Abstract
Gabriel was sorry. He had not meant to provoke Tilda. As indemnification, he wrote an email, apologised and offered her an opportunity to accompany him to the Barcelona symposium, which he was scheduled for next month, along with some sightseeing like they had done in London. This symposium had the strange name Post-Normal Science Symposium, and he was interested in what it would be about. Tilda obviously shared his curiosity because she gracefully accepted his apologies and even helped him to create the poster that he was to present there on a panel. Shortly before the day of their departure, Gabriel watched telly and switched to ARTE because nothing else was on the usual channels. There, he got lucky: He watched a fantastic personality feature of Freddie Mercury. He thought it was very moving and nicely put together. The loveliest part was about the piece that Freddie did with Montserrat Caballé.
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Gabriel was sorry. He had not meant to provoke Tilda. As indemnification, he wrote an email, apologised and offered her an opportunity to accompany him to the Barcelona symposium, which he was scheduled for next month, along with some sightseeing like they had done in London. This symposium had the strange name Post-Normal Science Symposium, and he was interested in what it would be about. Tilda obviously shared his curiosity because she gracefully accepted his apologies and even helped him to create the poster that he was to present there on a panel. Shortly before the day of their departure, Gabriel watched telly and switched to ARTE, the European public service channel dedicated to culture “Association Relative à la Télévision Européenne”, because nothing else was on the usual channels. There, he got lucky: He watched a fantastic personality feature of Freddie Mercury. He thought it was very moving and nicely put together. The loveliest part was about the piece that Freddie did with Montserrat Caballé.
For Gabriel, it came right on time because the album was titled Barcelona. The city was the hometown of Montserrat Caballé, and “Barcelona” was the name of the first great song they produced together. Such talented singers—and both dead already. It was a pity. However, Gabriel suddenly knew exactly where to go with Tilda for sightseeing: He would show her Montserrat Abbey, which was close to Barcelona. He knew that there was a local express train from Barcelona to Montserrat going every hour. The next day, he bought the album.
The Spanish Case
Adsila Idrissi had missed the coastal Vinolas bus connecting the little holiday village Canyelles Petites to Roses in the North of Catalonia where the Pyrenees fall into the Mediterranean Sea. Her kids would not get their supper in time. Probably, Aisha Maria had not done her homework yet and would fall back in school. Little Vaclar was probably asleep already despite his grumbling tummy.
Adsila sighed sadly and started her solitary walk along the rocky coastal path. It had been her last day as kitchen helper in the little beach bar. They closed in September but would open again in May. What to do in between? How to survive? There were no jobs once the tourists were gone, not even in Barcelona. She had already been to the agencies over there. However, since her husband has left her last winter, she was the only worker in her family. And she did not have any education. Nor could she speak Spanish. Nor did she have official refugee status. Nor anything she could count on as helpful. Except the priest. He was now in jeopardy with his dioceses because he had helped too many single, unemployed mothers with non-Spanish backgrounds, like her. She had an appointment with him this evening. But she knew that he could not do very much for her any longer. Shiveringly, she drew her Dschellaba close around her, fighting her way against the strong coastal wind called Tramontana. The few people passing her on the coastal path certainly had her down as Muslima, though she was a Christian, which was why her government had thrown her out of Morocco.
Her husband had worked on an orphan project near Fez. They had to leave their foster children behind when they left the country. So much the better because now they would have only shared poverty and mobbing at school from racism with their kids. When she reached the priest’s house in Castello d’Empuries two hours later, having finally caught the Moventis bus from Roses to Figueres, she was exhausted. “Did you eat?” the priest asked compassionately. She shook her head, not having eaten even though she had spent the whole day close to the oven where tons of food had been processed. But she was not allowed to take something away. He brought some bread, olive oil and tomatoes with a glass of red wine, Tres Fincas, from the local Cooperativa at Palau-Saverdera. Then, he put some money on the table between them. “This is some of what I got from last Sunday’s church collection in our basilica. You know that we do not have regular income through that. But last Sunday was good. You can buy Aisha new sports clothes at Decathlon. Her old ones are torn, and she is mobbed by her classmates because of it.” Adsila took the money gratefully.
The priest was the only one helping her. And now, her only friend and supporter was transferred to Germany by his bishop because of financial irregularities. A joke. He was the only one daring to help out. He was her one and only support. But today, he had another message for her, which took her by surprise: “Artificial intelligence might help you to get support from the agencies,” he said. Adsila looked at him questioningly. He had not come across as a techie or even technologically knowledgeable. AI she only knew through Hollywood. Wasn’t Arnold Schwarzenegger, the terminator, an AI machine? “They are introducing social assessment systems where machines decide on your eligibility for certain services,” the priest explained. “I fall through all nets,” Adsila said. “Do not you remember? I have applied many times over the past years. They are done with me. They have me down as permanently unemployed, not employable, not fitting any standard categories for people they can support. I am both a nobody and a singular kettle of fish. I am out. I won’t fit any of their standard cases. The only thing I can hope for is every now and again a temporary employer taking compassion on my specific circumstances. Machines work for standard cases, not for my specific case. Where I am standing, I am alone. How could AI make things better?”
