'tasvieer teri dil mera behla na sakegee; seenese laga lunga fir bhee kuchh na kahengee." (the photogragh of yours won't be able to engage my heart; it won't respond even if i embrace it to my bosom.) -- an old hindi movie song.

unawares, bill clinton inspired this:

running with the ray of light

the impulse was triggered by the chance meeting at a street intersection with the president-elect, bill clinton jogging in the streets of little rock, escorted by a throng of the body guards. as he passed, he looked in my direction, and in his eyes i noticed the recognition of our previous meeting at an art gallery, where he had tapped on my shoulder, telling, "hi, i am bill clinton. i am curious about you; who are you?"

of course, as the president-elect of a large nation one would be required to distance oneself from the unconventional persons who may not in any way be useful to the conventional u.s. presidency. and that did not bother me. what triggered the thinking was that when any dignitary is to pass a street, there are the roadblocks, sometimes hours in advance, creating inconvenience for people who are stopped from crossing the street.

what if persons are made like the rays of light, so that they may pass through each other without being blocked?

question formed an experiment that i had no means to conduct when i was in the pick-up truck returning from the farmers' vegetable market on my way to the eatery, which was an experiment in observing the relationship between the food intake and its effects upon the motions of life. (from a book of 'unamerican dreams and dissent')

the experiment is quite simple: take two flashlights and place a red transparent paper before one, and blue paper before another. place two white sheets of paper, one on one wall, and another on the adjoining wall. place each flashlight in front of each paper and adjust the beams such that they cross each other halfway. if the room is dark the entire length of each light beam will be visible. what i do not know is whether the crossing of the light beams affects each other. if it does, the crossed half sections of both beams would be purple as would the spots on both paper.

if it does not change the colour, then the light particles have properties like transparencies of non-matter.

what is not known is whether what one sees is the light reflected form the object entering the eye, or it is the eye reaching out to the object to see it. of course, the physical science views the eye as only the lens through which the reflected image of the object is imprinted upon the nerves screen, as what happens in camera. what is not verified is that the organ of sight as a living organ is much more than a camera.

images transformed into light-images can cross each other without blocking each other like what did bill clinton blocking the cross traffic. hence the experiment into the element of light, and then the other four elements.

another experiment requires a little more of lab facilities. using mirrors to reflect light from one to another multiple times to make the light beam travel a distance longer than it covers within a second or two, before it reaches its final reflected point. now setting up all this, shine two different coloured light beams simultaneously one directly upon the spot, and the second one through the mirrors. the reflected beam having travelled longer distance would reach a little later to affect the colour or the brightness of the spot. the degree of the dimness between the two light beams would also show that light beam, too, loses strength much like a jogger running a short distance and another running a marathon.

connecting the lights within and without one may flow with light at the outside light's speed or motivate the light within to move likewise. but first one must vacate all the preconceived notions in order to see what is.

seeing through the lens of camera records an image of that moment within a frame of the camera roll at a shutter speed. in a movie camera it may be until the end of the roll, and in a digital camera it may be on going endlessly till the battery is exhausted. but in all three instances, it is not the camera that sees what it records. it is the onlooker's eye of the observer who has only limited length of time span. and thus who tries to interpret the before and after of that fraction recorded on the screen, without matching the infinity of the without with the infinity within. it is this entering the light like a flame of a candle entering the flame of another candle. it does not burn off either of the two flames, but only becomes one, that is enlightenment. seeing is not interpreting according to what one thinks it is. when one flows with the elements, one experiences the cosmic dance. and even in the conventional dance hall one enters to dance with others, it is not going to see a dance on the stage sitting snugly in the audience. or like seeing a passing scene through a moving train window. a snapshot of that moving scene does not have the wholesomeness of the entirety, the vast space including the person in the moving train, as its motion does not freeze like the snapshot frozen within the frame.

are not the scientist's descriptions of the snapshots of the cosmic motions like people's descriptions of their outings captured in the snapshots? as calculated, the time length measured in light years, the image of the distance cosmic spot that the science lab captures on camera was of the moment that happened that many long years ago. that cosmic spot may not be the same in the next cosmic moment. though the professional scientists speculate what was there before that moment and what would happen next. they call it the scientific theories and try to disprove one another's theory as false or incomplete. and people believe in the theoretical science in a manner much the same as they believe in heaven and hell.

the modern world is a magnified image of the same little snapshot of the surrounding of an englishman, who had his scenery seen from his window of opportunity, the frame of reference. and upon having changed the 'new world' into the european battlegrounds, now he is trying to move into the outer space, but without first emptying his perceptive senses that are coloured in the provincial preferences, the habitual way of life and seeing things.

in the composite human form made up of five elements, there is the element of space. the greek seers and the modern scientists did not see space like the eastern seers, as the first of the five great elements, the 'panch mahabhuta'. space is the all encompassing cosmic arena in which all elements move in harmony with each other. it is also the dividing frame of reference that creates an identity with distinction and its description from the perspective of the onlooker. the dissolution of space is the nothingness coming about from the absence of the frame, the contour that defines one form to be separate from another, like the picture window hypothetically separating the without from within, the them separate from us, the ruler from the ruled, jailer from the jailed. it is the world of thought distinct from the world of reality including the identity of the thinker separating one from another.

it is like the little interchange between henry thoreau and his friend who visited him when thoreau was jailed for refusing to pay poll tax: emerson asked him, "what are you doing in there?" thoreau answered, "what are you doing out there."