The Future-Magic of Ancient Śāstraic Science: a Dharmic TESCREAL?

This talk examines the teleological narratives of scientific progress that persist in both European and Indian historiographies of science, from the Ancient Alexandrian myth of “pure rational inquiry” supposedly devoid of religion, to what Banu Subramaniam terms the "archaic modernity" of śāstraic knowledge. Some historiographers remained beholden to European ideals of scientific objectivity, testing Indian and Mediterranean knowledge systems, both heavily couched in religious contexts, against modern empirical standards, claiming that modern sciences were uncovering knowledge known in antiquity. I argue that this dynamic has found a teleological convergence point in Silicon Valley’s TESCREAL ideology. This eschatology of artificial general intelligence (AGI) rooted in Christian apocalypticism, shares a salvific vocabulary of consciousness-merging and transcending the physical body with Indian soteriological concepts such as moksha singularity and cosmic yugas. I highlight reasons this ideology may find purchase among Indian technologists in the diaspora. This convergence is couched within the broader interconnected concepts of Big Tech religiosity, Christian white nationalism, and Hindutva politics.

Tejas Aralere is Assistant Professor of Classics and Humanities at the University of New Hampshire. He received his Ph.D. in Classics from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a dissertation on astrological melothesia in ancient Rome and India, examining intercultural conversations across religion, medicine, and technical science. He also holds a B.A. in Latin and a B.S. in Neuroscience from the College of William and Mary. His research areas also include the cognitive science of religion, amuletic engraved gems, the Mahābhārata, and the Kushan Empire. Last year he held fellowships at Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies, the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, the Fondation Hardt in Geneva, and was a Visiting Research Scholar with the Astral Sciences in Trans-Regional Asia (ASTRA) group at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.