The Human Layer
The Human Layer is a podcast for those who refuse to be optimized, for the builders and breakers at the intersection of emergent technology, political resistance, and the fight for a positive-sum future.
The Human Layer
Reader #1 | Tantra + Tech
In preparation for the upcoming season on Dark Triad Powers, I decided to record some of the core research gathered for pre-production. These passages will also be spun through the Human Layer Knowledge Garden so readers (and the co-hosts ;) can engage with the source text and also expand their understanding of the themes before we record the episodes.
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What happens when ancient spiritual wisdom meets modern technological critique? A surprising resonance emerges that might just hold the key to navigating our current societal challenges.
Drawing from the ancient text, Bhairava Tantra, we explore a counterintuitive approach to negative qualities like anger, jealousy, and greed. Rather than suppressing these emotions, Tantric wisdom suggests observing them with complete awareness—using one pointed attention to penetrate beyond the surface disturbance to access deeper dimensions of understanding. This practice allows for the transmutation of negative energy into positive energy, offering a powerful tool for personal transformation.
This wisdom finds an unexpected parallel in Jaron Lanier's critique of our digital economy. Written in 2012, his book "Who Owns the Future?" warned that the information economy was evolving to systematically devalue human contributions while concentrating unprecedented wealth and power in those controlling the largest networks. His prediction that "ordinary people will be unvalued by the new economy, while those closest to the top computers will become hyper-valuable" feels prophetic a decade later as we witness growing inequality and the commodification of our digital lives.
Both traditions—ancient Tantra and modern technological criticism—point toward the necessity of awareness as the first step in transformation. By acknowledging the dark triad power structures (narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) embedded within our technological systems, we can begin the essential work of transmutation. The problem isn't technology itself but "the way we think about technology"—just as our negative emotions aren't inherently bad but rather energies awaiting conscious redirection.
Ready to elevate your consciousness and develop practical tools for navigating our complex digital landscape? Subscribe now and join us for our upcoming season on dark triad power structures—where we'll say the quiet part out loud and explore pathways toward a more humane technological future.
Okay, today's reading is coming from one of my textbooks from my studies at the Naropa University yoga program and it is called Sri Vishnan. I can never pronounce it, I'm so bad. It sounds great Even though I studied it for a semester the Baha Rava Tantra, and the particular text that I am working with is translated by Swami Saraswati and we are going to look at the. This is the Dharana 101, and it is focused on negative qualities, the season on dark triad forces and all the interesting negative power structures we're dealing with in society at large, but also in our industry. So first up is this one. It's the dharana on the negative qualities. I'm not even going to try the Sanskrit versions. I'm really, really bad at it, even though it's such a beautiful language. So we'll just start with the translation and then go into the commentary.
Crystal :When lust, anger, greed, delusion, arrogance and jealousy are seen within, having fixed the mind completely on these, the underlying tattva or essence alone remains. And here's the commentary. In this dharana, the focus of awareness is on the fires raging within. These are the negative qualities which torture and torment you throughout life until you are completely burnt out and withered by their onslaught. This can be seen in the life all around you as well. However, you can gradually change this situation by becoming aware of these internal forces and focusing your attention on them. In this process, the faculty of the buddhi, or proper discrimination, develops, allowing you to regain control or balance of the mind. This is the main sadhana that everyone has to undergo in life, whether on the spiritual path or not. Spirituality is knowledge about life. It is not anti-life, as many people may think. Those who tread the spiritual path labor very hard to understand that, their true nature and all the facets that govern it. This is why kama, which is desire, krodha, which is anger, lobha, which is greed, and moha, delusion, marha, which is pride, and matsaraya, which is jealousy, are the negative and limiting qualities present in each and everyone. They're the product of the gunas and everyone is subject to them, no matter who or what you are. These qualities are the devils that create a living hell for you. The only difference is that some people are more aware of these qualities within themselves than others, and thereby they are able to manage them. So, in fact, what determines your level of self-control and humanness is this awareness. Therefore, the object of this dharma is to develop awareness of these qualities Whenever anger, jealousy or delusion arise, step back and observe it, just as you would look at your face, your own face, in the mirror.
