(This essay was published in the Sept. 2004 edition of Vision Magazine, Catalyst for Conscious Living.)

It is often valuable to look at the etymological root of a word before speaking about its meaning. "Technology" comes from the Greek technologia, which means "the systematic treatment of an art." Techno signifies art or craft and logia means systematic treatment. The Greek understanding of technologia, therefore, embraced both aesthetics and practicality. The Greeks intuited that beauty and usefulness are two aspects of a single consciousness.

For the most part, technologia is absent in 21st century technology. One sees the death of techno or art, and the triumph of logia or systematic development and practical application, everywhere. Our technology produces things that may or may not be beautiful. For example, in the state of California, real estate developers have turned the technology of construction into the soulless erection of buildings. Here, in Palm Springs, three to five thousand square foot homes are built practically on top of one another. These homes are meticulously and brutally squeezed together in order to maximize building space. They are ecological and environmental disasters and are nothing less than visual atrocities. If you'd like to view the "perfection" of this building technology, visit Orange County. There you can see the transformation of sensuous, velvety mountain tops into flattened camps of ugly, claustrophobic homes. This is America's current "technology" of building. It is the degeneration of technologia into mere, functional technology.

When technology forgets the beautiful, the results are catastrophic. Beauty keeps us restrained and poised, so that what we systematically develop fits into a balanced whole. Systematic development, when divorced from aesthetic sensitivity, promotes a utilitarian consciousness. Underlying utilitarianism is the urge to accumulate profit. Mere profit eliminates the beautiful so that it can engage in unrestricted, mass production in the hopes of massive profits. This "technology" reflects the sad reality that the profit-motive has abducted all aspects of the creative human being. The uncensored urge for profit has created a deep wound at the core of the human psyche. The wound, revealed in meditative self-reflection, is greed. Greed is the motivator of ill-planned, perverse, and destructive action.

Greed arises in a space wherein the subject, "I," or "me," is separate and independent. The "I," which is an isolated and separate mental-sense, feels a deep lacking, a profound emptiness. The cravings of the anxiety-ridden "I" impose a ruthless demand for gratification. This "I" then systematically performs action without a broad and spacious vision, action that is hurtful to its surroundings. It is action for the sake of something else, action with an ulterior motive. In this case, it is the impulse for money and the things money can buy.

Paradoxically and somewhat refreshingly, the emptiness out of which greed arises is the infinite consciousness of the Self. Tracing the source of the "me-feeling" back into its origin liberates it. This freedom of return to the Self spontaneously empties the anxiety-ridden "I" into the pure-consciousness of the Heart. Dwelling in that sacred region, the human personality heals. Fulfillment is experienced and innocence is resuscitated. The human being learns to function beyond greed. It learns to function in love.

Abiding in the consciousness of the infinite Self allows for a spontaneous re-birth in feeling. This is the birth of devotion. Devotion is the unifying thread between being and action, the space in which logic and intuition exist peacefully. It is a space in which caring is born. The union of being and devotion ushers the human individual into the primordial, ecstatic radiance of the Awakened Heart. In such a liberated consciousness, human beings function automatically in a state of union with everything around them.

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