Once a day, I close my eyes for few minutes and try to imagine that I am leaving my body and floating in the air as I leave my apartment and see from above. Then I imagine that at a very fast pace, I am leaving the earth’s atmosphere and viewing the whole of planet earth from space, with the sun in the distant background against a dark space. Then I move one step ahead and imagine leaving the solar system as I see the earth becoming smaller and smaller in size and start seeing the Mars and Jupiter zoom across my view. Finally I imagine seeing the solar system from a distance, with the sun barely visible. Then I let my imagination make me travel at unphysical speeds to distant stars, to another part of our Milky Way galaxy. I imagine seeing countless stars and supernovae remnants from a distance, and I ‘choose’ to imagine a random star amongst them. I let my mind take me to near that unknown and random star, and just imagine that it’s got a set of very different kinds of planets around it with their own moons. I imagine big gas giants such as a colorful Saturn and rocky planets revolving around it. I imagine landing myself at one such rocky planet and seeing a nearby Jupiter-sized planet covering a huge chunk of its night sky while the rest of sky is softly illuminated with a brilliant array of colors of a supernova remnant in the not-so-far stellar neighborhood. I now leave the planet and imagine myself leaving the whole of Milky Way galaxy as I see billions and billions of stars merging to form one giant streak of white light. I float and fly through cosmic void as I see the Milky Way becoming fainter and fainter in its intensity and glow and imagine myself reaching the vicinity of Andromeda Galaxy, 2.6 million light years away from the earth. “Is there a super-advanced and intelligent species of life on some planet revolving around a star here in the Andromeda Galaxy, who probably wonders if there’s someone out in Milky Way?” – I ask myself. Maybe. But I shall never know. We humans shall never know (with science and technology of present day). The distances are incredibly large, even for light or other electromagnetic waves, and our human lives are super short. Finally I imagine moving even further until I see super-clusters of billions of galaxies and ‘seeing’ the observable universe from the edge. My mind – probably the human mind – can imagine no further. Then I open my eyes and come to reality.
This reminds me every-day of two
facts – our planet is very minuscule, fragile and not even a speck of dust in
the cosmos. And, my life (or our lives) is too short-lived in the cosmic scale.
I was dead for billions of years before I was born (quoting Mark Twain), and I
shall be dead for billions of years after I die. That is a humbling feeling, a feeling that gives me a reality
check.
In such a ridiculously tiny and
fragile planet called earth, things such as murder, genocide, bomb-blasts, war,
rape, etc are therefore so very unnecessary and uncalled for – I feel. We live
for such a short while and on a small speck of cosmic dust, that if imagined to
view from outer space, our planet is our
home, the place for all of us to just be happy and live our lives. When
innocent people are butchered everyday all across the world – be it in London
or India or Pakistan or Syria or USA – it’s incredibly tragic and unfortunate. Why
do people kill other people? There are already non-human causes like
earthquakes and tsunamis and epidemic diseases to wipe out incredible number of
innocent people in a matter of a few hours, why then do we have artificial
reasons to kill each other? I do realize that I have the luxury of closing my
eyes for a few minutes to imagine a cosmic travel to edge of the universe, but
many people do not. They need to fight for their next meal and they need to
battle poverty and economic/political/social suppressions every day. They have
no access to drinking water or electricity. Some of them may turn violent and
kill people who they think are responsible for their plight. I am referring to
people who rule and who are ruled – why do murders and killings have to happen?
When a person dies, he/she will just
require 6 feet x 2 feet area of land to be cremated or buried. He/she can’t
take anything with him/her to chill out after death – mobile phones, laptops,
gold coins or currency notes, lavish apartments or expensive cars – nothing.
That doesn't mean we don’t work or earn money to sustain our livelihood and
save money for our family or our children, for, as long as we live, we strive
to make it meaningful – we do work. We need money to sustain ourselves and our
family, to enjoy leisure and to have fun. But why does anyone need to steal
taxpayers’ money in colossal amounts such as few thousand crores of Indian rupees
(equivalent to hundreds of millions of USD)? Such are the magnitudes of
corruption in India as reported by media every now and then. What will a person
do with one billion dollar of black money ‘stolen’ by indulging in corruptions?
When he/she dies, these money and wealth will have absolutely no meaning or significance
to him/her. And he/she will have no idea after death if his/her children are enjoying
or having fun with the black money or if they too died soon after. Many billionaires
in USA, who have earned such money by honest
means, spend a massive amount of their wealth in philanthropic activities
throughout the world. They support schools for poor children in developing
countries in south Asia and spend money in helping people living in under-developed
places in Africa to fight diseases and to enable access to food and drinking
water etc. But those people in India, who are indulging in corruption to gather
billions of USD, are not doing such philanthropic works for the deprived
people. Why such money by corruption when all they need eventually is a 6 x 2
feet square of land for their bodies to be cremated/buried when they die?
Each human being has his/her ‘free
will’. Each human being is a super complex biological entity characterized with
a set of complex behavioral, psychological, emotional and social parameters.
When six billion such complex entities co-exist on a tiny rocky planet,
complete harmony and peacefulness are an absolute utopia – this is my
understanding.
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