Light was rushing in to fill the
darkness in his eyes. That was when he realized that he was falling down. His
physicist instinct couldn’t resist the temptation to calculate: From a height
of 100m, at the rate of 9.8 m/s2 he would hit the ground in exactly
4.517 seconds. As expected, he hit the ground with a loud thud. What he didn’t
expect was that he would survive such a deathly fall. It eluded even the
physicist’s brain.
John was wet with his own sweat. He
felt a deep pain through his spine, but he got over it quickly. To his
surprise, he wasn’t wounded by the fall. He stood up and observed the landscape
he was in. It was a mountainous terrain but he couldn’t recognize the place.
Infact he didn’t seem to remember anything at all. Except for the physics that
he studied and cherished so much, he didn’t have a clue about where he was or
how he ended up there. It was as if he was put on a brand new world with just
his past identity imprinted on him. He looked around him and found a person
wearing a blue robe, walking away in the distance. He ran to catch up with him.
“What is this place?” John asked
him.
“The village name is Shokam” came
the reply.
John was absolutely sure he’d
heard the word before but he didn’t know any place that existed with that name.
“I’m Sorry Sir! I’m completely
lost. I’m hungry too. Do you know a good place to eat?” John asked.
“I am lost too. Do you see any ants
swarming by?” he said.
“Yes. There.” John pointed his
finger in the opposite side where ants were swarming.
“Why?” John asked.
“We’ll follow them. I am sure
they are better in finding the correct route than me. Let’s go together.”
The blue robed fellow now seemed
like a crackpot. How could he be lost in his own village, John wondered. But
the sun was falling by, and the night was closing in. John had no intention of
questioning him further and decided to accompany him in following the ants. He
had no other choice anyway.
They walked 3 miles and the trail
finally ended in a tea shop full of people chatting around in tables. John had
never been so happy and relieved to see other people. He sat in a round table
and the blue robed man sat in the adjacent table joining two others who looked just
as strange as him. They were wearing robes of red and green colours and seemed
to be in a conversation while enjoying their tea. John took a look at the tea
master who was wearing a white robe and ordered a glass of tea to him. He
didn’t know why but John felt spooky in that tea shop. It was like déjà vu’. He
had the strange feeling that he had been to that tea shop before. He decided to
just drink a glass of tea and leave the place as early as possible. But he
couldn’t help but overhear the conversation in his adjacent table.
“If you were in a spaceship moving at ninety-nine percent the speed of light,
how much faster would another light ray next to you be?” asked the red robed
man.
“About one percent of the speed of light,
obviously!” replied the blue robed one.
“But
according to Einstein, the light ray would still be faster than your rocket
ship by the speed of light, no matter
how fast you are traveling.” said the red robed man.
“That doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“True, but it is accepted as a fact in the physics
world. I don’t understand why” replied the red robed man.
The green robed man remained silent from the start.
John was thrilled. He’d missed such intellectual discussions
and never hoped to see these village people indulging in scientific
conversation. He wanted to get involved with them and contribute his view
before tea arrived. John said “The speed of light is the maximum velocity
possible. Its like the outer limit of something, it is a boundary. Compare it
with the horizon you observe in the sky. No matter how fast you run towards the
horizon, it seems to stay ahead of you by the same distance. You can never
reach the horizon, no matter how fast you move. That is the case with light
too.”
The blue robed man seemed offended by this. “Yeah
but if God wishes, can’t he move faster than the speed of light? This is pure scientific
arrogance to put a limit on what God can do!”
This was unprecedented. John didn’t want to get into
an argument with strangers, especially with a fellow who follows an ant trail
for three miles. So when the master bought him his tea, he started drinking it
in silence. The tea tasted funny and burnt the insides of his stomach. He
became unconscious before even completing a quarter of the glass. The tea had
started to take its toll. His neurons were tickled and his memory was refreshed.
He started to remember things.
