Category Archives: philosophy

Worlds!

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I want to hear about heaven and things like that, too. That’s how I end up with books like this one.

“The physical world in which we live, the objectively observed universe around us, is only a part of an inconceivably vast system of worlds. Most of these worlds are spiritual in their essence; they are of a different order from our known world. Which does not necessarily mean that they exist somewhere else, but means rather that they exist in different dimensions of being.”

That certainly sounds like something I could have said. But I did not, at least not as grandly and beautifully as Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz. In the opening paragraph of his book The Thirteen Petalled Rose, Rabbi Steinsaltz plagiarizes me years before I even started thinking about these things in a non-fiction way.  (I have had an overwhelming urge to write fiction about this great chain of worlds since I was in my 20es, and fought bravely to resist it, which was probably a good thing in that age of confusion.)

I have still only read a couple chapters.  Some of his thoughts are alien in detail, based as they are on the Jewish Kabbalah. I am not sure I am ever going to agree with him in all details.  But in the grand scope, it rings eerily true.  Not just the large number of worlds, but also the way human use of free will have repercussions running up and down the chain of being.

Somewhere here I should throw in the quote by T’ien-t’ai Chih-i: “One thought leads to 3000 worlds” (or “There are 3000 worlds in one moment of thought”). Of course, I have not actually been to 3000 worlds. Well, perhaps in my dreams… ^_^

Since the definition of a lower world is one we create, and a higher world one that creates us, it seems counter-intuitive that our actions also make their way several worlds up from here.  However, the muse in my head that is currently planning yet another fiction on the topic, gave my fictional character the following example:

Two men are playing chess.  The chess board is a lower world, limited in size and scope and complexity compared to the world that created it. And yet what happens on the chess board has some effect on the world in which the players live. Depending on who they are, the news of their chess match might even be followed by people all over the world, thronging out other news and so slightly changing the flow of history.  Of course this change is still small compared to the lower world:  If the chess pieces were sentient, they would remember a world ravaged by war, beyond any world wars our world has ever seen, a costly victory and an utter defeat.  Yet objectively speaking, the effects on the world above theirs is greater, because that world is that much more real.

I want to add something else, that I have also thought about in this connection: Higher worlds appear abstract to us, and this planet the most concrete of anything imaginable; but a higher world is at least as concrete to those living in it, and possibly more so in absolute terms. Huston Smith mentioned this in his introduction to The Transcendent Unity of Religions, but that is not quite the first time it has appeared to me, I think. I am not sure however whether I have heard it from outside or inside me at first. Now that I am in contact with people, on the Net or through books, who also think about such things, it is hard to tell apart. I guess this has its own risks.  Still, I can’t help it, I want to hear about Heaven and such things too!

Esoterism and exoterism

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Of course, if I see the Light and don’t live a great life of love and wisdom, it is worse than nothing. And if you have to rely on books and the words of others, but you use that knowledge to live a great life, then you are much better off.

In all large religions, there are two main groups of followers. One sees religion in much the same way as any other cultural or social event. They go to the church, mosque, temple or synagogue in much the same frame of mind as they would go to a theater, a concert, a movie or a sports event.  They may be fanatic about their religion, but then in much the same way as British soccer hooligan attack supporters of opposing teams with stones and beer bottles.

These camp followers are generally the first to leave when religion loses its influence in society. I will not discuss them in further detail today. Rather let us look at those who remain:  Those who take their religion personally and seriously.  (Although most have other interests too.)

The personally religious again fall into two categories, one large and one small. The large group is what we call exoteric.  In a less precise but more understandable word, we could say “external” religion.  They rely on ritual and dogma as the highest expression of their religion.

Exoteric knowledge is learned the same way as any factual knowledge. To make this easier to understand, imagine that you live in another country and you learn the names of all major cities in Belgium, and where they lie on the map, and their relative sizes.  This knowledge can be learned and taught without ever setting foot in Belgium.  In the same way, exoteric religion can be transmitted without personal experience.

