Eternal Approach

Could death’s moment
    mirror Zeno’s paradox?

How exquisite—forever nearing the void,
     yet never gone. 

The worlds beyond my senses

 

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in; fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact, it fits me staggeringly well! It must have been made to have me in it! — Douglas Adams

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI

My senses serve as portals to the universe. They provide my brain with the data using which the brain interprets the world outside of me. Through the signals brought in by my senses, the brain discerns what to savor and what to shun; what to love and what to avoid. Over the years, this process has shaped my preferences and aversions.

What would I call an entity that is completely isolated from the external world (that is, for some reason, it does not ingest any signals from the external world)? What could such an entity conceive and comprehend? What would its comprehension of the external world be like? For that matter, for such an entity, do words like ‘external world’ even hold a meaning.

This inquiry might seem strange (or may sound even absurd), yet in my sleep, floating amidst dreams, I am such an entity. My brain is not processing much of sensory data (for example, related to vision), and yet, devoid of sensory input, some juxtaposition of brain and mind do conjure up brilliant worlds of fantasies.

Among my quintet of senses — vision, hearing, olfaction, tactility, and gustation –the faculties of sight and sound are especially vital for discerning the external world.

Vision, frequently hailed as the most important sense, empowers me to discern forms, hues, and motions. The percepts of vision are crucial for orienting myself in my surroundings, seeking sustenance, identifying friends and adversaries, and, in the current era, for reading a book — thus broadening my perspectives through the wisdom and experiences shared by others.

Hearing allows me to perceive sounds, a sense essential for recognizing the rustling of leaves, engaging in spoken language and communication, appreciating melodies, and heeding the sonic warnings of hazards that lurk in my environment.

As indispensable as my sight and hearing may be, the part of our world that my senses can grasp is small. Beyond the confines of my sensory capabilities, there exist worlds of which I remain utterly unaware of (that is assuming that they are there but are merely beyond the capabilities of my perception). The worlds I am unaware of are far bigger than the ones I comprehend.

The mechanism of my vision involves the transformation of electromagnetic waves into electrical impulses by my retinal cells, which are then relayed to the brain for interpretation. The richness of the world I see has extraordinary details — the blue sky, constantly changing formation of clouds drifting in the wind, the mountain peaks topped with the whiteness of snow, or sometimes a rainbow unfurled across the sky.

And yet, the world I do not see is far bigger than the one I do see. The electromagnetic spectrum encompasses a wide range of wavelengths, from very low-frequency radio waves to high-frequency gamma rays. The entire electromagnetic spectrum includes, in order of increasing wavelength (or decreasing frequency): radio waves, microwaves, infrared radiation, visible light, ultraviolet radiation, X-rays, and gamma rays.

My eyes (and their physiology) can see only an exceedingly small fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum, which (and no surprise) we have named is the visible spectrum (what else would we call it?).

The visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum ranges from about 380 nanometers (nm) (violet color) to about 750 nanometers (nm) (red color) in wavelength and only makes up about 0.0035% of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. So, I am only seeing a tiny sliver of all the electromagnetic spectrum that exists around me. I have no idea what worlds exist in the part of spectrum that I cannot see.

It is inconceivable to think that the only interesting things that are happening in the universe are happening in the fraction of electromagnetic spectrum I can see. That idea would be too self-centric or anthropomorphic.

The range (and story) of our auditory perception is no different. The sounds I hear are compression waves travelling through the air that make our eardrum (or tympanic membrane) vibrate. These vibrations are converted to electrical signals that are sent to the brain for further processing.

The physiology of the human ear is such that it responds to compression waves between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz (Hertz)and makes me capable of hearing things that vibrate in that range. Like for electromagnetic waves, it does not imply that compression waves do not exist beyond the frequency range of my hearing. They do and physiology of ear in different animals can respond to those waves. The Greater Wax Moth is capable of sensing compression waves at a frequency of 300kHz.

The bottom line is that there is a lot going on out there (or I assume that is so, even if I cannot be sure) of which I am not aware. Who knows what kind of wonders exist in the worlds I cannot see and cannot hear? Is there a world that exists and is beyond my perception, however, is a deeply philosophical question.

