When recently there was news of militants destroying a 2000-year old temple in Syria, in a city from the Roman days, sights of the temple came back to mind, particularly a ceiling that I had once come across. This writing is not about the shortsightedness of destroying a remnant of a long-past civilization; rather, it is about a science, an idea… the possible significance of the Zodiac.
“The human mind likes tangibles. We understand what we can count or measure. So, we defined ‘development’ as an economic measure because we thought more money equals more happiness. And we couldn’t have been more wrong because economic development and happiness are driven by opposite forces – one is led by greed (more the merrier) and the other by low expectations versus reality (less is more).”
“The most fascinating thing I have learnt is that all lifetimes take place simultaneously. We are unaware of this since time is viewed as a linear process, therefore, we view reincarnation as a sequence of events, rather than a continuous and simultaneous stream of consciousness, alongside our current lives.”
“Night Theater begins with a surgeon who is struggling against corruption in his dilapidated village clinic, and who is visited one evening by the dead and thrust into a bizarre night of revelations and surgeries, with the surgeon trying to restore them to life.”
Human beings are animals though of a special kind. We are mostly hairless and bear remarkable similarities with the apes. According to the process of natural selection, we have evolved to be the most superior of all living beings. In Hamlet, Shakespeare wrote about the uniqueness of humans more than two centuries before Darwin came up with the theory of evolution.
Novels in the spirituality genre are often non-fiction. They are committed towards presenting the facts rather than weaving a story. But what if spirituality intertwines itself with the elements from the spine-chilling thriller genre that will leave us biting our nails in anticipation of what will happen next? Won’t it be rather impressive?
For as long as I can remember, I have been a student of science. I always had questions. I could not shut down my brain from asking ‘when, why, where and what’ each time I learned something new. Scientists often invalidate previously known theories when a new one comes. But I can’t.
Sunim’s book inspired me to re-read Religion in Korea: Harmony and Co-Existence. It’s a little book that I borrowed a while back from the library. I mainly picked it up because I was interested in studying about Korean Shamanism–a practise that prehistoric Koreans brought with them as they migrated to the peninsula from Central Asia.
Writers in the spirituality genre are called to the craft. They are vessels for messages from the divine. When you read their words, they express what you’re feeling and give words to your secret emotions.
The literary world is filled with many works that dwell on such abstract concepts of time. From time travel to time dilation and alternate universes–the fictional world has sung laurels on time being relative. This made me wonder about the laws of physics and how they interpret time.