That is not to say that an exoteric religious person never has any religious experience that transcends what you would experience reading a dictionary. Far from it, such experiences are quite common.  But they are vague, haphazard, and play no large role in their life. In fact, exoteric religion usually warns against any altered states of consciousness. And while it does encourage ethical behavior, it is such as can be achieved by training and strength of will. It is not recommended to be transformed into something utterly different from an ordinary human. On the contrary, such a thing is seen as dangerous.  (Which it often is, of course.  Insane people go through this regularly, and are probably rather more common in society than esoterists.)

The exoteric believer gains strength from ritual and dogma.  If he cannot perform his rituals, his religion begins to fade from his mind, and this makes him feel bad. (To his credit!)  Likewise if someone manages to cause doubt in his mind about a dogma, it feels as if his religion is falling apart for him. Some atheists take a perverse pleasure in seeking out believers and dissing their dogma. The predictable reaction of the exoteric believer is to put his fingers in his ears and chant LA LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU LA LA LA, figuratively if not literally, and this is prime entertainment to some people. Of course there are also atheists who don’t like to cause mental suffering in others, but since you generally don’t hear much from them, it is perfectly reasonable for the believer to think that all atheists thrive on suffering.  It is not actually true however.

But there are also esoteric Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and so on. In each case, these are a minority. It seems to be a personality type, and often asserts itself early in life. The esoteric person often has gone through a brief period as exoteric, but found the need to go beyond this traditional view.

To the esoterist, ritual and dogma point toward something else.  If you point at the moon, a man will look at the moon, but a cat will look at your finger. (And likely swipe at it, at that.) The esoterist does not worship his religion, but rather that which his religion points toward:  The Absolute, the Tao that cannot be spoken, the God who cannot be named, who lives in a Light into which no one can enter, whom no man has seen or can see. And yet, despite being unspeakably alien and remote, the One resides in some way in the depth of our soul, at our deepest core.

This is blasphemy to the exoterist.  As far as he is concerned, the psychic being that resides in his body is himself, the ego, and nothing else (if all goes well – there may be the occasional demonic incursion if you live in a culture that accepts such things.) What he hears the esoterist say is “I am God”, which of course is a pretty good reason to kill the blasphemer on the spot. And of course, if you truly are convinced that you are ego all the way down, then the notion that any of this is divine is utter blasphemy, no doubt about it.

The esoterist has a kind of sense – the eye of the heart, it is often called – that lets him directly perceive truth.  He does not arrive at it by logic, but his love for truth and the One Truth which is the wellspring of all truth is such that he experiences it directly, as a kind of unity, much like your senses perceive your body as being one with you.

There are among esoterists again two sorts.  The most rare, and it is exceedingly rare indeed, is he who can perceive Truth directly with no assistance except the Divine itself. He is the one who has the open eye of the heart. There is no limit to what he may learn, except his lifespan and the direction of his effort.  For Truth is limitless, so even the greatest adept is unlikely to explore it all in a lifetime!

When the esoteric adept tries to share the truth he has acquired this way, he will tend to try to explain it logically. For truth is logical – it is not true because it is logical, but logical because it is true. But this is generally seen as an invitation to debate, for there are many who are masters of logic. But if your first premises are wrong, then no amount of logic will make your conclusions right.  The seeing cannot compromise with the blind in a discussion of what he has seen.

At his point the esoteric adept will normally say something like “This is not open to debate. This is the truth, and it is your loss if you don’t accept it. The presence of the blind will not cause the sun to stop shining.”

The exoterist will predictably be offended. He will see the other as arrogant, blasphemous or crazy.  And reasonably so: At any time, there is no lack of actual insane people claiming to be sent by the Master of Orion to warn us that the Negroes will kill us all, or Dick Cheney is the Antichrist, or Hitler will return with a fleet of flying saucers. And they are absolutely certain of this and need no proof. It is the truth, they have seen it, and are sharing it out of the goodness of their heart.  How exactly is that different?

But I skipped a group here. What about the majority of the minority? What about the esoterists who cannot just stare at Truth and see it as it is? These are those who, when they hear the Truth, recognize it. Their mode of perception is more like hearing than seeing, I guess.  When they hear Truth, it echoes in their heart, like a memory that awakens.  And once it awakens, it returns to life with great strength, which surpasses doubt.  It is as if they somehow knew this all before they were born, and only needed to be reminded of it.

