September 26, 2006 | 01:15 AM
Doubt !
Here is one of the more frighteniing conversations with the Astrophysicist, Piet Hut (which I am serializing in The Film maker and the Astrophisicist blog ) : From: Shekhar Kapur, Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001, To: Piet Hut : You Said : < Needless to say, IF linear time is not real, then a realization of that fact makes one a more effective player in alleged linear time; just like you can only be an effective film director if you realize that a film is not real -- which doesn't mean it is arbitrary. >>
Dear Peit :
I am going a different way : I still want to see (because I imagine everything as a picture) - time like a little canary in a cage : caged by us - therefore I look and say :
" this is a Canary in the cage - and that is the reality" The cage is my mind - and the canary a way of making time absolute. In my mind I open the cage - and the bird fies away and just in one whoosh disappears - as if there was nothing else.
I have to destroy the cage and throw myself into chaos. I have to understand that I am not caged by time - but time is caged by me interms of a linear concept - I would rather go this left field way because it forces me to completely think chaotically. Like the bird represents a spirit - and time is actuall a free spirit. But gentle and soft and ethereal.
Time is Space : Free flowing like God. Time is God. That is the unknown dimension - GOD/TIME/SPACE - I know that in my bones - but my mind must force itself through the pain of logic - I must put my mind through absolute chaos and put it in self destruct - and the only way is chaotic thinking - not to allow it to to hang it's coat on any peg.
I know that at the end there is light. But the the tunnel is dark and dangerous - and for those without courage may get lost in the tunnel - and destruct everything without understanding.
No, not understanding, but - without experiencing.
A half a Buddha is perhaps worse than someone enclosed in Maya.
Lets keep up these conversations - I do not have to totally understand what u say - nor do you, I guess. But as long as we keep questioning each other - there will be at some points of time a coming together - a synchronization - and then like a wave - disbelief and questioning again.
shekhar
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Is this where my father resided ?
September 18, 2006 | 02:51 AM
Is this where my father resided ?
As I lit my father's funeral pyre and watched the flames consume his body, the priest handed me a long bamboo pole. To puncture the skull. To release his spirit, he said, but also the skull has a tendency to explode..
And then the unthinkable happened. The wood fell away and I watched as the exposed white fatty tissue of the brain began to bubble and melt in the intense heat. I called my sister to watch with me. Is this where my father resided, I asked ? In this piece of tissue ? Is this where his mind existed ? The mind of one of the best known peadraticians in India ? Is this where his passion, compassion and warmth for all the little children who's life he devoted to saving existed ? Excuse me for not using the word soul, though I am so tempted to.
And is this where his love for his own children existed ? For me and you ? And with the brain extinguishing into flames, does that love no longer exist ?
And what about me ? Is that who I oved really ? That brain ? Was that the sum total of my father ?
Or is the truth something else. That the mind does not reside in the brain. That emotions do not reside in the mind. That that which we call love and memory and emotion exists in a realm beyond the physical body. More then just synapses of neurons that express themselves through chemical reactions
shekhar
Is this where my father resided ?
As I lit my father's funeral pyre and watched the flames consume his body, the priest handed me a long bamboo pole. To puncture the skull. To release his spirit, he said, but also the skull has a tendency to explode..
And then the unthinkable happened. The wood fell away and I watched as the exposed white fatty tissue of the brain began to bubble and melt in the intense heat. I called my sister to watch with me. Is this where my father resided, I asked ? In this piece of tissue ? Is this where his mind existed ? The mind of one of the best known peadraticians in India ? Is this where his passion, compassion and warmth for all the little children who's life he devoted to saving existed ? Excuse me for not using the word soul, though I am so tempted to.
And is this where his love for his own children existed ? For me and you ? And with the brain extinguishing into flames, does that love no longer exist ?
And what about me ? Is that who I oved really ? That brain ? Was that the sum total of my father ?
Or is the truth something else. That the mind does not reside in the brain. That emotions do not reside in the mind. That that which we call love and memory and emotion exists in a realm beyond the physical body. More then just synapses of neurons that express themselves through chemical reactions
shekhar
Rationalising or fooling yourself ?