“It is just a plan in Barcelona,” the priest said. “They work on novelty. The Spanish social assessment algorithm will not work with standard profiles. It is supposed to be a case-based system where the algorithm assesses your whole life trajectory, your history and your biography and analyses the complex situation you are in at the moment, how you have come there. Then, it looks at the options and resources of the state, whatever social service can be possibly applied, and tries to find the best match for what the state in its current situation can do for you.” Adsila looked at him. “Do you think it can work?” she asked. “No idea,” replied the priest. Adsila nodded. “If I am assessed by an AI algorithm, I want to be heard. Who am I? Where do I want to go, me and my kids? Who do I want to be? How important is culture and tradition for me, both Moroccan and Spanish? What society do I want to live in? So far, I cannot see that government taking any of this into account. Individual people are not really considered.” The priest had some crema catalana for her as desert. “What will you do?” he asked, wanting to know. Adsila smiled. “I will challenge the algorithm to really mean me. Would be the first guy doing that.”
Angels’ Play
Location:
Heaven between Barcelona and Monistrol de Montserrat. Shared-Office Cloud.
Time:
Real-time GMT, Friday, 16 November 2018, 07:45
Players:
The two angels as before.
Setting:
The cloud is flying in slow motion on automatic control above the train from Placa Espanya to Monistrol de Montserrat.
Both angels are sitting relaxed in their cockpit seats reading the Script and from time to time checking on Gabriel and Tilda, who are aboard the train after having bought some proviant in a little supermarket in Placa Espanya.
TA
(giggling delightedly):
Showtime! Happy to demonstrate that this Spanish trip is a Bede Griffiths intervention. Gabriel and Tilda are not here for fun and sightseeing. They need to realise that Spain is on the agenda for the AI project. Have you read Adsila Idrissi’s case?
GA
(very worried): Yes, sad story, but I am really concerned that Gabriel and Tilda will not survive this trip. Gabriel has severe vertigo. He has never free climbed before.
Is it really necessary to put their lives in danger to make them understand that they follow the chapters of Father Bede’s Essential Writings in their travels?
The worst of the three climbing trails is up to the monastery in this wet and misty weather. They don’t even have proper shoes, only trainers… (shaking its head in dismay)
TA
(regretfully and also a little anxious):
It is in the Script, and I already configured Tilda’s GPS so that it will point them to the steep climb. Climbing vertically up, and nothing else. That is the cave experience. Otherwise, no chance for revelation afterwards (encouragingly). They are tough. It will be super hard, but then da da-da! Divine mystery! Your boy has to see sense, that this is not only about going to India, and all is fine. Think of Adsila!
GA
(consenting): Yes, and by the way, we need to get vulnerable people like Adsila involved in the project. They need to have a voice because they know exactly what is wrong with their current situation and can advise on improvements for the AI.
The two of them harmoniously bend their angelic heads over the Script to reread the next passage of Pater Bed’s Essential Writings.
Experiencing Hardships
Montserrat is a mountain with an abbey for the Order of Saint Benedict at the top of it, just about fifty kilometres away from Barcelona. Montserrat means ‘serrated mountain’ in Catalan. Gabriel and Tilda had bought tickets from Placa Espanya to Monistrol de Montserrat, the little town with a train station at the foot of the mountain.
On the train, which was running through the early morning dew, they had a heated discussion about machines and humans. “I am a bit stuck with the best image for a better society. One favourite dystopia of literature is that we will be bossed around by big brains, superhuman creatures or artificial intelligence that knows better than we do. I think this is crap,” Tilda confessed. “Why is that, Mrs Toelz?” Gabriel asked curiously. “Do you want to be bossed around by a machine?”
“Could we not we learn as much as possible from the temporary leadership of the machines so that we could become more intelligent and powerful ourselves? Look at all these causal processes here, which we only half understand. Maybe machines are better at that. With machines leading, our societies could become better organised than they currently are,” Tilda argued. “Knowledge of those dominating us today could be preserved for our everyday knowledge of tomorrow.” “You must be joking,” Gabriel said. “Your image of a better society should keep the very central idea of liberal democracies where vulnerable groups also have voices and participate in decision-making. There is no need to develop such a control-freak approach with machines taking over.”
Tilda scowled at him maliciously. “Mr David, do you really think that your ideas of involving everybody under your generous guidance and your brilliant mind is better than the far more neutral guidance of a probably even more clever algorithm?” Gabriel looked at her gobsmacked. She had never been so cheeky before.