These are what we may call disciples. The Truth they recognize is not something they just learn, like cities in Belgium. It is like a memory of having been there. They can no more doubt it than they can doubt the ground they are walking on or the air they breathe. And the Truth sets them free. They become able to see far-reaching consequences that are not obvious to others. They see deeply into the future or into the human heart. They have gained something that ordinary people are lacking.  There is a conviction and a light in their eyes, and they become able to help others.

After these again come the theologians, years later, transcribing the truth into ritual and dogma.  And so a new branch of religion has been born, and go on its merry way, perhaps one day becoming powerful enough to persecute the others.  Until another visionary appears…

***

Well, that was not as exact and as lucid as I wanted it to be.  But I think it may serve as an introduction, to see whether this might interest you at all. As always, I am more of a spiritual tourist than a teacher, so before risking your soul, be sure to find a more reliable source.  Well, unless you have one in your own heart, I suppose.

Living in wonderful times

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Before jumping with joy, be sure to consider the furniture, so as not to worry your family.

I know not everyone is happy, and not everyone is growing happier. In America, literally millions of people are now out of work, and the country does not have a security net that catches all of these people. There are many who lie awake at night, filled with fear and worry.  Where will they get food? Where will they get medication they need? How will their children get an education now?

And yet, even in America, the vast majority of people are better off that they were twenty years ago.  If we compare to thirty years ago, when I was still young, the difference is really striking.  Even now, the economy is technically growing.  If most people even half-heartedly cared about each other, or at least pretended to when others saw them, it would not cost them much to help the poor.  In so far as there is a problem, it is a problem of extreme selfishness, or “narcissism” as it is called these days.

For the great number of people who live in wonderful times, who have more than they have ever had before, is it not even a little shameful to not help a friend or relative who has worked hard all their life and yet fallen on hard times?  Would not gratitude, if you knew what that was, make it bearable to give a little to charity or at least pay your taxes?

Make no mistake: We live in wonderful times. Many illnesses that could not be cured are now considered mostly harmless. Basic knowledge of healthy eating and exercise is everywhere, and there is less and less poison in the food. The air is cleaner than it was a generation ago, and the forests are growing all over the northern hemisphere.

Even many of the poor now have access to the Internet, and there is beautiful music available for free, and more books than you can read in a lifetime. Whether you are looking for entertainment, news or words of wisdom, there is more of it than you could possibly use. Thinking back to when I was a child, reading the phone book and dictionary to satisfy my curiosity, it is as if I wandered in a desert where you had to dig for drops of water, and now have come to a wide river of fresh water, so great that we cannot see the end of it. It is amazing, nothing less. And we can meet people from around the globe, share their thoughts and memories as friends.

Even while some of the rich countries struggle in some ways, most of the world is still growing rapidly richer.  Each year, millions in China and India are quietly rising from poverty into the life of the middle class, where they no longer have to worry about food and clothes and other necessities, but can begin to enjoy luxuries and hobbies that used to be reserved for the well off. Those who walked are biking, and those who road a bike are driving. Those who lived in a hovel have a small house, and children who used to work on the farm are going to school.  All over the world things are getting better, except for a few sad and war-torn places.

New windmills and solar panels are being put up every year, and improvements in industry make it possible to produce over 1% more with the same energy for each passing year. Low-energy light bulbs are quietly replacing older models, and the new LED lamps not only shine as brightly with a fraction of the energy, but also have the potential to last for decades or even centuries, if such a thing can be imagined. They have no parts that move or grow hot.

The world has never been as educated as today. Both in rich and less rich countries, the number of students is swelling.  Children start school at a younger age and stay longer. Now, that may be a mixed blessing with all the political propaganda being served at our colleges, but surely people are more knowledgeable than ever before.  The accumulation of knowledge from science is skyrocketing thanks to easier publishing and spreading of data. From the depths of the oceans to outer space where new Earth-like planets are being discovered, we are seeing what was invisible to a thousand generations before us.