Crystal :If you observe how you are thinking, behaving, looking, laughing or talking, at that time you will notice a difference in yourself and that will not appeal to you. Basically, you do not like to see these qualities within yourself and you feel uncomfortable when they arise. Moreover, they cause a great deal of imbalance and you tend to lose control of yourself and the situation you are in at those times. Thus, this dharana shows how the defects of human personality can be used as a means to liberate consciousness. This is the very principle of tantra which sets it apart from other religions and philosophies. Apart from other religions and philosophies, they ask you to eradicate greed, anger, jealousy, passion and pride, but they do not tell you how to do it effectively. Over time, you develop a guilt complex because of the inability to manage these negative attributes, which causes further imbalance in your behavior and personality. Tantra, on the other hand, says that these negative traits are also part of the mind, so utilize them, just as you would use the assistance of another thorn to remove a thorn which is deeply embedded in your foot.
Crystal :It would be a lie to say that you never feel anger or jealousy. Accept that these feelings do arise within you and they're also part of nature's law. Wherever there is love, there will be hatred. This is natural. You cannot stop this process, but you can become aware of it. For example, when jealousy arises, focus your mind on it, develop total awareness of this quality through one-pointed attention and penetrate it with your deep, sharp intellect. If you are able to do this, you will suddenly find that your awareness goes beyond the jealousy and enters a subtler dimension, which brings you closer to the essence.
Crystal :In reality, jealousy and all other negative qualities are nothing but subtle forms of energy. When you realize the essence of these qualities, you will realize yourself as well as develop the ability to convert negative energy into positive energy, to convert negative energy into positive energy. The energy is the same in all experiences, whether they are positive or negative, material or spiritual. It is just a question of how streamlined the flow of that energy is. If the flow is scattered, dissipated and disturbed, then it is certain that your experience and subsequently your expression, will be unbalanced. On the other hand, a positive, confident and focused person will exhibit a steady, unbroken and streamlined flow of energy. So this text is going to be one of the foundations of our season on dark triad power structures and one of the things I've been studying for years now, but especially lately, is how to transmute these energies, these negative energies and positive energies.
Crystal :And this text, which was originally written thousands of years ago, is one of the core foundations of the type of yoga that I practice, which is Nandul Shaiva Tantra Tantra yoga. When it was brought to the West, was sexualized and really bastardized. To you know, do what we do in the West, which is commodify it. But if you go back to the ancient text from source, which is in the Kashmir regions of India and that surrounding area, and find good translations and there aren't many you'll see that a lot of these ancient texts are really designed for all of modernity, but especially now, this transmutation of energy, looking within yourself to find the divine, not in some deity in the sky or in some other location, not to denigrate any religion. I grew up in the South, in Christianity, and it gave me an interesting and necessary foundation, and now this tantra actually does resonate much deeper, because now it's just more appropriate and one of the reasons I chose to go back to school again. I go about every decade because I love to learn.
Crystal :The reason I chose to return in my mid-40s to study yoga, and it was an undergraduate bachelor's degree in yoga. It's a thousand hours of yogic studies under one of the most amazing yoga instructors, nadaraja um. His lineage comes from ram das, who started the yoga program at my school one summer in 75 74 um. Basically, this lineage traces back to these ancient texts. So I went back to school to learn a skill set to navigate the world. I knew we were rapidly approaching, which is a world of unpredictable chaos which we all know we're in, and now it's in its acceleration phases. Um. Prior to that, I had studied journalism to better understand the world and my place in it and be able to document it. Prior to that, I just studied outdoor recreation because, I don't know, I started as an education major out of high school and knew I couldn't stay in one place long enough to be a teacher in traditional systems, so I went into outdoor recreation.
Crystal :Anywho, this is just one of the texts that we'll be pulling from Just to get ideas and thoughts and elevate our consciousness as we approach the recording of season one. And yeah, thank you for listening. Hello again. Hello again. We are going to explore a passage in I think it's the first chapter, page 15 from the book um title who owns the future by jaron lanier. He's also the author of you are not a gadget. Highly recommend his work. Don't know exactly what you call his philosophy, but quick context and there'll be more in the Knowledge Garden.