He was insulted and spent the rest of the journey looking sullenly out of the window. Then, Montserrat came in sight. Gabriel had been at the abbey before. This time, unlike on the other occasions, his plan was not to use the cable car from the train station up to the abbey on the top of the mountain. Most people did that to pilgrimage to the so-called sanctuary of the basilica, Mare de Déu de Montserrat, next to the Benedictine monastery that enshrined the image of the Virgin of Montserrat, one of the famous Black Madonnas of Catalonia.
This time, with Tilda, Gabriel wanted to hike up. He was only a bit worried because they had only a half day for the tour because their schedule had an afternoon poster session at the Barcelona symposium. It was already ten o’clock, and they were still on the train. The hike would start from the train station at Monistrol de Montserrat, covering an altitude difference of about 650 metres while climbing up the steep rock. All tour guides described the Montserrat hikes as difficult and technically challenging. Gabriel had to confess that he was a little concerned: not only distrusting his fitness and footwear, which were just his running shoes, but also his ability to fight vertigo. He had been afraid of heights, especially in the mountains, all his life.
Even Tilda, who dreamily followed with her eyes two big mountain birds flying for some time in parallel with the train, looked a bit awestruck when the Montserrat summits came into view through the mist of the morning for the first time. It was like the Uluru in Australia—a solitary giant stone massif with fantastic shapes and spikes unexpectedly rising up out of nowhere. “We will hike all the way up there,” Gabriel told Tilda. “Fantastic!” she exclaimed with a grin. She was of course delighted, being such a sports person.
At the train station, the Internet on their mobiles showed them a few trail options. Gabriel selected the easiest one and started to hike up. However, they wandered around for about half an hour without finding access to the chosen trail. They met a man with his dog, the only others far and wide. He looked at the two of them doubtfully and said, “Unfortunately, only the most difficult hike is accessible from here if you do not want to go back to Monistrol.” Gabriel sighed and said, “Please show us; we will try to make it before we get completely lost.” The man looked as if he thought he would never see them again alive.
The first thing that Gabriel did on that difficult trail was put his left foot into a pulpy sand puddle and get soaked to the socks with red-yellow water, which coloured his trainers nicely. Tilda just shook her head in dismay. Hiking some time on a plateau while talking to each other about their families brought them to the feet of the rocks, and then it was just climbing straight up for 600 metres to the 1300-metre heights of the abbey. It felt as if they were the first and only human beings in this world.
There was not a single soul around them but some butterflies. It was like Adam and Eve in paradise. Tilda was very considerate and careful after Gabriel told her about his vertigo. Only once did he have to tell her off. She said “Good that it is so misty and shadowy dim, Mr David; otherwise, you would be aware of the many hundred metres of mountain steeps sloping right under your feet.” “Be silent!” Gabriel told her a little rudely, but it was just mortal fear. It was only with a shaky balance that he could fight terror and blind panic. The merciful mist, however, made the rocks a little slippery. He was indeed grateful just to see what was immediately in front of his eyes and could not care less about missing the view.
Amazingly, the mist disappeared immediately when they reached the last via ferrata to the abbey where all trails came together, and many people again joined them. Climbing around the last rock corner, they stepped into the full bright light of the sun. Gabriel felt as if reborn coming out of the dark womb of a cave full of trial and physical labour.
However, he and Tilda also shared some ambiguous feelings about returning to civilisation and populated dwellings. Though it was kind of nice because the church bells from the basilica started chiming. Tilda looked at him strangely when he spoke to the bells a little breathlessly: “Yes, we hear you. And we are coming. But slowly, slowly. First we have to eat.” He remembered that song where Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé sing together—“Barcelona.” “The bells are ringing out; they're calling us together, guiding us forever.”
They found a nice place in the sunshine on the sightseeing balcony of the monastery with perfect mountain views to have their picknick, eating the food that they had bought in the little supermarket in Barcelona. They quietly sat there in surprisingly warm weather for mid November, wearing only T-shirts under the sun.
It was good that happy Gabriel could not read Tilda’s thoughts. She still mused about his fitness level. She went for a run each morning and engaged in weight training in her local studio three times a week, the days in between for endurance sports and aerobiosis. Only Sundays were free. On Saturdays, she had an additional pseudo-kickboxing session with a former coach who was now well over eighty and retired. One day without sports is a bad day for her. Wherever she was, the first thing she looked for was a gym. What she deplored deeply were the training discipline and the body consciousness lacking in most people.
“He thinks that because he hiked up the Montserrat, he is a fitness hero. Hilarious,” Tilda thought. “He has nearly no muscles; the few he has are not well defined. Amazing how one can be so slow and not topple over. And he had gasped for air like bellows. OK, he is over sixty. But still. I have my ankle as a handicap, and he is a man. What is wrong with these people is that they do not take sports seriously. They think it is a kind of voluntary leisure time activity rather than a necessity. No ambition.” She sighed and decided to leave him to his illusions.