September 10, 2006 | 03:17 PM
Rationalising or fooling yourself ?
"Maybe our concept of time is just a method for rationalising things and making it have a point or giving it a meaning... a perspective."
yes absolutely, raviswamy, our five senses in their limitations need to reduce perception to rationalize our understanding of the world we inhabit...
So we give everything a begining, and an end. We see time linearily. And then we spend our lives wondering and being afraid of the event called Death, because we have decided the universe exists in beginings and ends, in events separated in time/space. The question we should be really asking is "if the event of Birth never happened, then how can Death happen ? Or is my Birth and my Death continious even as I write ?
What I keep struggling with is why we need to reduce everything to a point where we need to rationalize it. Why do we need to rationalize ? It seems purposeless, but then of course it is difficult to find any purpose in this world. The only purpose we have ever seem to have found is in imposed 'morality'. But the Universe is neither moral nor immoral. It's amoral.
I do not believe we are born with an addiction to only the 5 senses. We acquire the ability to shut ourselves out of anything that does not fall into the perception of an increasingly limited rationalistic world. That's modernism. Logic.
My daughter at 4 was extremely comfortable with the idea that Angels existed and at the same time did not. She saw no difference between the logical world and the illogical one. To her the connection between what she saw and what she imagined was not contradictory. But now at 6, with her going to school she is already getting trained to ignore that which cannot be touched, seen, heard or smelled,
Consequently she is less and less comfortable with her emotional life, as myth and imagination are played down in schooling. But the do not go away do they ? They bubble up in the most unexpected ways. And sometimes dangerous ways. You and I are coming to terms with our loss of universal percepton by arguing out right now through words.
Buddhism says that at the root of all human suffering is Desire. I do not dispute that. For Desire only arises out of a misunderstanding of Time/Space continuum. How can I desire something unless I see the object of desire as something seperated from me in time/space. But even Quantum Physics now reveal that all such seperation is not real fact, but is assumed fact through the act of observation by the observer.
What i want Buddhism to explain to me is the purpose of Desire, if there is one. Procreation of the species? is that all ?
Shekhar
Rationalising or fooling yourself ?
"Maybe our concept of time is just a method for rationalising things and making it have a point or giving it a meaning... a perspective."
yes absolutely, raviswamy, our five senses in their limitations need to reduce perception to rationalize our understanding of the world we inhabit...
So we give everything a begining, and an end. We see time linearily. And then we spend our lives wondering and being afraid of the event called Death, because we have decided the universe exists in beginings and ends, in events separated in time/space. The question we should be really asking is "if the event of Birth never happened, then how can Death happen ? Or is my Birth and my Death continious even as I write ?
What I keep struggling with is why we need to reduce everything to a point where we need to rationalize it. Why do we need to rationalize ? It seems purposeless, but then of course it is difficult to find any purpose in this world. The only purpose we have ever seem to have found is in imposed 'morality'. But the Universe is neither moral nor immoral. It's amoral.
I do not believe we are born with an addiction to only the 5 senses. We acquire the ability to shut ourselves out of anything that does not fall into the perception of an increasingly limited rationalistic world. That's modernism. Logic.
My daughter at 4 was extremely comfortable with the idea that Angels existed and at the same time did not. She saw no difference between the logical world and the illogical one. To her the connection between what she saw and what she imagined was not contradictory. But now at 6, with her going to school she is already getting trained to ignore that which cannot be touched, seen, heard or smelled,
Consequently she is less and less comfortable with her emotional life, as myth and imagination are played down in schooling. But the do not go away do they ? They bubble up in the most unexpected ways. And sometimes dangerous ways. You and I are coming to terms with our loss of universal percepton by arguing out right now through words.
Buddhism says that at the root of all human suffering is Desire. I do not dispute that. For Desire only arises out of a misunderstanding of Time/Space continuum. How can I desire something unless I see the object of desire as something seperated from me in time/space. But even Quantum Physics now reveal that all such seperation is not real fact, but is assumed fact through the act of observation by the observer.
