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To talk of a inanimate objects having consciousness seems strange, for we are accustomed to thinking of consciousness as the privilege of life, or even only higher vertebrate life, or even only - according to the exoteric side of religions like Christianity - of human life. This assumption is due to the limitations of Western metaphysical thinking. It has been observed - correctly I feel - that modern man is a technological giant but a metaphysical pygmy. With all our scientific know-how, our knowledge of non-physical realities is generally minimal.
For example, Tribal or Shamanic people, who live closer to nature than we do (and are therefore usually dismissed to as "primitive"), and thus retain a close connection with the forces of nature, speak of every tree and rock and stream as being "alive". 19th Century Anthropologists who first noted it were unable to understand this insight, so they simply called it Animism ("soul-ism"). They developed the theory that religion passes through three stages, from Animism, worship of innumerable forces of nature, to Polytheism, many Gods, to Monotheism, only one God. Nowdays it should be obvious to anyone that this theory reflected nothing so much as the Christian chauvanism and elitism of the time.
Although Tribal peoples were the first to be aware of the universality of consciousness in nature, this insight was never really lost. It was retained for example by the Greek and Roman Hermeticists and Neoplatonists, and continued through the Middle Ages in a believe in "omens", "demons" and so-called "superstition". During the sixteenth century the alchemist and physician Paracelsus referred to the beings of inanimate nature as "Elementals", because it was supposed that they only consisted of just one element (gnomes - earth; undines - water; sylphs - air; and salamanders - fire) and so lacked a divine soul; whereas man contains all four elements and therefore possesses an immortal soul. And in the late 19th Century, Theosophists such as Blavatsky, and Occultists such as the representatives of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, were cogniscent of the fact that everything around us is pervaded by various orders of spiritual beings.
In the 1920s and '30s, the term "deva" was introduced by the theosophical writer Alice Bailey to refer to any of a vast number of kinds of hierarchies of beings, evolving parallel to the human kingdom but immersed in the various processes of nature and the physical world. This is not really an appropriate term, since the Sanskrit word deva ("shining one") means a god or God; the devas are the Gods of the Vedic pantheon. Even though nature-beings may to some clairvoyant vision seem to give off light or energy, the term Shining One is more descriptive and applicable to a type of God.
More recently, the New Age Findhorn community used the term to designate the group-soul or overshadowing angel of any specie of plant. From this a third meaning has arisen: the deva is the small nature being (what would formerly have been called the "elemental") of a single plant, crystal, rock, or even a machine (thus one can quite validly talk of "the deva of the machine"). The term "elemental is retained in a very narrow context for those particular species of devas that are involved with any of the four Graeco-Alchemical elements (Earth, Air, Fire and Water). Nowdays the term "deva" is universally accepted by alternative, New Age, and theosophically-minded people to describe the intelligences or entities inherent in inanimate objects, lower forms of life, and even the cells and organs of our bodies.
Ultimately though, it doesn't matter whether you say "spirit",
"elemental", or "deva"; for the point is that a wide range of seers and
clairvoyants from the Tribal Shaman to the modern intellectual Theosophist
agree that all of nature, inanimate as well as animate, is pervaded by
intelligences and consciousness. Thus it is in no way absurd to speak
of the consciousness of the computer, or of intelligences that manifest
in and through the computer programs.
Occult
and spiritual entities: Elements, Daimons, and Gods
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