It was the night before Diwali and she had been back from the hostel the same evening. Happy and excited as one can only be during the festive season. She had chatted away the whole evening animatedly but her ears were on the road. Waiting. Waiting for the sound of the bike stopping. Waiting for the main gate to creak open. Waiting for the door bell to ring. The three sounds had a peculiar note and an octave – a music that no one else could match. As soon as the first note reached her, her body would tense with anticipation and excitement, the second note would bring out the goose bumps all over and at the third note she would occupy herself with something totally irrelevant just to appear as if nothing out of ordinary had happened. As if she wasn’t expecting him. As if she didn’t care. As if… But then the whole world (including him) knew the truth. That he was the person outside family she wished to see first every time on each trip home. That she studiously avoided every outsider until she had seen him. That she grew irritable and withdrawn with each second that passed until he came and set everything right.Her personal God.
Same with today. A slight chill in the air that was shattered with an occasional cracker and the frequent sounds of people heading to the market in preparation for the big day. It has been three hours that she had entered home and the time had come for the clock to go super slow. The animated conversation was drying out…She consoled herself with the thought that he might be out as well buying gifts and sweets for his family. She smiled at the thought because she knew the greater the wait the sweeter was the meeting. But then patience had its own limits especially when the clock was slow. When 3 hours converted themselves into 5 she did something she had never done before. In a carefully packaged conversation she asked her mother about him in general…how he was doing and things like that; making sure not to appear concerned or to make an eye contact. Her mother answered also, without the eye contact with just a plain “Hmmmm” and “this and that” which kind of relieved her. To her it meant that her mother had not understood the significance of the question or the fact that she was almost at bursting point. Bursting to see him. To hear him. To appear unconcerned before him. To see that smile that told her that he knew everything that lay beneath that facade.
But the day passed. Dinner time came and went. The lights were switched off for the day. Her mood (and mouth) was already switched off. She felt tired more out of waiting than out of the journey. She curled up against her mother (another of those holiday pleasures she looked ahead to) and said goodnight. Her mother repeated the greeting but something unsaid hung in the air, in the silence around. After 5 minutes she hears her mother, “Gauri, I did not tell you something…” She turns to face her mother thinking it to something inconsequential happening at the school. Another moment of silence as she thinks again about him and the fact that he made her wait so long and her mother things how to say it across.
“Gauri, sir is no more. He died in a road accident in August”. It takes a moment to register because her mind is teasing her with the images of what the meeting would be like after this long wait. The moment of registration passes too quickly (not slowly as she had seen in Hindi movies). There is no shattering sound or anything to signify that something life changing has just been said. All she hears is her mother sobbing – her mother whom she had never seen crying (or heard crying in the darkness). She holds her mother close as the entire story of the accident (and what happened after and before) comes tumbling out. Her mother says sorry too many times for not telling earlier (obviously she had presumed that the child will not be able to take it well, that too at the hostel). Hearing those sorrys and sobs she is grateful to her mother for having chosen this moment to tell her. At least she can hide her dry eyes and “matter of fact” attitude under the cover of darkness. After a while peace returns. She knows her mother is watching her in the darkness waiting for the tears to flood her eyes so that she can put an arm around and console. But that moment never comes. Atleast not on that night or the next or the one after that.
She closes her eyes and tries to bring out the grief. But it refuses to come. She is reminded of a poem she had read in Standard VII; “Home they brought her warrior dead…she neither swooned nor cried…” She could not recall the rest of the poem but she felt that the only reason these two lines had stayed in her head for these 8 long years so as to block out the grief. But unlike the poem the “warrior” was not her husband and there was no offspring to elicit tears. The warrior here was her Maths teacher from school – her mother’s colleague – a family friend-the “family” outside family. The link between the mother and daughter for his age equaled the sum of their ages divided by two. The link was gone. So was the peculiar music of the bike stopping-gate screeching-bell ringing-body tensing-hormones rushing.
At that moment she realized that the weariness that had been hanging all evening was gone. The weariness that had come because of the wait. No more waiting, no more weariness. Ever… In a way she felt ashamed about it- that she could feel such lightness in the event of a tragedy. She tried to fill her mind with his images –the first time she had spoken to him, the last she had seen him, the Maths-magic he did, his always being supportive of her even when she was wrong, his scoldings, his attempts to get her interested in things other than books…the list was endless. But they were all happy memories – so happy that they had the power to eclipse the reality of a life without him.
After a while she gave up that effort to cry or to feel sad. His memories, words and emotional presence were stronger than his absence. And she knew that if there was anything called as a spirit then it must be right there beside her. With this thought she slept…peacefully. Of course she would miss him but then there were to be no more waits, no more efforts to find ways to see him.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Insights of a layman into Science(Class X knowledge) & Spirituality(Zero knowledge)
Have you ever wondered that how do we know certain things- simply out of the blue? Things that no one taught us but still we know. Like to use our senses or how to have sex (well I am talking about the age before Google and UTube can teach everything and leave nothing to imagination). Where does this knowledge come from?