Why is there not an epidemic outbreak of gratitude and joy all over the world? Sure, there are many happy people, and more are coming. But we live in an age of wonders, we live in times that the greatest dreamers could not dream of, times that few prophets dared hope would ever come.  How can we restrain our joy long enough to make it through our workday without breaking out in song and dance?  An age of freedom, an age of prosperity, an age of knowledge, an age of mobility, an age of connection, an age of arts.

If our ancestors had seen the way we live, in a vision, suddenly as they lifted their head and dried the sweat off their forehead… would it not look to them as if the High Spirits of Heaven had descended in glory, wielding powers beyond comprehension, to bless this age with miracles never before seen or heard of? Who among them could have seen us today and would not have fallen to their knees in awe and gratitude that the seed of their life would be allowed to live in such an age?

Please, wake up, even for a minute, and know that you have been allowed to live in wonderful times.

Confusing thoughts

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Books will do this to you, although mostly when they fall on your head from the top shelf.

Today on the bus, reading Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, I went through the fairly slim part about Kong Qiu, or Confusius as he somewhat confusingly is known in English. I rather hoped for a more complete treatment. But then Ryuho Okawa thinks Confusius is one of the most awesome people who have lived in the last 5000 years, perhaps the greatest after himself (the Buddha) and Jesus Christ. By avoiding an outright religious angle with gods, Heaven, afterlife etc, Confusius’ philosophy was able to last for thousands of years without being twisted by sects trying to conform it to their own fantasies. Religious people tend to abandon logic way too easily for Okawa’s tastes, or even mine for that matter.

Well, it was short, but it was sweet. Armstrong certainly seems to share the admiration for Confusius, but her book has a sweeping range, trying to sum up the whole Axial Age from China to Greece. That is a huge project. I am sure she could have written a book about Confusius if she had the time. I would not mind buying it, I think.

Not that I am saying Armstrong is one of my top authorities on religious matters.  But she is an accomplished scholar and writes an engaging prose. For a grand overview such as this book about the Axial Age, one could do worse. And I think she is particularly well suited for writing about a man who himself did not consider religion “out of this world”, but rather taught a transformation or refinement of the soul through making everyday life a kind of sacred ritual.

Note to self: Read up more on Confusius, if given the chance.  I am not planning to become his student or anything, but a few thousand words more about one of the greatest thinkers of history may be worth the time.

As better men than I have pointed out, the greatest men of history are so rare that one would be considered amazingly lucky to ever meet 1 of them. But in books, we can meet them by the dozen. That’s some superpower!

Different

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“Is it a crime to be different from others?”  Not really, but it may be less of a super saintly virtue than I sometimes like to think.

Gallup called and wondered whether I was going to complete the big book of surveys they had sent me. I had wondered that too, but decided at that time not to. It was unnecessary big, but what made me stop was the assumptions.

If someone was to ask you: “Have you stopped slashing your neighbor’s tires? Yes or no?” – you would not want to answer such a question.  The questions in this book are not so morally repugnant, but they are equally nonsensical. There are pages (this is literally a book) with questions regarding TV programs, which I have for the most part not heard of. I don’t have a TV, never had. That really cuts down on the relevance of these questions, but there is no “I don’t watch TV” box to tick, not for each question and certainly not to skip the whole section.

And then we come to automobile and the same thing repeats. There is a wealth of questions related in this way and that way to the car. There is no “I don’t care” box. Would it cost that much to design a thick book of surveys in such a way that one could skip irrelevant things?

Then there are vacations. My vacation, as regular readers may know, is to take November off and write 50 000 words of fiction, the National Novel Writing Month project. Needless to say, none of the questions apply to that. I would think vacations may not even be a human right, but they sure are not a human obligation!

To know truth; to love beauty; to will virtue; these are human obligations. But nobody seems interested in surveying these things.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I have my worldly interests too. Entirely too much of that really.  But even then these are too obscure to interest Gallup.  Yes, I play online games on the PC. That’s 1 ticky box. As if the kind of person who plays Age of Conan has much in common with the person who plays the ancient board game of Go at the International Go Server.