Crystal :But Jaron Lanier was or is a humanist technologist. I don't think that's the actual title he calls himself, but basically he was part of the early Web 1 movement in virtual reality. I haven't dug too deep into his history, I've just listened to him explain his background, and so he was there when a lot of that transition, when that transition was happening from Web 1, where we saw a complete movement of open source builders create the Internet, you know, in combination with the government and universities, as an open source public good. And then he was there when the commodification of Web 2 happened and most of this, or a lot of this technology, was put behind commercial walls, and knows this technology very, very deeply philosophically and technically. So I found his work to be really fascinating and inspiring, because there's a lot of questions about what happens when we get it wrong, and these were written in 2010, 2012. So now we're actually seeing what happens when we get it wrong. And these were written in 2010, 2012. So now we're actually seeing what happens because we did get it wrong. Not to say that we didn't make beautiful things with technology, that's obvious but we allowed the Brolic arcs to consolidate power and well, here we are. So I found this passage.
Crystal :Now I listened to this audio book Driving Cross Country to go visit family this year and knew I had to also work with the hard copy. So I'm reading from the paperback version where I'm going through and pulling out excerpts that will you'll hear woven throughout. You know most of this, these podcast episodes that you'll hear woven throughout, most of these podcast episodes, this one in particular, since we're talking about these dark triad power structures which, just to clarify real quick, a dark triad is a triangle and it is a combination of narcissism, psychosis and Machiavellianism. And we'll get into this much deeper when this season actually goes live, live, but prior to that, there'll be research building up towards it. So you can read along um, and the reason we're talking about it is not to be negative, nelly's um, but you know, what we do is say the quiet part out loud here at the human layer. And in order to do that, to really understand our humanity and how this technology, all technology, but especially emergent technology, how it impacts us as humans and our collectives, our communities, our society as a whole, we need to understand and acknowledge. Understand and acknowledge where the dark parts come from and why brologarcs can consolidate power and try to take over a nation state because they're driven by those powers. So that's why we explore them. Somebody's gonna do it, and hopefully we land in a place where there's deeper understanding and elevated consciousness from all of us which will lead us towards viable solutions. That's the hope. Okay, so let's get into it Again, page 15, and I'll just get to it Again, page 15, and I'll just get to it.
Crystal :The problem is not the technology but the way we think about the technology. I will argue that up until about the turn of this century, we didn't need to worry about technological advancement devaluing people, because new technologies always created new kinds of jobs, even as old ones were destroyed. But the dominant principle of the new economy, the information economy, has lately been to conceal the value of information of all things. We've decided not to pay most people for performing the new roles that are valuable in relation to the latest technologies. Ordinary people share in quotations, while elite network presences generate unprecedented fortunes. Again, remember this was written in 2012, I think, so it's very fascinating. Whether these elite new presences are consumer-facing services like Google, or more hidden operations like high-frequency trading firms, is mostly a matter of semantics. In either case, the biggest and best-connected computers provide the settings in which information turns into money.
Crystal :Meanwhile, trinkets tossed into the crowd spread illusions of false hopes that the emerging information economy is benefiting the majority of those who provide the information that drives it. If information age accounting were complete and honest, as much information as possible would be valued in economic terms. If, however, quote raw information or information that hasn't yet been routed by those who run the most central computers isn't valued, then a massive disenfranchisement will take place. As the information economy arises, the old specter of a thousand science fiction tales and Marxist nightmares will bring back from the dead and empowered to apocalyptic proportions. Ordinary people will be unvalued by the new economy, while those closest to the top computers will become hyper-valuable. We'll be getting into that last passage quite a bit in this upcoming season and we'll also be dovetailing with surveillance capitalism, which is an amazing book, by the way. Okay, back to it.
Crystal :Making information free is survivable so long as the only, the as only limited numbers of people are disenfranchised. As much as it pains me to say so, we can survive if we only destroy the middle classes of musicians, journalists and photographers. What is not survivable is the additional destruction of the middle class in transportation, manufacturing, energy, office work, education and health care, and all that destruction will come surely enough if the dominant idea of an information economy isn't improved. Digital technologists are setting down the new grooves of how people live, how we do business, how we do everything, and they're doing it according to the expectations of foolish utopian scenarios. We want free online experiences so badly that we are happy to not be paid for information that comes from us now or ever. That sensibility also implies that the more dominant information becomes in our economy, the less most of us will be worth Saving the winners from themselves. Is the present trend really a benefit for those who run top servers that have come to organize the world In the short term? Of course yes.