Having lost his mother at a young age, John
Holmes was raised by his arrogant stepmother. Undernourished and constantly
bullied by his stepbrothers, his intellect was his only asset. It landed him in
Harvard, his alma mater which made his stepbrothers intensely jealous. It was
there that John met his Princess Charming Maya. Born in India, Maya entered
Harvard to pursue her Masters in Mathematics. Despite the troubles from his
stepmother, they fell in love, truly madly and deeply. It was an inverted
Cinderella story. John realized that he could actually love a physical person
more than the physical laws that he cherished so much. But now, he had lost her
in this strange chaos, and worse, he is lost himself. He had to find her.
He woke up with a start. He didn’t know where he was.
But now he has a purpose. He has to find her, and get back home. He understood
that drinking that tea somehow brings back his memories and will provide the
keys to unlock this mystery. It seemed silly, but he had to drink more tea to
know more. He started to walk,
determined to find the right route. Suddenly, a person came running from behind
and stopped him.
“What is this place?” he asked John.
John replied “The village name is Shokam”.
The stranger asked “I’m Sorry Sir! I’m completely
lost. I’m hungry too. Do you know a good place to eat?”
John was flabbergasted. He desperately wanted to
find the tea shop and remembered that ants swarm into that tea shop perfectly.
“I am lost too. Do you see any ants swarming by?”
John asked.
“Yes, There. Why?” The stranger pointed his finger
in the opposite side where ants were swarming.
John replied “We’ll follow them. I am sure they are
better in finding the correct route than me. Let’s go together” and started
walking.
That was when
John remembered having the exact conversation already. John looked at himself.
He was wearing the blue robe. He was shocked; He didn’t know what had happened.
He had become that person he just witnessed; He followed the ant trail and it
led him again to the tea shop. He now felt foolish for not trusting the ants
before. He realized there are certain things that common sense can’t grasp. Like
drinking tea which can bring back your memory and following ants which will
lead you to the right path. He now became a genuine believer.
The same people with their colored robes were
sitting on the same table drinking a cup of tea and having a conversation. The
stranger sat in the nearby table. But the tea master had changed. John ordered
a tea and joined their table to see what conversation they were having.
“Science dictates that any theory that cannot be
verified by an experiment is not true. Can the presence of God be verified by a
scientific experiment?” asked the red robed guy.
The stranger in next table answered, “Of course it
cannot be. Nobody has seen god. Nobody has experimentally verified his
presence. Your belief system is based on just received wisdom but there is no
such thing like that. To err is human, and therefore the only way to understand
reality is through skeptical analysis and reducing human error. That is the
approach of science”
John got furious. His newfound faith clouded his
earlier scientific skepticism. He saw his own reflection in the arrogance of
the stranger to discredit a point without rigorous analysis.
John retaliated “Oh yeah? Then why didn’t you
skeptically analyze and find out your own way? Why did you blindly follow the
ants with me? What was the rationale behind that? You skeptics question
everything and the only truth you accept is ‘empirical’ but what about those
things that you cannot perceive? Have you seen dark matter? How do you believe
it then? There is no room for inspiration or revelation in your world. I
mistrust scientists because they mistrust everything else”. The red robe person
listened to it and the stranger was about to retaliate. The green robed guy
remained silent.
John didn’t want to be there anymore while his faith
was being tested and started drinking the tea kept on his table by the tea
master. He couldn’t drink more than half the tea cup. While he finished half
his cup, he became unconscious.
He remembered having proposed to Maya
with the duality principle.” I am Wave. You are Particle. Two manifestations of
the same reality. I will become you and you will become me. Will you experiment
me?” to which Maya said an instant yes. They shared a wonderful chemistry. They
were intellectual equals. They used to solve the daily crosswords and Sudoku in
the newspaper together. Maya had a great passion in designing and solving
puzzles. So she used to design mazes for John to solve. She would tie the eyes
of John and leave him in a maze filled with clues. She will be giving him signs
and wait for him to grasp them. She would give him keywords and he needed to
unscramble them a bit for clues. She would often say him that she won’t leave
him alone in his shokam, meaning sadness. She would say it is just to test his
patience. He was tied blind in the maze but she will always be watching over
him and guide him. It was fun. She would
want him to solve the puzzle himself and find her and finally embrace her. It
wasn’t for anything. They did it because they liked doing it and they were able
to do it. She was a terribly real thing in a terribly false world and she was
worth the pursuit.