To answer that let’s break a human onto a three dimensional graph as follows:
a. The X axis represents the physical body
b. The Y axis the mind – that which makes us conscious and;
c. The Z axis the soul – the unconscious self that is a form of energy – our link to higher energies if they exist (that something called as a soul exists – has been scientifically proven and I am not arguing that).
The (0, 0, 0) coordinate- where the 3 axis meet represents any living creature exactly at the time of conception (not birth). Over a period of time (the fourth dimension to our graph) we become what we are – dogs, cats, whales, birds and humans. Even how good or bad we turn out to be depends on the movement across the co-ordinates of the graph.
The soul in pure scientific terms is a small portion of energy lent out by the universe (or God or whatever) to us to make us “aware” and “conscious”. The moment the soul departs the body becomes an empty box and the brain dies out. And the soul, true to the nature of energy (Energy can neither be created nor destroyed-it can only be converted from one form to another) goes back to where it belongs to.
That means a particular soul goes through the same energy conversion process as all the other souls and this means that all of them will have the same kind of properties. And memories. And maybe that answers how we simply know certain things – because it’s all hard coded into our souls. While the brain acts as the ROM- remembering stuff from just this life the soul is our RAM and the body becomes the outer shell…Thinking on these terms makes me think of the possibility of past lives because what we call as life is simply the intersection of body and soul (these two may or may not intersect with the brain thereby giving rise to Newtons, common man and duffers.
Now lets talk about how the fields represented by the three axis (excluding time) actually co-ordinate (or rather “talk” to each other). The brain and the body, talk via the waves generated by the brain and carried around by the nervous system. The brain and soul – the conscious and the sub-conscious interact via dreams. Both the soul and the brain record the happenings of a particular day. Since the soul is much older than has bigger memory than the brain it is in a better position to advise the brain. The dreams thus are a representation of what we sensed over the day – the hidden aspects that we are unaware of.
But how about the body and soul talk? I pondered over this for a long while and realized that they do not speak to each other-or we do not allow them to do so. Ask a God man and he will say that prayer is the means. Maybe they are right, maybe not. After all the concept of “look within thyself” has been around as long as one goes back in history. It’s in the past few 100 years that the concept of “look within thyself” has been linked with Gods and prayers. The ultimate objective even of prayer or meditation is to question your soul, thereby linking ourselves to the higher powers to find solutions.
However, in today’s rat race body soul interaction is slowly becoming a thing of the past. If things go the way they are (with all the information available on web) we might as well stop asking questions to ourselves – thereby stopping the body-soul interaction. I may top the chart of people who say “let’s check on Google” but still others are not far behind. Its far more tempting to digest have readily cooked information than baking your own cake. It quite possible that 50 years down the line children will be born only with one knowledge “check it on Google” and they type in everything right from “how to cry” to “what I do when someone tickles me”. No imagination, no soul searching – just plain database access. And if the database is destroyed they become nothing but damaged robots. The idea may seem laughable but to support this notion lets go into the past. Children who were born 50 years ago were healthier and had better survival skills than those of today, even if the death rate was high. Reason? Access to medication and comforts. The two of them together kill body immunity – thereby making “things” (or people) survive even when they are not the fittest ones. Another example – most of the animals in the wild can fend for themselves within days of being born…compare that to the time a human child takes and you would actually want to die out of shame…
Let’s add another dimension to our diagram – space. Space as in Universe. If scientists are to be believed the universe is expanding every second and time started when space came into existence. What hypnotists do when they hypnotize is that they direct the brain to a visit a particular incident (or space) at a particular point in time.
Thus what we call as memory may actually be very much of a “reality” (or present tense) stored in that space and all the brain has to do is to visit that particular location in space again and again. Since there is an inverse relationship between body and time it’s physically impossible to visit the location (and thus we refer to it as past) but the direct relationship between time and soul/brain makes it possible for them to jump across the time graph. Let’s hold on to this discussion here and move on to the next target –thoughts. They are brain waves…very much measurable – which means that they again are a form of energy. Our actions are based on thoughts thus it is conversion of one form of energy into another. What happens to those thoughts that we consider as alternatives but do not act on for reasons such as non-feasibility, paucity of time or what ever. What happens to the energy of the unused thoughts?
If incidents or actions that we do have storage space in the universe then the same would be true about the unused thoughts. Thus all that we actually did or planned to do is actually happening right now also – it’s just that because of body and time limitations we are unable to visit it. Several scientists have suggested the possibility of “Alternate reality” i.e. in some other reality our unused thoughts have taken the shape of an action. Thus in my real “reality” I would still be a child, a teenager and a married woman. While in an alternate reality number one I would be a child, a teenager and a single woman (because I had an unused thought of not marrying). In alternate reality number two I would only be a child because I killed myself when I decided to cross the road unheeded. In another alternate reality I would be still working in my previous company at this point in time because I was so scared to leave without another job in hand…so on and so forth.
PS : The opinions expressed in the article are solely of the writer. I have tried to make them based out of scientific knowledge but there might be severe loopholes. Also, the writer does not intend to express any kind of disregard or hatred towards the internet,Google or any other company.
