long time to come; things are changing too fast. The environment in which we’re living is changing too fast for it become mythologized.

BILL MOYERS: How do we live without myths, then?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, we’re doing it.The individual has to find the aspect of myth that has to do with the conduct of his life. There are a number of services that myths serve. The basic one is opening the world to the dimension of mystery. If you lose that, you don’t have a mythology, to realize the mystery that underlies all forms. But then there comes the cosmological aspect of myth, seeing that mystery as manifest through all things, so that the universe becomes as it were a holy picture, you are always addressed to the transcendent mystery through that. But then there’s another function, and that’s the sociological one, of validating or maintaining a certain society. That is the side of the thing that has taken over in Our World.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Ethical laws, the laws of life in the society, all of Yahweh’s pages and pages and pages of what kind of clothes to wear, how to behave to each other, and all that, do you see, in terms of the values of this particular society. But then there’s a fourth function of myth, and this is the one that I think today everyone must try to relate to, and that’s the pedagogical function. How to live a human lifetime under any circumstances. Myth can tell you that.

There’s a wonderful story in one of the Upanishads, the Brahmavaivarta Upanishad, of Indra, this god who is the counterpart, really, of Yahweh. He is the god patron of a certain people and of historical life and time, with all kinds of rules for people to live by and that sort of thing. And there was a time when a great monster named Vritra had closed all the waters of the Earth, and so there was a drought, a terrible drought, and the world was in very bad condition.

Well, it took this god Indra quite a while to realize that he had a box of thunderbolts there, and all he had to do was drop a thunderbolt in Vritra and then blow him up. And when he did that, of course, he blew Vritra up and the waters flowed and the world was refreshed. And he said, “What a great boy am I.”

So, thinking What a Great Boy am I, he goes up to The Cosmic Mountain, which is The Central Mountain of The World, and so he decided he would build a New World up there, a New City, and particularly his palace was going to be a palace worthy of such as He. 

So he calls Vishvakarman, the main carpenter of the gods, and gives him the assignment to build this palace. So Vishvakarman goes to work, and in very quick order he gets the palace into pretty good condition, and then Indra comes, but every time Indra arrived, he had bigger ideas about how big and grandiose the palace should be.

So finally Vishvakarman says, “My gosh,” he says, “we’re both immortal and there’s no end to his desires. I’m caught for life.” So he decided to go to Brahma, known as The Creator, and complain. 

Well, now, Brahma sits on a lotus, this is the symbol of divine energy and divine grace, and the lotus grows from the navel of Vishnu, who is the sleeping god, whose Dream is The Universe. 

So here’s Brahma on his lotus, and Vishvakarman comes to the edge of the great lotus pond of the universe, and down, and he tells his story. Brahma says, “You go home,” he says, “I’ll fix this up.”

So next morning, at the gate of the palace that’s being built there appears a beautiful blue-black boy, with a lot of children around him, just in admiration of his beauty. So in comes the boy and Indra on his throne, he’s the king god, he says, 

“Young man, welcome, and what brings you to my palace?” 

“Well,” says the boy, with a voice like thunder rolling on the horizon, “I have been told that you’re building such a palace as no Indra before you ever built” 

And he said, 

“I’ve surveyed the grounds and looked things over, it seems this is quite true. No Indra before you has ever built such a palace.” 

Well, Indra says, 

“Indras before me! Young man, what are you talking about?”

The boy says, 

“Indras before you?” 

He says, “I have seen them come and go, come and go.” 

He said, “Just think: 

Vishnu sleeps in the cosmic ocean, the lotus of the universe grows from his navel. 

On there sits Brahma The Creator. 

Brahma opens his eyes, A World comes into being, governed by an Indra. 

Closes his eyes, The World goes out of being. Opens his eyes, the world comes into being; closes his eyes 

… And the life of a Brahma is 432,000 years, and he dies. 

The lotus goes back, another lotus, another Brahma. 

And then think of the galaxies beyond galaxies in infinite space; each a lotus with the Brahma sitting on it, opening his eyes, closing his eyes with Indras. 

There may be wise men in your court who would volunteer to count the drops of water in the oceans of The World, or the grains of sand on the beaches, but no one would count those Brahmas, let alone those Indras.”

And while he’s talking, there comes in parade across the floor of the palace an army of ants in perfect range. 

And the boy laughs when he sees them. 

And Indra’s hair goes up, and he says to the boy, “Why do you laugh?” 

And the boy says, “Don’t ask unless you are willing to be hurt.” 

And Indra says, “I ask. Teach.” 

The boy says, “Former Indras, all. 

Through many lifetimes they rise from the lowest conditions spiritually to highest illumination, and then they drop their thunderbolt in Vritra, and they think, 

‘What a good boy am I,’ and down they go again.”

And then Indra sits there on the throne and he’s completely disillusioned, completely shot, and he thinks, well, let’s quit the building of this palace. 

He calls Vishvakarman and says, 

“You’re dismissed, you don’t have to” so Vishvakarman got his intention, he’s dismissed from the job and there’s no more house-building going on. 

And Indra decides, “I’m going out and be a yogi and just meditate on the lotus feet of Vishnu.” But he had a beautiful queen named Indrani, and when Indrani hears this, she goes to the priest, the chaplain of the gods, and she says, “Now, he’s got this idea in his head, he’s going out to become a yogi.” “Well,” says the Brahmin, “come in with me, darling, and we’ll sit down and I’ll fix this up.”

So he talks to Indra, they come in and they sit down before the king’s throne, and he tells him, “Now, I wrote a book for you some years ago on the art of politics. You are in the position of the king. You are in the position of the king of gods. You are a manifestation of the mystery of Brahma in the field of time. This is a high privilege, appreciate it, honor it, and deal with life as though you were what you really are.” And with this set of instructions, Indra gives up his idea of going out and becoming a yogi, and finds that in life he can represent the eternal in the way of a symbol, you might say, of the Brahmin and the ultimate truth.

So each of us is, in a way, the Indra of his own life, and you can make a choice, either to go out in the forest and meditate and throw it all off, or stay in the world and in the life either of your job, which is the kingly job of the politics and achievement, and as well in the love life with your wife and family, you are realizing the truth. Now, this is a very nice myth, it seems to me.

BILL MOYERS: Do we ever know the truth? Do we ever find it?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, each person can have his own depth experience and some conviction of being in touch with his own satyananda, his own being, true consciousness and true bliss. 

But the religious people tell us we really won’t experience it until we go to heaven, you know, till you die. 

I believe in having as much as you can of this experience while you’re alive.

BILL MOYERS: Our bliss is now.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: I think in heaven you’ll be having such a marvelous time looking at God that you won’t get your own experience at all. 

That’s not the place to have it. 

Here’s the place to have the experience.

BILL MOYERS: Here and now.