The Net of Nets . . .

C.G.Jung wrote:

"We live today in a time of confusion and disintegration. Everything is in the melting pot. As is usual in such circumstances, unconscious contents thrust forward to the very borders of consciousness for the purpose of compensating the crisis in which it finds itself. It is therefore well worth our while to examine all such borderline phenomena with the greatest care, however obscure they seem, with a view to discovering the seeds of new and potential orders."  [1]

  I would like to suggest that these “borderline phenomena” – are usually ignored, because of the condensed, nuclear space in which they often gestate. Put in other terms, these borders, or liminal states are ignored by the monolithic beams of our conscious mind. Small Things are overlooked, and the Gods of Small Things – are driven to extinction. 

     It is said that Jain monks  sweep the ground in front of them to avoid tramping on insects. It is a Buddhist practice to buy animals that are destined to be slaughtered and eaten, and release them. But there are some living creatures that we find difficult to show compassion to, for example, spiders and snakes. 

"...the family was also respectful of spiders: Mary Berners-Lee hung cotton threads down into the bath tub so fallen spiders could scale the smooth sides."  [2]

   I have personally seen spiders caught in the bath.  I usually use a towel or a cloth to help them to escape. This story would not be so unusual – unless we know who Mary Berners-Lee was, or to be more exact, who she mothered. Her son, is Tim Berners-Lee - inventor of World Wide Web.  I find the connections rather fascinating. Born and raised in London, [ruled by Gemini] - Tim Berners-Lee is an unsung visionary.  His book: Weaving the Web. The Past, Present and Future of the World Wide Web by its Inventor  -[3] published 10 years ago is an important read for everyone involved in the digital/virtual/world web.  He writes:

“Link by link we build paths of understanding across the web of humanity. We are the threads holding the world together.”

These are very beautiful words,  of wisdom, and point towards what we have to work towards, in these terrible and promising times.  How extraordinary then, that another great visionary of the 20^th Century  gives us an almost identical  . . .

"Everywhere on earth there are people of our kind. That for a small part of them, I can be a focal point, the nodal point in the net, is the burden and the joy of my life."  [4]

As these are quotes from a larger work on the Symbolism of the Net, I will only continue with one more example here:.

“Imagine a vast net; at each crossing point there is a jewel; each jewel is perfectly clear and reflects all the other jewels in the net, the way two mirrors placed opposite each other will reflect an image ad infinitum. The jewel in this metaphor stands for an individual being, or an individual consciousness, or a cell, or an atom. Each jewel is intimately connected with all other jewels in the universe, and a change in one jewel means a change, however slight, in every other jewel.” [5]

From this elevated perspective, we more back to Tim Berners-Lee:

“Hope in life comes from the interconnections among all the people in the world. We believe that if we work for what we think individually is good, then we as a whole will achieve more power, more understanding, more harmony as we continue the journey. We don’t find the individual being subjugated by the whole. We don’t find the needs of the whole being subjugated by the increasing power of an individual. But we see more understanding in the struggles between these extremes.” [6]

    These interconnections are very important in a Buddhist  approach to life.  Ideas of networking –preceded the actual emergence of the World Wide Web. In the little magazines I published from 1972 – the word ‘network’ appears consistently. [See Appendix 1] It is thus appropriate, that on this edge of a new decade, and in the midst of an ongoing crisis of confidence in politicians and businessmen  - we might re-examine our own networks – even though the sense of co-operation and sharing has been shot down along with the concept of a Rainbow Nation.  It is not merely enough to network.

Yours sincerely

Samten de Wet

14 January 2010

[1]   C.G.Jung, The Psychology of the Transference, p. 160.

[2]   Scientific American, December 1997, Vol. 227 No.6. p.21.

[3] Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web. The Past, Present and Future of the World Wide Web by its Inventor, Texere, London-New York, 2000. [1999]

[4]   Hermann Hesse, private letter, 1955.

[5]   Mitchell, Stepen, The Enlightened Mind: Harper Perennial, New York, 1991.

[6]   Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web. The Past, Present and Future of the World Wide Web by its Inventor, Texere, London-New York, 2000. [1999]