I have a smart neighboring kid who is just 2-year-old. She can hardly express herself clearly. But some of her utterances amaze me and show how shallow we, the ‘so called adults’ are!
One day, I was standing in the veranda of my house. And this kid was standing outside her house facing my veranda. There was someone standing at the far end of the road who looked almost like me. This kid was alternately looking at me and the other person. She appeared to be quite puzzled. She finally asked me
“Uncle, the person standing over there, is that you?”
I just smiled and said
“You are a smart kid. You tell me”
The kid pondered over for a while and then said
“You are here in front of me. How can you be standing over there? So, it can’t be you. It must be someone else!”
What a great observation!
Even at that early age, this kid has understood the most fundamental truth that governs our world – “a thing cannot be in two places simultaneously!”. We can be either here or there. But not in both places at the same time. We are limited by time.
Similarly, two things cannot be exactly in the same place at the same time. Any given space can accommodate only one thing at a time. What it means is that ours is a space limited world as well.
We often take this for granted. Unlike this innocent but inquisitive child, we never even ponder over this most fundamental law of this world of ours and take it for granted. What will happen if we somehow free ourselves from this law?
Wonderful things can happen.
At the minimum we can be in more than one place at the same time. We can be working in our offices and at the same time lying on the couch and watching a movie at home 😉 Isn’t that great?
Why restrict to small things? We can be shaking hands with Joe Biden in the Whitehouse and at the same time hugging Xi Jinping in China, though neither of them may like that 😉. Will it not be fantastic?
That is not all. This freedom from space/time can also allow us to ‘appear’ as more than one person in more than one place, all at once! Why?
We have a specific appearance because the atoms that make our body are arranged in a specific way at any given time. What if we lift this restriction? These very same atoms can reorganize themselves in any way we like and we can appear in an altogether different Avtar! And don’t forget, our different Avtars can be in multiple places all at once!
Now the most confusing question is – which of these multiple Avtars is really me? They all look different. They are also in different places. Supposing you can sit back and watch these Avtars as if you are just an observer, are there multiple people or is there a single individual? There are Avatars taken by you and also ‘you’ who has taken those Avtars and watching those Avtars as if you are separate from them.
I want to confuse you further. ;-) Let us play an interesting mind game.
Let us say that a single actor plays different roles in different movies. In one, he is a saint. In another, he is a robber. In yet another, he plays the role of a downtrodden person. The role played by the actor is just what it is – a role. It does not in anyway affect the actor. He merely plays the role.
When he plays the role of a saint, he is exemplary, full of compassion, completely detached from the world, and so on. The same actor behaves as if he is cruel, greedy and ruthless when he plays the role of a robber. And when he plays the role of a downtrodden, he is completely helpless and begs for mercy. Whatever he does is as per the script of the movie. He acts as if he is really the character. That is when he excels.
Let us say that we project all these movies simultaneously on multiple screens side by side. On one screen we see the actor playing the role of a saint. On the other we see him as a robber and on the third, we see him as a helpless sufferer, all at the same time. But each is just a movie and is not real. The real actor is none of these characters projected onto the screen since he cannot be in each place at the same time. That is because of our space-time limited world.
Let us say for a moment, we free this actor from this space-time restriction. Let us also assume that each movie is not a projection but live like a drama. What happens? The actor would simultaneously be a saint as well as a robber and a downtrodden person. But the real actor could still be sitting and watching all the three dramas as if he has nothing to do with them. Mind you, each of the roles are his own and he is simultaneously all that.
Do the roles make any difference to the actor? Not as long as he knows that they are only the roles he is playing. When he plays a role he merely sticks to the script of the drama, unmindful of the detachment or suffering or emotions that the characters go through. That is because they are just the roles that he is playing. He is not really going through any of those. He is only playacting.
What happens when he involves himself a bit too much? In the least he may undergo suffering taking the role a bit too seriously. In the worst, he may mess up his role and even spoil the drama, transgressing the script altogether. In that case, he could even interfere with the roles of other actors in the movie and what results could be completely disastrous to the drama.
Ideally, an actor in such a situation has to be aware that he is playacting, but should play his role in such a way that he should appear as if he is really the character. He should neither violate the script nor remain indifferent without playing his role just because he knows that it is only a play.
You probably are wondering what I am trying to drive at through this mind game. I will explain that in the next episode. Please do join me.
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