I was thinking that it would be a good thing to get the message across, that not everyone is the imaginary “common people”. But there is no way to get the message across. It is not something Gallup’s customers want to know. So I am telling it here instead.

Of course, my voluntary simplicity may come across as slightly less impressive if you had actually seen me writing this surrounded by 3 active computers,  plus a couple more computers and backup disks in reserve…

Our true nature?

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The precious moment when, somehow, we become able to stand outside our own thoughts and look at them. Treasure these moments, for they are where we learn to know this mysterious, unknown person known as “myself”.

See if this does not resonate in your heart, as it did in mine.  “In the spirit world, what a person thinks about or prays for most strongly reveals their true nature. Awakening to this truth will completely turn your life around.”

I have a hard time imagining how it could possibly be otherwise. What else would more clearly reveal our nature?  Certainly not our title or paycheck. Certainly not our house or car. Not even our looks or our health. Probably not our political affiliation or even, in and of itself, what church or temple we go to, if any. But as the Bible says: “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he”.  (Proverbs 23:7.)

If there is a problem with the original statement, it is that it is obvious. “It says itself” as we often say here in Norway. Well of course we are what we think! Really? Then why do appearances mean anything to us at all? Why does it matter what this or that person thinks about us?

If we want to know who we really are, there is no way around observing ourselves as the days go by. What am I thinking about when I am not thinking about anything else? When I am at rest, perhaps before falling asleep at night? When I am waiting in line and the line is slow, where are my thoughts? And what, if anything, do I wish so much to see happen that I am willing to pray for it when no one on Earth sees me?

It appeared to me, that we might imagine we were taken away to a secret place of power, and there ordered to state the deepest wish of our heart.  (Such an event starts one of my unfinished stories, which may be why I can imagine it easily.) Now, if this our greatest wish was to come true, that would certainly be something.  But what is it?  Do we really know that? And is this, our aspiration as it may be called, what we actually think about when waiting for the bus?

Magic and genius

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Screenshot from the anime Aoki Densetsu Shoot. “He was a god-like person.” In Japan’s Shinto tradition, the border between the human and the divine is still more porous than here in the West with our centuries of monotheism. So much so that even a soccer player can be seen as divine.

It is not just soccer players, of course. We all have this wonderful magic called life. Somehow, only dimly knowing how, we are able to control our own bodies to a great extent. Some people, through talent and training, are able to control them even better.

I believe without doubt that there is sports genius, just like there is musical genius or chess genius and others. And like with all of these, the genius cannot truly be brought out and made to shine without effort. Hard work through several years. But the thing is, for the genius it is not just hard work. It is something they feel called to, drawn to.

In the anime Aoki Densetsu Shoot, which set off this train of thought, the genius Kubo had a question for all who wanted to join his soccer club: “Do you like soccer?” And those whose eyes lit up when they answered “yes” were the ones who became his team.

Obviously, there was never a time in my life when I could have said that about soccer, or indeed any sport. But when I was young, you could have asked me: “Do you like programming?” and my eyes would have lit up in just the same way. I would practice it when no one was looking. I would read about it, think about it, even dream about it. And that is how, when the chance unexpectedly came, I was able to create a debt collection software suite that helped companies in Norway save millions. I did not earn millions, of course, though I did earn a few thousand for a little while, which I wasted. But that was not why I did it. I did it out of love.

We don’t think of life as magic, but if we came to a world where stones could move and grow, our first impulse would surely be to see it as magic. But because carbon-based structures do this routinely in our world, it is perfectly natural to us. In a similar way, if we had not seen genius before, we would quite likely be astounded and think it was something supernatural. Or at least our ancestors did just that. In the age before books, we did not have access to the many geniuses of the past. So when a great man (it was usually, not quite always, a man) stood up and did something remarkable, people thought that a god had descended on earth and left his seed among us.

Well, I suppose that can happen too, in a very abstract manner of speaking. But my point is that it is just a matter of perspective. We know for certain that our way of seeing things is right, and their is wrong. But what if not? What if genius really is divine and life really is magic? It is not like we can recreate these under controlled circumstances, after all, which is the essence of scientific practice.