Crystal :The greatest fortunes in history have been created recently by using network technology as a way to concentrate information and therefore wealth and power. Information and therefore wealth and power. However, in the long term, this way of using network technology is not even good for the richest and most powerful players, because their ultimate source of wealth can only be a growing economy. Pretending that data came from the heavens instead of from people can't help but eventually shrink the overall economy. The more advanced technology becomes, the more activity becomes mediated by information tools. Therefore, as our economy turns more fully into an information economy, it will only grow if more information is monetized instead of less. That's not what we're doing. Even the most successful players of the game are gradually undermining the core of their own wealth. Capitalism only works if there are enough successful people to be customers. A market system can only be sustainable when the accounting is thorough enough to reflect where value comes from, which I'll demonstrate is another way of saying that an information age middle class must come into being. Progress is compulsory.
Crystal :Two great trends are colliding, one in our favor, the other against us, balancing our heavenly expectations. There are also countervailing fears about such things as global climate change and the problem of finding food and drinking water for the human population when it peaks later this century. Billions more people than have ever been sustained before will need water and food. We bring the great problems of our times on ourselves, and yet we have little choice but to do so. The human condition is an evolving technological puzzle. Solving one problem creates new ones. This has always been true, and it is not a special quality of present times. The ability to grow a large population through reduced infant mortality rates sets up the conditions for a greater famine.
Crystal :People are cracking the inner codes of biology, creating new amazing chemistries and amplifying our capabilities with digital networks, just as we are also undermining our climate and critical resources are starting to run out. And yet we are compelled to plunge forward because history isn't reversible. Besides, we must be honest about the bad things. We're in lower tech times. New technological syntheses that will solve the great challenges of the day are less likely to come from garages than from collaborations by many people over giant computer networks. It is the politics and economics of these networks that will determine how new capabilities translate into new benefits for ordinary people.
Crystal :Now, this was written right as Bitcoin was coming online or coming into being, and I find this last passage interesting because now we are, you know well, into web3 and crypto and all that fascinating goodness, but what I find fascinating with our technology is the ability to coordinate and for communities, global and local, to find coordination, governance and value exchange mechanisms through an immutable ledger, and I feel like that is one hopefully one anomaly that we can enter into this equation to try and break the cycle that he's talking about. Progress is never free of politics. Maybe the coolest technology could get very good and cheap, while at the same time crucial fundamentals for survival could become expensive. The calculi of digital utopias and man-made disasters don't contradict each other. They can coexist. This is the heading of the darkest and funniest science fiction, such as the work of Philip K Dick, and, just as a side note, we also have these conversations bouncing through our ecosystem now too, with network states and other concepts which I mean to be clear. I found the concept of a network stake fascinating when Balaji first threw it out there, because in a world where a nation state does actually collapse which I've documented a few on the cusp being able to stand up systems like we work with in our world here in crypto is essential. But standing them up at the same time as an existing nation state is really far-fetched. But we don't have to get too deep into that right now.
Crystal :Back to the book.
Crystal :Basics like water and food could soar in cost. Even as intensely sophisticated gadgets like automated nanorobotic heart surgeons float about as dust in the air in case they are needed, sponsored by advertisers. Everything can't become free at once, because the world the real world is messy, software and networks are messy and the sprawling miracle of information, animated technology, rests on limited resources. The illusion that everything is getting so cheap that it is practically free sets up the political and economic conditions for cartels exploiting whatever. Isn't quite that way. When music is free, wireless bills get expensive insanely. So you have to look at the whole system, no matter how petty a flaw might be.
Crystal :In a utopia, that flaw is where the full fury of power seeking will be focused, and that's the end of that chapter. I really find this fascinating to read right now because he's touching on points that he pointed out a long time ago. And yet here we are and seeing them come to life is really wild. Seeing the concentration of power and how that happens because of the network systems that we use, that is absolutely fascinating and something we will explore much deeper as we get into it, and I'm just going to stop there because I've been talking a lot. So thanks for listening and, yeah, talk soon.