Angels’ Play
Location:
Heaven above Black Madonna Sanctuary, Montserrat Abbey. Shared-Office Cloud.
Time:
Real-time GMT, Friday, 16 November 2018, 12:45
Players:
The two angels as before.
Setting:
Both angels silently watch their charges make the last hundred metres to the sanctuary, where the goal of the Montserrat pilgrimage for all people is situated: the statue that was fetched from the mountain cave—the Black Madonna of Montserrat. Gabriel had purposeful stride thanks to his familiarity with the surroundings; Tilda, not without apprehension and considerable hesitation, looked appalled at the pilgrim streams flooding the stairs in front of the Madonna high above the church altar.
Then, Gabriel and Tilda sit in the dark church in front of the Black Madonna. Both angels are eagerly checking the scene below for similarity to the chapter ‘The Perpetual Allegory’ in Bede Griffiths’ Essential Writings. Further books of reference, such as travel guides and religious literature, cover the floor around their cockpit seats. The angels are working hard.
GA:
Now they are in the inner sanctuary to finish the chapter. Right in time for them to listen to the Escolania. By the way, this is the music choice of today (it lets its colleague listen to ‘Salve Regina’ with its earphones; TA approvingly nods. The Escolania is the famous boys’ choir of Montserrat Abbey, one of the best boys’ choirs in the world. It will soon be time for their regular singing at midday prayer).
TA
(proudly looking at Gabriel and Tilda, who are utterly exhausted):
I think I managed very well in giving them a hard time and testing them to their limits: rock climbing 650 metres high with long winding passages and then sitting in the dark inner sanctuary in front of the divine mystery. Father Bede will be satisfied. Listen (reads aloud to its colleague from page 31 of Essential Writings, with emphasis)
“In the Paleolithic caves which have been discovered in the south of France, it has been found that there are long winding passages leading from the front of the cave by a difficult and often dangerous path into the inmost recesses of the rock, and there in the darkness of the interior are to be found those drawings of animals which astonish us with their power and beauty.
Why was it that these pictures were drawn in the darkness of the interior where they could only be seen by the light of a torch of moss dipped in animal fat? Miss Rachel Levy in her Gate of Horn has given us the answer. The pictures on the wall were the sacred images by means of which it was believed that human beings could enter into communion with divine powers, and the long, winding, difficult passage to the interior represented the dark and difficult approach to the divine mystery. We find this symbolism continued all through Neolithic times, in the megalithic temples and in the ritual dances of primitive peoples today; always there is the laborious approach to the sacred place where the encounter with the divine mystery is to take place. …
Thus, from the earliest times of which we have any knowledge, it seems to have been understood that our life in this world is a journey toward God. … It is the passage from the outer to the inner world. … All these stories are symbols of the same mystery of the search for God which is at the same time the return to our true home. It is represented sometimes as a new birth. … Always it has been understood that our life in this world, as Keats said, is a ‘perpetual allegory’; everything has meaning only in reference to something beyond.”
GA
(a little piqued on behalf of Mother Mary):
Do not you think that “drawings of animals” is something other than the Black Madonna? Look, this is Our Lady of Montserrat, La Jerosolimitana. St. Luke himself carved this statue with Mother Mary sitting as his model and him using the carpentry tools of St. Joseph. Later, St. Peter brought it from Jerusalem to Barcelona.
TA
(looking doubtfully at the text in its lap):
OK. But it is a sacred image, nevertheless. What happened to the statue next, by the way?
GA:
When Barcelona was under attack by the Muslims in the eighth century, Our Lady was taken to the nearby mountains, hidden in a cave and forgotten until two young shepherds saw a strange light and heard angelic singing in the mountains. They alerted some church guys, and entering a cave on the serrated mountain, they found the source to be the Black Madonna. The Santa Cova, her holy cave, is just below the sanctuary.
TA
(suddenly feeling huge compassion with Tilda, who looks around shyly):
Blimey. Did it really have to be a Black Madonna as a sacred image? This is so Catholic! Could not anything more interreligious be used? I would have thought that Father Bede with all his Indian background would have chosen something else instead.
GA
(shaking its heard and fetching a book by Matthew Fox from the floor, citing):
“Every archetype has its seasons. They come and go according to the deepest, often unconscious, needs of the psyche both personal and collective. Today the Black Madonna is returning. The Black Madonna is the transcendent Kali-Mother, the black womb of light out of which all of the worlds are always arising and into which they fall, the presence behind all things, the darkness of love and the loving unknowing into which the child of the Mother goes when his or her illumination is perfect.”
