Life Framework

There are two people I admire more than everyone else currently. Buckminster Fuller and Sadhguru. While these two are individuals, I’m referring to them as the “Crème de la crème” of the two seemingly separate spheres which human life seems to have always existed in - the external, and internal. The technological and industrial edge of the ‘west’ and the internal and spiritual edge of the ‘east’. Modern science and ancient wisdom.

In yoga, it is famously stated that there are four paths. Karma, gnana, bhakti and kriya. That is, body, mind, emotion and energy. That if you use all of these properly, you will be in yoga (union with the universe). Let us look at these four briefly:

1. Karma: This is about selfless, intense action. If it is for the self, it creates karma or bondage. If it is for everyone except you, it frees you.
2. Gnana: This is honesty basically. Being honest to yourself first and then to others. Easier said than done.
3. Bhakti: This is devotion or love, to put it simply.
4. Kriya: This is using your ‘prana’ to its fullest. It’s a bit of a curve ball as it is not graspable by any scientific instrument other than the human body. In the Indian lexicon, the word ‘prana’ is often used interchangeably with ‘life’. This layer of the human body is where most of the Indian traditions root from - the temples, deities, various yogasanas, etc.

In Buckminster Fuller’s book Critical Path, there is a chapter by the name ‘Geoscope’. The chapter details three problems he sees humanity being currently caught up in. These problems being:

1. Invisibility of reality: Reality used to be all that could be seen, heard, tasted, smelled or touched. But after electron was discovered, industry completely switched from being a brain-sensed reality to a reality apprehended only by instruments, comprehended only by trained individuals.
2. Hyper-specialization: This is the observation of how humanity has been kept divided globally by intentional design so as to keep the global power structures safe. Akin to the story of ‘Blind men and the Elephant’. Thus making a few humans overadvantaged instead of the many becoming regeneratively ever more universally advantaged.
3. Humanity’s inability to see more than a very limited number of rates of motion: “Humans cannot see humans growing either bodily or as local hu man tissue. Humans cannot see the motion of the hour and minute hands of the clock or of the physical growth of trees. Humans can realize only ret rospectively that they have grown because their clothes no longer fit. Hu mans find that trees have grown because yesteryear’s view has been cut off —99.9 percent of what humans can “see” comprehendingly is the belated aftereffects of what happened.”

The solution to all the three problems, as implied by Bucky, respectively are: Synergetics, World Game, and Geoscope. Synergetics is Bucky’s magnum opus publications, with sub-title “Explorations in the geometry of thinking” on the front cover. It lays bare the aforementioned “invisible reality”. World Game is Bucky’s alternative to the current ‘World War Game’ being played by humanity. It asks of the player to try to figure out global solutions which will work for all instead of some. Geoscope is a tool which Bucky proposed which will make it possible for humanity to see itself, and where it is going. So it can effectively re-route its actions towards where it wants to go.

Interestingly, all of this seemingly aligns almost perfectly with the 4 yogic paths. Synergetics is the practical version of the yoga of emotion. I know, sounds weird. But the truth is that grasping reality makes you love it. Synergetics makes ‘love’ a scientific reality rather than a moral dilemma.
Geoscope is the global-scale model of gnana yoga or honesty. If you so clearly see a graphical trend on a metric, there is no way to lie to yourself about it. World Game is karma yoga in the most amazing way. Both of their premise is built on the orientation of the individual towards the well being of all. World Game makes it a game-plan instead of theory.

So we have World Game, Geoscope, Synergetics and Kriya Yoga.

In the same book ‘Critical Path’, Bucky has specified ‘World Game’ as a software meant to be played on the hardware of the Geoscope. (he mentioned dymaxion map as the ‘playing field’, and geoscope as the ‘scorecard’). Similarly, we find Synergetics is “geometry of the mind”, and Kriya yoga is “geometry of the body”. So we can go ahead and make up such a table using those observations:

Software	Synergetics	World Game
Hardware	Kriya Yoga	Geoscope
Goal	Mukti	Utopia
Kind	Subjective	Objective
Type	Internal	External

Also, if we need to simplify it further, we can say from a “meditational” point of view, that when your eyes are open, it is World Game x Geoscope. When eyes are closed, it is Synergetics x Kriya Yoga.

Because I landed on these 4 by combining the observations of the two people I admire the most, I deem it as the most complete model of ‘how to live’ there exists for me. I will be sure to update the page as and when I discover more on the same. I have diagrams and flow charts trying to map out things more granularly which I will share as well.