John woke up from his unconsciousness. He started
thinking, “Was this another Maze for me to solve? How did she erase my
memories? How am I supposed to find her?” and was quite frustrated with her.
This was too intricate a maze. He didn’t like being there. He hated her for
putting him in this maze. But he started to think the questions on how to solve
this puzzle. He started analyzing both fact and faith rationally.
He looked down on him and this time he was the red
robed person. He directly went to the tea shop this time. Neither the blue
robed person nor the stranger had arrived yet. The green robed person was
sitting alone enjoying his tea. The tea master with his white robe had changed
this time too. John started to wonder why the others remained the same but the
tea master changed in every cycle. He realized that asking the right questions
will lead him further into the maze.
“Why is the village called Shokam? How did I get in
here, in the first place? Maybe this is an infinite loop. If I were on an
infinite loop, would I know that? How am I moving through time? How do I
measure time? Clocks don’t measure time; they measure themselves. The objective
reference of a clock is another clock. So how do I slow down? Don’t slowing
down and slowing up mean the same thing in time? Is my time linear or cyclical
like the Kalachakra?”
Being the red robed person, he analyzed everything
rationally. He looked at his green robed partner. He smiled silently. He made a
toast to him and drank three fourth of his tea glass. He couldn’t drink more
and fell unconscious.
Maya was truly a math genius. She was
working on a machine called G.O.D. Its working principle was the Poincare Recurrence
Theorem. It states that certain systems will, after a sufficiently long but
finite time, return to a state very close to the initial state. It is quantum
mechanically possible to design and program such a system with discrete eigenstates
such that this theorem holds. The machine generates this illusory maze which
has both linear and cyclical time simultaneously and as you move forward along
the straight line of time, you are also returning to the beginning of time in
an ever shrinking spiral. It operates till the Quantum Revival Time when the
initial state is reintroduced. The cycle closes when it is destroyed.
Generation.Operation.Destruction.G.O.D. This maze is her ultimate test of love.
She is wave: Infinity: Poornamadah. He is particle: Zero: Poornamidam. Will you
discover her by discovering yourself? That is the question.
He opened his eyes patiently. He didn’t speak a
word.
He understood the whole maze. He travelled in a
linear time scale, but his surroundings travelled in a shrinking spiral path.
Thus in his end, he will be at the surrounding’s start. Every time he drinks
tea, the operation is performed and the initial state is restored. He could
only drink tea in proportion to his understanding of the truth. And little
clues about the maze were revealed in every memory that was recalled. The true
challenge in the maze is realizing that it is a maze. After attaining that
knowledge, solving it is the final step. John retraced his path. He started as
a physicist who thought he had all the answers in science. As he moved forward
in the cycle, he became a believer with a blue robe who thought he had all the
answers in faith. Then he came closer to the truth by being a rishi with a red
robe who analyzed everything rationally. Now he is the Jnani with the Green
robe who has discovered the truth in his silence. Now he could attain Maya by
drinking the full glass of tea.
But he had to
discover himself first. She would always give him keywords which when
unscrambled would show him its true meaning. The village name was SHOKAM. He
unscrambled it a bit.
MOKSHA.
Liberation.
He realized that the greatest master in the maze was
not the green robed guy who drinks a full glass of tea. It was the tea master
who is in the tea shop making tea for others, but never drinking it himself. He
was a karmayogi. Anyone who realizes this becomes the master and it keeps
changing in every cycle.
After this realization he becomes the new tea master
in the white robe and he gets the chance to reach the peak of the mountains in
the maze. The straight line bends in search of infinity and returns to its
source, to join ends and become a circle which is the legitimate symbol for
zero, holding in its heart all the quest of a long voyage.
He reached the peak of it which was about 100m and
decided to fall down. Darkness was filling in with an utterance from the voice
of silence.
Footnote: This is a hugely metaphorical piece. Maya
stands for Paramatma and John stands for Jivatma. It portrays the whole life
cycle as a maze and breaking away from the cycle to join with Paramatma is the
ultimate goal of life.
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