TA
(again satisfied):
OK. Right. There you have it. But Tilda will still have a hard time digesting this.
On a Miracle Tour
Tilda’s sitting in a church was just too funny. She felt so awkward. “This is my first time in years sitting in a church,” she whispered uncomfortably. Gabriel soothed her: “My regular and very frequent attendance suffices for the two of us. You’re OK.” Tilda’s opinion of Black Madonnas was written clearly on her face: How could an academically trained man such as Gabriel be so superstitious? Seeing all these poor, misguided people crawling on their knees up the last steep passages to spend a few individual seconds in front of this ugly little statue with a totally dark female face. She hissed into his ear: “Pure idolatry writ large! To think that staring at an odd sculpture or, better, even touching it—disgusting—will help them in their sorrows and heal their medical diseases. Can it get worse? Do not these Catholics have this thing with the golden calf and the commandment not to dance around it? And we right in the middle of it.” They were all sitting in front of St. Mary’s shrine with pilgrims crawling up there by the minute when the light suddenly first faded entirely and then came on with full brightness on the shrine. Obviously, a power outage: The whole church full of people sighed in holy shuddering. Gabriel mockingly whispered into the ear of Tilda: “A miracle! Mary!” He felt joking was just necessary to break the spell of awe. Tilda relaxed a bit after that.
She was not the only funny thing in church. There was a man in uniform who was supposed to get the pilgrim crowd under control. He constantly hissed at people with a sharp “shhhssst!” He must have been especially trained for that because not even Gabriel with his cantor education could have produced such a penetrating sound. However, the man achieved at least a reduction in the noise that these hundreds of people were making, who had come to hear the boys’ choir for its daily Angelus singing at one o’clock. Then, the choir filed in. They sang just awesomely. It was a rendition of ‘Salve Regina’ that Gabriel had never heard before. The quality was perfect. Gabriel held up his mobile high to record them.
While they went back to Monistrol, this time by cable car, Gabriel, who was very tired by then and wanted to have some peace and quiet, opened the Bede Griffiths book, which was in his rucksack.
However, after having read the few pages after where he had stopped reading last time, he went white and gave the book to Tilda. She read the two pages on the “perpetual allegory.” “Very obvious,” she said. “We have again ‘lived it through,’ right? This is what we did.” Gabriel agreed. “No wonder that we had missed all the easier-to-hike trails, because this is what the book had advised. It had to be the hardest way up. We have made a three-step breakthrough: From obscure, misty subconscious being through hard work, pain and endurance to full light, deep insights and finally to unity.”
For Gabriel, it was crystal clear: Tilda and he were somehow following the path in Essential Writings, by Bede Griffiths. This had various implications. For example, he was pretty sure that they would have to go to India at a certain point. Furthermore, unfortunately, it was not only following that book as in reading. He said to Tilda, “It is ‘autoethnography,’ Mrs Toelz. We have to live through it to get a real understanding.” “What?” she asked. “It is a social science research method,” Gabriel explained. “You know what ethnography is, right?” Tilda nodded and answered, “An ethnographer investigates the behaviours of foreign people. For data collection, he or she, for example, goes to a little Indonesian island to observe the native population in their daily activities, sometimes sharing their life for some time to get familiar with everything, returns home and writes a scientific treatise about them telling stories about their life.” “Correct,” Gabriel agreed, “in autoethnography, data for your research is coming from yourself: from your thinking and from your writing. You are the foreign creature under investigation. You use self-reflection to explore your personal behaviour and experience in a chosen context, and you tell a story to explain it to others.”
“And this is why I have to crawl up mountains with you, nearly dying?” Tilda asked indignantly. “We are carrying our skin to market. I am sure I can make myself understandable. I am not very happy with that. The whole approach is preposterous. Much too personal. And to prove exactly what point? These autoethnographers must be joking. We were overdoing it a little for my tastes sitting in this dark overheated church like in a cave surrounded by tons of medieval rocks. Suffocating. And the hike was much too dangerous. We should be happy just to have survived this, Mr David.”
She was warming to her fury and got louder and louder. “And, finally, it is a weird idea that we have to undergo many hardships, even a death experience, to move from darkness to light. Even a bit cynical,” she observed. “It seems as if the bad is necessary to come up with the good. What about the current bad state the world is in? Is it only a transitional stage to a better one? How can we reach the good life? Is it only through hardships that we can achieve any improvement? Can we honestly tell people that suffering is a necessary part of a generally sense-making and positive process? When does this become merely cynical in the face of evil, pain and suffering? People really suffering might find that cynical.” “Yes, me, for example.” A woman with two children sitting next to them unexpectedly joined their conversation. “My name is Adsila,” the woman continued, introducing herself. “I heard you talking, and I must agree with this young lady. I have no money and no job. I am a foreigner, and I am a single mother. I am completely in the hands of social services. But they refuse me basic provisions. My life is a constant hardship. Do not tell me that this is good for anything.”