Yes, I have also read that some scientists have recently created life. On a closer look, they have assembled DNA and inserted it into an existing cell from which they had removed the original DNA. That is creating life in much the same way as playing with Lego bricks is creating matter. Not that it is not respectable, but we are still a far cry from even understanding life, much like creating an equivalent of it from scratch. And the same is the case with genius, I think.

That is why I don’t have a problem with the notion that a genius is a “high spirit” who has come down from Heaven. It is just a different way of looking at the same thing. We need to see things from different sides. A world in which there are no wonders is not a world fit for human habitation. There is nothing heroic in creating a mental world in which everything is just the random movements of atoms. Such a world has no room for heroes anyway. Those who lose their sense of wonder lose, in a very real sense, their humanity. They become self-professed animals. What has always raised us far above the beast is our imagination. It creates delusions, but it also creates discoveries. It brings forth the madman and the genius. And sometimes the mad genius…

But genius without work is like water running into the sea, disappearing without having done any good. That is why Edison, one of the greatest geniuses of modernity, said that genius was 1% inspiration and 99% transpiration.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes music comes to me. Hauntingly beautiful melodies or even songs, in languages known or unknown, songs that I have never heard before and never hear again. If I were a composer, I could grasp those melodies and bind them to ink and irrigate the world with their beauty. But I am not, and so after a while they join the river Lethe and return to the endless ocean from which they may have come. I sometimes wonder if this happens to almost everyone, most people, or just a few. But it does not matter, I guess. I never felt a call to be a composer. If you asked me: “Do you really like music?” my eyes would not have lit up.

The horse harness

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I think I needlessly mixed up two concepts in my previous entry: Fame, and being important to others. Sometimes they go together, sometimes not. For instance, no one talks about the one who invented the modern horse harness, which allows horses to pull great weight while still breathing freely. Supposedly this happened in China in the 5th century. Perhaps someone there knows. It seems like such a small thing, but it revolutionized agriculture and land transportation, and thereby trade. It came to Europe around the year 800, and without it the Dark Ages might have lasted much longer, if at all moving on toward the Middle Ages (not the same thing!) and eventually to modernity.

The Roman empire did not have the full use of horses in agriculture, although they did use horses in war. Instead, they relied on slave labor. While slavery has happened later as well, we cannot really imagine how important it was to early civilizations. The Christian message of freedom for the slaves, even if weaseled out of at certain times, was greatly helped by our hairy friend the horse, harnessed by a simple invention born out of empathy. Anyone who saw a horse struggle in the old type of harness should have been aware that it had trouble breathing when working hard, but it was probably just one man – or possibly even a woman or child – who thought of how to change it. By giving the horse greater freedom, they also brought freedom to hundreds of thousands of workers through the ages to come.

From “small” things like this, our history became possible. There are many turns where history could have slipped and fallen (and sometimes, it seems, it really did). But here and there, now and then, once in a thousand years, someone came up with an idea that changed everything. Sometimes it was someone great and famous, like Archimedes or Edison, mass inventors both. But sometimes it was just some guy, forgotten by those whose lives he saved.

“I have been here”

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“I learned to be kind because of you.” That is how Unlimited Translation Works renders this line from the song “Kimi no mama de” (YouTube link). The line has also been translated as “I was able to be kind because of you”. So anyway, what have you learned or become able to do because of me?

I have been listening several times now to the song “Read my name” (YouTube link) by Chris de Burgh. I have mixed feelings about this song, and those who know me can probably understand why. Here is the chorus and the essence of the song:

“I have been here!
read my name, read my name!
With all I’ve got I’ve taken part,
I’ve made a difference to the world.
I have been here,
just read my name!”

Chris has mentioned in at least three of his earlier songs a practice of going to the graveyards and reading the names on the headstones there. I get the impression that he considers this a kind of sacred act, as service perhaps both to those who lie beneath those stones and him who doesn’t yet. Because for each such name, there was someone whose life was just as important to them as our life is to us. Someone who dreamed, and tried to share those dreams. Where we are, they have been. Where they are, we shall be. They have been here, just read their names.

I read an article on a Norwegian computer related web site the other day. It said that only a small part of the population used Twitter, and of those who did, only half actually read other people’s tweets. The other half were only interested in sending tweets, not reading them.