To answer that let’s break a human onto a three dimensional graph as follows:
a. The X axis represents the physical body
b. The Y axis the mind – that which makes us conscious and;
c. The Z axis the soul – the unconscious self that is a form of energy – our link to higher energies if they exist (that something called as a soul exists – has been scientifically proven and I am not arguing that).
The (0, 0, 0) coordinate- where the 3 axis meet represents any living creature exactly at the time of conception (not birth). Over a period of time (the fourth dimension to our graph) we become what we are – dogs, cats, whales, birds and humans. Even how good or bad we turn out to be depends on the movement across the co-ordinates of the graph.
The soul in pure scientific terms is a small portion of energy lent out by the universe (or God or whatever) to us to make us “aware” and “conscious”. The moment the soul departs the body becomes an empty box and the brain dies out. And the soul, true to the nature of energy (Energy can neither be created nor destroyed-it can only be converted from one form to another) goes back to where it belongs to.
That means a particular soul goes through the same energy conversion process as all the other souls and this means that all of them will have the same kind of properties. And memories. And maybe that answers how we simply know certain things – because it’s all hard coded into our souls. While the brain acts as the ROM- remembering stuff from just this life the soul is our RAM and the body becomes the outer shell…Thinking on these terms makes me think of the possibility of past lives because what we call as life is simply the intersection of body and soul (these two may or may not intersect with the brain thereby giving rise to Newtons, common man and duffers.
Now lets talk about how the fields represented by the three axis (excluding time) actually co-ordinate (or rather “talk” to each other). The brain and the body, talk via the waves generated by the brain and carried around by the nervous system. The brain and soul – the conscious and the sub-conscious interact via dreams. Both the soul and the brain record the happenings of a particular day. Since the soul is much older than has bigger memory than the brain it is in a better position to advise the brain. The dreams thus are a representation of what we sensed over the day – the hidden aspects that we are unaware of.
But how about the body and soul talk? I pondered over this for a long while and realized that they do not speak to each other-or we do not allow them to do so. Ask a God man and he will say that prayer is the means. Maybe they are right, maybe not. After all the concept of “look within thyself” has been around as long as one goes back in history. It’s in the past few 100 years that the concept of “look within thyself” has been linked with Gods and prayers. The ultimate objective even of prayer or meditation is to question your soul, thereby linking ourselves to the higher powers to find solutions.
However, in today’s rat race body soul interaction is slowly becoming a thing of the past. If things go the way they are (with all the information available on web) we might as well stop asking questions to ourselves – thereby stopping the body-soul interaction. I may top the chart of people who say “let’s check on Google” but still others are not far behind. Its far more tempting to digest have readily cooked information than baking your own cake. It quite possible that 50 years down the line children will be born only with one knowledge “check it on Google” and they type in everything right from “how to cry” to “what I do when someone tickles me”. No imagination, no soul searching – just plain database access. And if the database is destroyed they become nothing but damaged robots. The idea may seem laughable but to support this notion lets go into the past. Children who were born 50 years ago were healthier and had better survival skills than those of today, even if the death rate was high. Reason? Access to medication and comforts. The two of them together kill body immunity – thereby making “things” (or people) survive even when they are not the fittest ones. Another example – most of the animals in the wild can fend for themselves within days of being born…compare that to the time a human child takes and you would actually want to die out of shame…
Let’s add another dimension to our diagram – space. Space as in Universe. If scientists are to be believed the universe is expanding every second and time started when space came into existence. What hypnotists do when they hypnotize is that they direct the brain to a visit a particular incident (or space) at a particular point in time.
Thus what we call as memory may actually be very much of a “reality” (or present tense) stored in that space and all the brain has to do is to visit that particular location in space again and again. Since there is an inverse relationship between body and time it’s physically impossible to visit the location (and thus we refer to it as past) but the direct relationship between time and soul/brain makes it possible for them to jump across the time graph. Let’s hold on to this discussion here and move on to the next target –thoughts. They are brain waves…very much measurable – which means that they again are a form of energy. Our actions are based on thoughts thus it is conversion of one form of energy into another. What happens to those thoughts that we consider as alternatives but do not act on for reasons such as non-feasibility, paucity of time or what ever. What happens to the energy of the unused thoughts?
If incidents or actions that we do have storage space in the universe then the same would be true about the unused thoughts. Thus all that we actually did or planned to do is actually happening right now also – it’s just that because of body and time limitations we are unable to visit it. Several scientists have suggested the possibility of “Alternate reality” i.e. in some other reality our unused thoughts have taken the shape of an action. Thus in my real “reality” I would still be a child, a teenager and a married woman. While in an alternate reality number one I would be a child, a teenager and a single woman (because I had an unused thought of not marrying). In alternate reality number two I would only be a child because I killed myself when I decided to cross the road unheeded. In another alternate reality I would be still working in my previous company at this point in time because I was so scared to leave without another job in hand…so on and so forth.
PS : The opinions expressed in the article are solely of the writer. I have tried to make them based out of scientific knowledge but there might be severe loopholes. Also, the writer does not intend to express any kind of disregard or hatred towards the internet,Google or any other company.
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