The Birth of a Project
The woman told them that she was on her way to Barcelona to speak to a social service agent about her needs. “Maybe for the last time, a human agent,” Adsila laughed. “They have a pilot project running in that agency to let the case history be done by artificial intelligence.” Tilda got very interested and took down the woman’s contact details. “We are from an international aid organisation,” she explained, “always on the lookout for interesting topics. We might put together a research project about this AI-based social welfare approach and speak to you again. We need your expertise. You seem to be quite in favour of the machine approach.” “A machine cannot be more unfair than anybody I’ve had to deal with so far. But nobody would do science with marginalised people like me. I’m nobody. Me and my concerns have no voice. There is no safe space where I could even speak my mind,” Adsila muttered. Gabriel eagerly looked at Tilda. A project idea was just born in his mind.
Tilda, however, was not responsive. She was very silent, very thoughtful and completely exhausted, both in body and in soul. She leant in her corner of the train seat and dreamt while looking out the window. For her, that they were somehow living out the chapters of Essential Writings one by one was hard to swallow. When she suddenly asked Gabriel for the next chapter, he refused: “I do not read the book as a whole, having strong feelings of reservation against that. Instead, I carry the book with me at times only to open it at special occasions.” “What makes these situations special?” Tilda wanted to know. He could not explain but assured her: “I know whenever it is time to read a few more pages.” She was not satisfied with that answer and, against his resistance, fetched the book out of his rucksack. “Let’s see,” she said. “What’s next? Oh, boring. Chapter called ‘Science and Wisdom.’” “Put it back,” Gabriel demanded, trying to retrieve the book from her, but she started to read out loud to him. “It is not dangerous. Here, listen to page 102.”
“Modern science … is intrinsically defective both in its principles and in its methods. It is defective in principle because it looks upon the material world as an independent reality, and it is defective in its methods because it treats the material world as though it obeyed mechanical laws which are independent of the law of the Spirit. But in reality, the material world is a part—and an inferior part—of a greater whole. According to ancient tradition, there are three ‘worlds’—the physical, the psychic, and the spiritual—and these worlds are interdependent as an integrated whole.
This is the root cause of the ‘disease’ of modern civilization. … The present state of the world is not due to some defect in the use of science and technology which can be corrected. Western science and technology are based on a false philosophy which has undermined the whole of Western civilization. … There can be little hope therefore that Western science and technology will change their basic character. The only hope lies in a deliberate break with the whole system and an attempt to reconstruct science and technology on a new basis.
This will only come when the Western world has undergone a radical change of consciousness—a change which will probably be accompanied by a breakdown of the present system—and has recovered the wisdom of the ancient world, the world not only of Christian Europe but of India and China and Islam. Unfortunately, India and China and the Arab world are now exposed to the full force of Western science and technology with all its devastating effects. The new world must therefore be the creation of East and West together, seeking to recover the wisdom which has been lost and to advance into the new age now beginning.”
She stopped reading and looked at him, asking, “So what? No consequences from here, right? Nothing we have to do following from this. Do not get your knickers in a twist about that book.” Gabriel groaned. “My dear Mrs Toelz, cannot you see how it all connects?” he asked her. “Bede Griffiths obviously wants us to put together a project around this ‘new science’ he speaks of. Even our Post-Normal Science Symposium is about it.” He cited from the conference flyer in his rucksack: “It says something like ‘escaping mainstream practices of science and look for inspiring new styles of research practice.’ The new science has to be transparent, integrative and inclusive in the sense that it seeks the upstream engagement of vulnerable groups. Values should be at the centre moving into a direction of the democratisation of expertise. The symposium aims at developing support tools for informed multiactor dialogues and empowering marginalised actors.”
He stopped quoting and looked at Tilda. “What this chapter of the Griffiths book tells us to do is apply for a project that will bring forward the idea of reflexivity, inclusion and societal evolution to contribute to the advent of new science and technology. And it was you who was already saying what this project will be about.” Gabriel stopped talking and looked at Adsila, who had listened fascinated.
“Don’t you know that in more and more countries, public administrations are increasingly using artificial intelligence algorithms to decide on the provision of public services such as unemployment benefits, pension entitlements, kindergarten places or social assistance to their citizens?” Gabriel went on: “It is not only in Spain that they are doing it; it is everywhere! Governments hope for greater efficiency and objectivity in applying AI. Data profiles of all of us are thereby analysed and evaluated by machines for decision-making. Profiles are checked by machines to determine whether the people in the profiles are ‘worthy’ of receiving public services. The issue affects us all: whether as recipients, as service providers, as taxpayers, or as members of vulnerable groups excluded from benefits. Social services are government benefits that address people’s vital needs from cradle to grave to alleviate poverty and inequality: Most people will use them (or be rejected from receiving benefits) at some point in their lives. Whether the machine distribution of services works, whether it improves or worsens the situation, is of interest not only to national policymakers but also to all people living in national welfare systems. Can a machine do social justice, and can it do that in all cultures? It is a fascinating topic for an international aid project.”