What i want Buddhism to explain to me is the purpose of Desire, if there is one. Procreation of the species? is that all ?
Shekhar
Time and Event
September 10, 2006 | 03:04 PM
Time and Event
ravi swami : Yes...moment and continuity are contradictions in terms - an 'event 'assumes a "before event and after event" situation - what you are saying is that every "event" exists and is not marked by a start and end point, if it did then "time" as concept has to exist -
as in editing a film, an in point and out point, but outside of the "edit", events and actuality(for want of a better word), continue, despite the film makers division of the continuum to make logical sense and tell a story....
Maybe our concept of time is just a method for rationalising things and making it have a point or giving it a meaning... a perspective.
I sometimes ponder on the idea of dividing time into ever smaller divisions - like you see in "time slice" films - at a certain point time appears to stands still - on a theoretical level this is what is supposed to occur for a viewer if he/she/it approaches the speed of light, time "stands still" and all "events" become simultaneous...
Time and Event
ravi swami : Yes...moment and continuity are contradictions in terms - an 'event 'assumes a "before event and after event" situation - what you are saying is that every "event" exists and is not marked by a start and end point, if it did then "time" as concept has to exist -
as in editing a film, an in point and out point, but outside of the "edit", events and actuality(for want of a better word), continue, despite the film makers division of the continuum to make logical sense and tell a story....
Maybe our concept of time is just a method for rationalising things and making it have a point or giving it a meaning... a perspective.
I sometimes ponder on the idea of dividing time into ever smaller divisions - like you see in "time slice" films - at a certain point time appears to stands still - on a theoretical level this is what is supposed to occur for a viewer if he/she/it approaches the speed of light, time "stands still" and all "events" become simultaneous...
Time and time again
September 10, 2006 | 12:51 PM
Time and time again
rawi swami said : .....time is actually (as we understand the meaning of the word) better described as "moment" or continuity - not an evolution of anything but a constant...within that constant there are "events"...us, supernovas, all instances of "local time"....
I agree, ravi swami, but.....
..... if time is a constant and not an evolution, then we have reconsider our definition of the word 'event', for the word event assumes a moment that is not continous, but singular. But a singularity of an event assumes a past and future where that singularity never existed, right ? And if so then are we not, after having described Time as a constant, contradicting ourselves ? So every event too, in that case must also be'constant'. So it always existed, does exist and will always exist. And is therefore not an event at all, but also a constant.
shekhar
Time and time again
rawi swami said : .....time is actually (as we understand the meaning of the word) better described as "moment" or continuity - not an evolution of anything but a constant...within that constant there are "events"...us, supernovas, all instances of "local time"....
I agree, ravi swami, but.....
..... if time is a constant and not an evolution, then we have reconsider our definition of the word 'event', for the word event assumes a moment that is not continous, but singular. But a singularity of an event assumes a past and future where that singularity never existed, right ? And if so then are we not, after having described Time as a constant, contradicting ourselves ? So every event too, in that case must also be'constant'. So it always existed, does exist and will always exist. And is therefore not an event at all, but also a constant.
shekhar
The Astrophysicist and the Filmmaker 2
September 10, 2006 | 12:51 AM
The Astrophysicist and the Filmmaker 2
I would urge anyone on this blog that is interested in the exploring the areas where mysticism and science collide to click on the blog on top of the page about my conversations with Peit Hut, the astrophysicist.
Though these conversations happened 6 years ao, I am finding them fascinating all over again. Piet has promised to answer questions - but he is a bit busy for the next 10 days, in the meantime I will continue to serialize the conversations and feel free to post comments and questions to Piet.
Shekhar
The Astrophysicist and the Filmmaker 2
I would urge anyone on this blog that is interested in the exploring the areas where mysticism and science collide to click on the blog on top of the page about my conversations with Peit Hut, the astrophysicist.
Though these conversations happened 6 years ao, I am finding them fascinating all over again. Piet has promised to answer questions - but he is a bit busy for the next 10 days, in the meantime I will continue to serialize the conversations and feel free to post comments and questions to Piet.
