Rishis

Cosmic Storytellers

The Rishi has existed since time immemorial in our culture, but the need to evolve as such has never been so stark as it is in the Age of AI, simultaneously the most dire and also the most inspirational technology that is accelerating into being.

Star Beings

The grandest of storytellers in the Yoga tradition is called the Rishi, a cosmic storyteller that take us back to the stars from where we once came.

The root sound Ri in Rishi is also found in the Sanskrit  Ritam, a cognate of the English word Rhythm.

In other words, a Rishi  is one in tune with the grand Rhythm of Life, or the patterns of existence that play out, and from this lofty perspective crafts a magnificent story that resonates with humanity to spur them on the evolutionary path.

A Rishi has the power to entrance the psyche of an entire civilization with gripping narratives, embedded with timeless wisdom of the Truth of our existence at multiple levels. 

These grand epics give us a sweeping view of a multi-layered narrative of human existence, and have been relevant for as long as Humans have had the curiosity to surface the Meaning of Life.

In the Indian civilization the stars in the night sky are named after Rishis because they provide guidance to navigate our journeys, equally so by explorers on the surface of the Earth and through the journey of Life.

By virtue of identifying with the stars a Rishi thus transcends the grip of mere material constraints and is able to see way beyond normal human vision, as to where humanity came from, and where we should be heading.

This should shed some light on the well known saying that "our Life is written in the Stars", helping us understand where we are in the grand scheme of Life and inspiring us as to where we could ultimately be.

Fate

As is usual when we look at the past through rose-colored glasses, we put these exemplars on an unreachable pedestal which makes the Rishi state seem out of reach for most mortals. 

When we view the Rishi state as unreachable, our life stories fall under the control of inscrutable fate, we doubt whether we actually have free will, and we outsource our destiny to astrologers decrypting star charts.

Worse, we become mere characters acting out some role in a cosmic Virtual Reality game, where our actions are barely under our control, let alone having any deep understanding of the game of Life.

The scripts of our life stories unfold in some seemingly random storyline, usually someone else’s, and if even that is not unclear then “it must be Karma, dude!” in the misquoted sense of being held in the thrall of inscrutable fate.

Manifesto

Our manifesto is to evolve towards a whole new life-form we call Rishi Sapiens, made possible by the coevolution of Humans and Machines, while retaining our human essence that has evolved over millions of years, and simultaneously leveraging our most capable invention yet in AI.

It is in this vein that we are taking a fresh look at the word ‘Rishi’ - not as some unachievable mythical personality that rarely occurs on Earth but quite possible to actualize in this lifetime, as we approach the singularity of AI.