“And what has this to do with India?” Tilda watched him strangely. She saw that he was determined to kick this off immediately. He would certainly follow up the India plans and all the clues that they had got lately from this Bede Griffiths. He would try to translate all these theoretical insights that they had got over the past period by putting them into practice and try to implement the ideas of Bede Griffiths to help people around the globe. Why not have a project for saving the world? She sighed and stuffed the book back into his rucksack without looking at it again.
Thinking About India
For Gabriel, the Montserrat excursion had been most enlightening. It had been more than helpful for discovering that all their travels seemed to be connected to the exegesis of Bede Griffiths’ Essential Writings. What remained clear to him was the fact that the two of them had to go to India. The new chapter had again confirmed this. There was also the following passage from the editor of Essential Writings, Thomas Matus, which definitely pointed in that direction:
“The parabola of his (Bede Griffiths’) life linked these places—India, Rome and Britain, Subiaco and Camaldoli, Saint Gregory’s Monastery and Shantivanam—like points on a star map, forming a strange constellation, and countless numbers of persons gravitated like wandering asteroids into his own far-ranging orbit, centered on God and on God’s eternal Wisdom, which enters history ‘at many times and in many ways’ (Heb. 1:1). For those who wonder whether there was any symmetry between Bede’s Roman Catholic monkhood and his Indian san-nyasa (“renunciation”), let me summarize the story enfolded in his midlife autobiography, The Golden String, and spun out in his writings from India.”
India should be part of the new project they were obviously supposed to create. And clearly this ashram place of Bede Griffiths’, which was in the south of India. Strange. He had never been there before, and nothing had drawn him to it. India was supposed to be hot, humid and full of very poor people being unfair to each other in their believing in this weird caste system. For Gabriel, India was no place to find happiness.
He was convinced that the so-called holistic or polycentric Eastern societies had not better preserved nature or, with all their community focus, improved living conditions but were often suffering from poverty, inequality and violence, partly due to convictions in underlying ideologies, or were promoting totalitarian approaches enabled by collective-centred policies. Gabriel felt that he was a total Westerner, in spirit and action, in science and religion. He had been educated by Jesuits—or, to be more precise, by Sacré Coeur sisters (that means ‘Holy Heart’ in French), who constitute the female branch of the Jesuits and who also follow the rule of St. Ignatius of Loyola. The most sober, rational and hands-on people that Christian orders have on offer. And now he was supposed to go to India of all places.
Other people his age would have some clue about Upanishads, yoga, Buddhism and stuff because they would have fled to Poona or other ashrams in their midlife crisis to go on perm-meditation with some gurus. The problem was that he did not know anybody over there. If it could have been Delhi, this would have been less of a problem. As a social aid company, B1 would have many connections that he could use. They might even have a cooperation partner over there and a nice, air-conditioned office for him, where his presence would be fully justified by some kind of company secondment work. But a remote location in the middle of Tamil Nadu, South India, at the borders of the river Kaveri, as Essential Writings already relates on its first pages? A place with a few huts called Saccidananda Ashram Shantivanam?
In the evening after the conference had finished, Gabriel and Tilda sat in a little restaurant talking about India and the new project. Even Tilda asked for a glass of white wine. They were in good spirits, having survived their cave adventure. “Mr David, do you have any personal connections to India or to this ashram?” Tilda’s first question hit right on the most sensitive spot. “Erhh,” Gabriel cleared his throat, “there are two striking coincidences. ‘Ananda,’ as in Sac-cid-ananda, is the name of the young organ player with Indian origins who sometimes accompanies my singing in church.” Tilda looked at him disbelievingly. “Probably many male Indians are named Ananda. It means ‘bliss.’ What else?” Gabriel mused. “Then there is Kaveri, the river where Pater Bede’s ashram is close to. Kaveri is also the name of my Indian ‘goddaughter,’ whose schooling I’ve supported for years through the charity organisation of our parish.” Tilda looked even more unconvinced. “Probably many female Indians are named Kaveri,” she said. “Do Ananda and Kaveri, as the only two Indians you know by name, bring you any closer to India? Maybe in your dreams, but I doubt that this is any help.”
