Anupam- The Dreamer

Einstein once remarked that “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” And why go to far away to look for miracles, than ourselves? The human body, as it has been estimated, consists of 7 billion billion billion atoms (i.e. 7 followed by 27 zeros!). A number which cannot be made sense of even by any stretch of imagination. It is more than the size of world economy and even more than the total number of stars in the whole universe!

And the best part of 7 billion billion billion atoms is that about 99.99% space in every atom is empty. This is not an estimation or a guesswork, rather a proven scientific fact. Just imagine, every matter that we see with our naked eyes is 99.99% pure empty space. Yet, we see that the matter has a particular form and shape. Quite astonishing, isn’t it? And moreover, those 7 billion billion billion atoms dance together in such a way so as to create as complex a structure as a human body, which is easily visible despite being empty space. The moot thing here is to ponder is whether it is just the atoms doing the dance, or there is more to what meets the eye. This thought has been a persistent enigma before the humanity since eternity and still we are yet to come to terms with it in order to fully uncover the whole truth. I think we are still meandering around this thought, and still trying to make sense of what this means to us.

I watched an amazing movie called “Ship of Theseus” long ago. The movie was an amazing one, which comes close to this idea of discovering this paradox of what lies beyond the visible form. It is based on the idea of “Theseus’ paradox” developed by Greek philosopher Plutarch way back around 40-120AD. It states the following:

If a ship is so heavily repaired and nearly every part of it is replaced with a new part, is it still the same ship? If not, at what point did it stop being the same ship? And what would happen if the original planks were gathered up after they were replaced, and used to build a second ship. Then which ship, if either, would be the original Ship of Theseus? As simple as this “Ship of Theseus” paradox seems, it has many profound and deep meaning if you think it through.

If all the people in an organisation leave and get replaced by all new set of people, is it the same organization or a new one? Do the organizational values remain the same or do they change?

If every organ of a human body is transplanted by a new organ, then is it a new body or the same old one? By the way, most of the cells in our body are replaced by new cells every 7-10 years, so are we same or different as we were a few years ago?

All the above questions point to the same thing- that there is something beyond the obvious, something invisible, which is always there. Take a simple example of organ transplantation, which is also depicted in the movie called “Ship of Theseus”. If one by one, every organ of your body is replaced by another organ, then will you change as a person? We all know that it doesn’t! The person remains the same. But do the organs belong to the new person? No! Then, there must be something which still remains in the first person, which is core to his/her identity, which is indestructible! Something, which is beyond the capacity of the ordinary humans to replace in a person! What’s that??? The answer eludes the science and lies somewhere in the domain of spirituality…The beginning towards that cannot be made unless we accept the fact that something else is there beyond the visible…

Till next time….