About Me
My name is Stanislav Panin. I am a scholar interested in the study of contemporary spirituality, social functions of religion and esotericism, conspiracy narratives, and psychological roots of religion. I am also fascinated with programming and digital humanities and explore intersections between humanities, religion, and new technologies.
2025-11-24 | Buddhist Robots
While some religions find the idea of artificial intelligence problematic, Buddhism seems to be pretty comfortable with artificial life. In the past few decades, a gamut of Buddhist authors, including the 14th Dalai Lama, consistently addressed this topic, arguing that people can potentially reincarnate as robots and that robots can achieve spiritual enlightenment. Recently, some Buddhist comminities even experimented with introducing robots in their spiritual practices.
2025-01-19 | Nikolai Berdyaev on Magic
An often overlooked part of the legacy of the Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev is his theory of magic. Here, I discuss Berdyaev's vision of the new Middle Ages as well as his views on magic and its relation to science. In contrast to nineteenth-century rationalist thinkers writing about the disenchantment of the world, Berdyaev predicted the new rise of magic in the twentieth century and gradual transformation of modern science into a new form of magic.
2024-12-01 | Technology and Nature
This essay describes the history of technology as inherently connected to the history of worldviews. The way we imagine and construct technology always reflects our understanding of the universe. The limits of our imagination, our understanding of possible and impossible are defined by the constraints of our worldviews. The influence, however, is mutual: just like worldviews define our technologies, technologies provide a language to describe the world. Consequently, the emergence of new technologies often sparks worldview shifts.