“And what is with you, Mrs Toelz?” Gabriel asked rebelliously. “Any personal connections to India?” Seeing Tilda shaking her head, he continues: “Or to the new project idea?” Tilda thought for a long time. Then she replied, “I’ve come across the term safe space before.” Gabriel looked at her curiously. “Once I helped rescue animals from medical experiments, though I was a police trainee at that time myself,” she continued. “One of the activists with a whimpering puppy under her arm just snatched a bleeding rabbit out of my hands when we were persecuted by the police. “I will bring it to a safe space,” she said before disappearing into the dark. “Stop her! Catch her!” the commanding officer shouted, but she was gone. I do hope she reached this safe space for the animals. I got heavily disciplined after that night for my refusal to obey orders. That was it for my career with the police. I lost my status as a public servant, my salary, and I got an entry in the police records. Last but not least, I got a dishonourable discharge. However, I did not care. I did not want to obey orders from a state that shelters torturers and not the powerless. I only hope that this activist managed to bring the rabbit and the dog that night to this safe space.” Gabriel looked at her aghast. That had been one of the longest speeches he had heard from Tilda so far. And she had got really personal.
This provoked some little confessions from his side. “I am not overly happy with this plea to go to India,” Gabriel related to Tilda. “Why is that, Mr David?” Tilda asked, then continued: “What is it precisely that you are not happy with?” Giving it some consideration, he replied, “My biggest problem is that, of course, all these revelations will not come for free. As far as I know about these epiphany stories, they all end with a so-called mission and a call for responsive action. I seriously—and anxiously—wonder what I am supposed to do as a mandate in exchange for all this spiritual apparentness.”
Seeing Tilda’s questioning glances, Gabriel also confessed, “And of course, Mrs Toelz, whether I have to do it with you or whether you just happen to be at the right place at the right time.” Things were definitely getting difficult. “What can this mission be about?” he asked. “The only sure thing is that this is about relationship.” “What makes you think so?” Tilda asked. “You have totally lost me.”
Gabriel swallowed and moved away from theology and towards a more painful subject, more painful because it was more personal: “In the moment, I am mistrusting the message. All this spiritual stuff could well be just flirting with you behind the veils of a big lie about the greater common good.” Tilda started to laugh. “I would not totally discard this possibility,” she said. The next bit of laughter that she had happened after Gabriel confessed: “And I do not like the idea of going to an ashram, because the Bede Griffiths book seems to suggest it as next thing to do. I do not care to belong to these middle-aged people spiritually awakening and serving themselves on the world market of pseudo-religious offers, doing yoga day and night and permanently rhapsodising about Buddhism and Eastern holism without having a clue what they’re talking about.” She was already laughing with tears in her eyes when he continued to honestly speak his mind: “This mostly concerns women anyway, and it all disagreeably reminds me of the Julia Roberts movie Eat, Pray, Love, which is nothing but a great gift of idiocy and disgust!”
“Holy shit,” Tilda said. Still suspiciously giggling, she more or less convincingly said, “Mr David, I do not expect you to go Julia Roberts–like,” which was kind of nice of her. However, the next revelation about Gabriel’s idea of an Indian ashram sent her into another fit of uproarious laughter. “You know, people there are constantly having sex with one another for spiritual reasons. I really do not feel like that. And should I not comply with their sexual inclinations all the time, they might complain that I do not fully support the unity of humankind,” Gabriel revealed, desperately sharing his worst fears.
When she had finally stopped laughing, which Gabriel fretfully observed, she soberly recommended a novel to him to get a little more relaxed about issues like this. “Read D.H. Lawrence,” she advised. “Mr Noon is an autobiographical novel detailing D.H.’s relationship to a girl named Frieda von Richthofen, related to the famous Red Baron. Frieda escaped with D.H. Lawrence in an illegitimate relationship to the North American town of Taos, New Mexico, which is just a few miles away from Santa Fe, to found a kind of new order, with Frieda as the main priestess. This is real. An ashram is nothing compared to that.” “Maybe,” Gabriel opined a little sheepishly, “but why must I read D.H. Lawrence when I actually just want to put together a project about AI-based social service provision?”
This time, they went back home in more unison than last time, when they came back from Sussex. At home in Berlin, Gabriel did two things: First, he watched a YouTube video about Christian ashrams in India recorded by a Jesuit named Sebastian Painadath. This cured him of most of his prejudices. Then, he tried to strengthen his connection to India by buying a little Indian elephant from the fair-trade shop in his parish. It came from a whole collection that they had on sale, where each handmade elephant looked different in the patterns of their little blankets and in colour. His was mostly orange. He also bought an elephant for Tilda. It was mainly green, and he left it on her office desk for Christmas. It was good that he had not seen her when he found it, so that he could not read her mind. Turning the green elephant in her hand, Tilda successfully fought against the impulse to throw it in the wastepaper bin immediately.
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Ahrweiler, P. (2024). The Perpetual Allegory. In: Angels and Other Cows. Artificial Intelligence, Simulation and Society. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-60401-0_2
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