My reaction was that this was probably better than in the flesh, where it seems the overwhelming majority are in love with their own voice, and will use most of the time when others speak to prepare their next “message”. In contrast, as I believe my brothers can attest, I rarely have anything to say when I converse with people lately. When they speak, I am listening to them, so I usually don’t have much of a rejoinder when they draw their breath.

Yet even I have my “dance” that I wish to perform in front of the other bees, to tell them where I found my sweet flowers. This is the human condition, I think. (And that of worker bees, or so science says.)  But what does it amount to, beyond “I have been here, read my name”? What is the difference I have made to the world?

2000 years ago, when Jesus Christ lived, there was some 200 to 300 million people in the world. A number of them are still known by name, but even your high school teacher would only know 20-30. To get up to 200-300 (one in a million), without resorting to specific books on the topic, you need a classical scholar. And even then, you don’t get much further.

That is not to say that none of the rest made a difference to the world, a tiny and local difference. And due the “butterfly effect”, history might have been drastically different if one of them had made a different choice one day. But most of those lives kind of canceled out, like the waves of a raindrop hitting the sea on a rainy day. And then there was the depth charge that was Jesus Christ, who set off a tsunami that is still making waves 2000 years later. But how many would have followed his twitter in the year 25, compared to any other random raindrop?

Not so much comparing myself to the incarnate sky-god here, as just reflecting on the scope of things, and how hard it is to say who we are until we are forgotten and only the work we did remains.

Someone else’s theory, put quite simply, is this: The Savior is the light of the great saints. The great saint is the light of the other saints. The saint is the light of the heroes. The hero is the light of the good people. The good is the light of the world. -Details may vary, but in the old days, hierarchy was considered natural, and most thinking people would recognize the expression “the great chain of Being” even if they had not heard it before.

Today, we have democracy, and those who vote depending on the color of someone’s necktie have as much influence as you. Or that is the theory. But it is not quite like that. Well, it may be in elections, but most elections are much less important than people believe. If random people elect other random people, the result will not rise above randomness. And if you cannot rule your own home with wisdom, let us not mention your own body, what will you achieve even if you rise to power or fame? Randomness. Some poor forgotten widow whose feeble life has a single direction will accomplish far more.

By resource or talent I could be a hero, one of a hundred. But apart from a brief spurt of software development, my life has mainly been a raindrop on the sea, so far. Or so it seems to me. But we won’t really know until I am forgotten. As the flesh hides the bone, so does the personal life hide a man’s work. But in time it will be all that is left in this world. (I don’t mean “work” in the sense of “employment”, of course, but accomplishment.)

“Hateshinai toki wo koete”

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“A never-ending journey continues”

Listening again to the song “This is my road” (here on YouTube, but I bought my copy) by Kanon, sung in a mix of English and Japanese with a little Latin and Greek thrown in from Christian rituals. (There is also an English-only version, but they differ a bit.) This is a truly beautiful song, and it was almost solely the inspiration for my attempts at last year’s NaNoWriMo. Eventually I failed that one, but not because of this song. The vision it raised in my mind was simply greater than I was capable of expressing.

The phrase that particularly rang out to me was “Hateshinai toki wo koete” – approximately “unlimited time is surpassed” or words to that effect. So I set out to write a story about a road that surpassed time – a road to immortality. The simple discipline of walking this road day after day would slowly transform the main character as he bit by bit, almost unnoticeably, moved from the barely ordinary into the extraordinary, and then ever deeper into it, into a world filled with miracles.

A lot of people have walked such a road, and some are even now doing so. But I speak then about a spiritual journey. I wanted to dress it in a more concrete language, to make it come alive for those who are yet unable to see that other road. But I failed, which should probably surprise no one.

Perhaps less talk, more walk would help. It has already been a year since then. I am still not one of those “where did the years go” people, for which I am thankful, but I am not sure I have changed as much this past year as I did the year before. Timelessness takes time, and I am wasting too much of mine, when I could be moving deep into a land of miracles, surpassing even the undefined expanses of time itself.