A cloud in the sky is visible to me because it reflects the electromagnetic waves coming from the sun in the range of visible spectrum. Are there no other “objects” in the sky that can reflect various parts of electromagnetic towards me, but I am unaware of them. If they do, what would they look like?

At some level, the above sentence is bizarre because I am using words and experiences that are human to discuss what is independent of us, and more so, has never been perceived by our senses. I am trying to augment the world I cannot see or hear into the world I am familiar with, but a moment of reflection tells how absurd the notion is.

Heck for that matter, there may be many more dimensions out there that my senses cannot contact. Perhaps, because of some unintended perturbations, those unknown dimensions leak into the realm I can perceive and after a moment retract themselves back to where they came from. Who knows what else is out there and is beyond the range of my senses.

Do I ever dream of floating through a space that has more than three dimensions? Even if I do, how would my waking self-know.

Ciao.

Note: Electromagnetic and compression waves: The former can travel through empty space while the latter requires the existence of a compressible medium, like air.

We were friends again

 

Sitting in the Ethiopian airline Lounge
      at Addis Ababa
my guest David had wondered
if I were flying
      in Business class.

There was a look on his face
      that comes from sensing
that an injustice
      is being done.

We, after all,
were two peas in pod;
there was nothing elite about us,
so why I am flying Business
while he was not,
      he had wondered.

I put his misgivings aside
and said, no,
I am not flying in Business
but just using a privilege
that came with the Gold status
for living a million mile
of my life
      in the air.

His face relaxed.
He felt at peace.
We were friends again.

Connectedness is an antidote to mortality

 

The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself — Carl Sagan

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI

On rare occasions, I receive a gift of connectedness. The trigger could be the upbeat rhythm, or its opposite, the sadness of a song. It could be an aftermath of immersing in moments of creativity, or a gust of cool wind in the middle of summer brushing against the face. It could be an unexpected whiff of sweet fragrance of jasmine, or a chance look at the open spaces stretching to the horizon that is aglow with an orange sunset. It could be a sudden ache of nostalgia of moments gone by and realizing how old I have become and how little time is left there to be lived.

The feeling of connectedness dissolves the invisible boundaries between the self that I am and the rest that is out there. Without the notion of duality I have always lived with, the idea of the destruction of the self after death also dissipates. The fear of mortality, in those ever-fleeting moments, no longer haunts.

After all, what else is the fear of mortality if not the fear of the destruction of the self? The thought that I will no longer be here, but the party will continue without me is the fear and the angst of mortality. I simply wish not to disappear without a trace.

Today, I experienced brief moments of connectedness, and for an instant, the fear of mortality receded once more. In its wake, a question emerged: Could the self I possess be immortal, and is my fear of mortality merely irrational?

At the physical level I am immortal. I am connected with everything else that existed or will exist in space and time.

I, like everything that is out there, is made of the same atoms that originated at the moment of the Big Bang. After death, the atoms of my physical self would be given back to the universe. They would eventually become part of some other form — a rock, a bacterium, a chimpanzee, perhaps another human being.

The principle of conservation of energy provides the foundation for my physical immortality and I have no reason to doubt that I will continue to exist either as matter or as ephemeral energy.

Would my consciousness self also continue to exist beyond the moment of my death? After my death, would I remember what I was and what I accomplished during this lifetime?

As for my conscious self, other than for a few moments when I feel connected with the rest of the universe (and when the sense mortality dissolves), I am not as certain about my immortality.

There is no phenomenological evidence for my immortality. In my current form I do not remember anything what I was prior to taking this form. People pass away and without missing a beat the universe continues on its merry journey. There is nothing to make me think that the same would not happen when I die.

Even if my consciousness is immortal, however, if it does not have any remembrance, then functionally, that immortality is equivalent to being mortal.

For all I know, the awareness of self may have been just an outgrowth of the process of natural selection and is meant to increase my chances for survival and reproduction. The self is nothing more than that and when I die there is nothing left vying for survival and reproduction.

It is only in the rare moments of connectedness that the awareness of self is eliminated. In those moments, the self is no longer the skin I need. But it is also hard to let that skin go and feel naked, and so I hold on to the self and become a mortal again.

Ciao.