Shekhar
Till the rains come.
September 04, 2006 | 12:28 AM
Till the rains come.
Her grandson hung loosely from her hip. Lacking the energy to steady his head lolling from side to side. He was badly in need of food.
Yet as she implored me for some money I knew she had not been doing this for long. For the hundreds of beggars I pass every day have a permanent look carved onto their faces. A look to evoke pity. But her smile is warm. The shine in her eyes real.
Where are u from ?
Sholapur, she said. There were no rains and the fields were dry. No one was hiring labour, and there was no food or water. 20 of her community walked, hitched rides on top of trains and buses to come to Mumbai.
To beg for food, shelter and water. This is after all the city of dreams.
Where do u live ?
Wherever we find the space.
Which means the streets, the shelters under the highways. The narrow spaces on the dividers between the roads. Real Estate is at a premium here, even to put down your head to sleep on the streets
Her grandaughter walked upto me. Hand stretched out to beg, but her heart not in it. Not yet. anyway. It had not yet become a profession. She smiled the most stunning smile, eyes still sparkling with hope and optimism. All of sixteen.
We will go back soon to sholapur, she said to my question.
When ?
When the rains come. When the crops grow. When there is food and shelter.
That I knew, and she knew, would be not till the next monsoons a year from now. Would this community exist together for a year ? Would the warmth in her eyes, and the sparkle in her grandaughter's eyes survive that long ?
Or would this family be indistinguishable from the permanently etched and grimaced faces of al the others.
My daughter's school bus arrived and she stepped out laughing. The old lady laughed too. She asked for her name and blessed her. I gave her some money and she bent to touch my feet. I said no. In the same square mile we existed on different planets. But at this moment I wanted to be her equal. Equal in their hope. Equal in their dignity. Praying that somehow they may be able to survive the onslaught of the city.
I drove home, as Suresh, my driver laughed.
You really got taken in didn't you, sir. Have u not been watching TV ? There has been so much rain in Sholapur that their are floods everywhere !
He is wrong. He must be wrong.
Shekhar
Till the rains come.
Her grandson hung loosely from her hip. Lacking the energy to steady his head lolling from side to side. He was badly in need of food.
Yet as she implored me for some money I knew she had not been doing this for long. For the hundreds of beggars I pass every day have a permanent look carved onto their faces. A look to evoke pity. But her smile is warm. The shine in her eyes real.
Where are u from ?
Sholapur, she said. There were no rains and the fields were dry. No one was hiring labour, and there was no food or water. 20 of her community walked, hitched rides on top of trains and buses to come to Mumbai.
To beg for food, shelter and water. This is after all the city of dreams.
Where do u live ?
Wherever we find the space.
Which means the streets, the shelters under the highways. The narrow spaces on the dividers between the roads. Real Estate is at a premium here, even to put down your head to sleep on the streets
Her grandaughter walked upto me. Hand stretched out to beg, but her heart not in it. Not yet. anyway. It had not yet become a profession. She smiled the most stunning smile, eyes still sparkling with hope and optimism. All of sixteen.
We will go back soon to sholapur, she said to my question.
When ?
When the rains come. When the crops grow. When there is food and shelter.
That I knew, and she knew, would be not till the next monsoons a year from now. Would this community exist together for a year ? Would the warmth in her eyes, and the sparkle in her grandaughter's eyes survive that long ?
Or would this family be indistinguishable from the permanently etched and grimaced faces of al the others.
My daughter's school bus arrived and she stepped out laughing. The old lady laughed too. She asked for her name and blessed her. I gave her some money and she bent to touch my feet. I said no. In the same square mile we existed on different planets. But at this moment I wanted to be her equal. Equal in their hope. Equal in their dignity. Praying that somehow they may be able to survive the onslaught of the city.
I drove home, as Suresh, my driver laughed.
You really got taken in didn't you, sir. Have u not been watching TV ? There has been so much rain in Sholapur that their are floods everywhere !
He is wrong. He must be wrong.
Shekhar
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