I gladly accepted two invitations, one each for 12th
and 13th January 2019. As you may have guessed both were to events in
Bangalore. On 12th January, the Mother
Tekhla auditorium on Brunton Road hosted a physicist Arthur
Esienkraft from Boston, in India as the guest of the Azim Premji University. His
talk was on the Light at the end of the Tunnel. Quite like Carl Sagan, who
popularized science through his passion for astrophysics; Arthur took on the task of making the
mystery behind light as a phenomenon accessible to citizens at large.
By the end of his 60 minutes talk, he was not only sure he had primed his audience for their questions; he had also moved from the phenomenon to models and their predictive nature, looping the predictions all the way back to phenomena with the help of the fuzziness of quotations from Archimedes to Asimov.
So what did Arthur begin with? “Only 6 phyla of 21 known to humankind have eyes”. Now, that speaks to something that Nature or ecology represents in evolutionary terms. But it piques our conditioned perceptual anchors to vision and sight. And while our visual cortex are expected to be different from other species, to know that anamorphic art began contemporaneous with understanding of light traveling the shortest distance in a straight line.
Show me the place, help me roll away the stone
Show me the place, I can't move this thing alone
Show me the place where the word became a man
Show me the place where the suffering began
My second invitation was to a memorial service on Sunday, January 13, 2019. It was an alumni gathering and remembrance of a man who delighted at a child’s wonder on seeing a light
bulb come alive with electricity itself. That was primal joy for him in
Chaibasa, Bihar. The man in remembrance was Rev. Richard (Dick) McHugh SJ, who
after spirited initiation from Tony D'mello SJ at the Jesuits' Sadhana Institute, Lonavla, went on to study
the NLP masters at work before he integrated Vipassana like mindfulness to
sensory acuity of the human body. His book Mind with a Heart a touchstone of experientially
decoded processes of neuro-linguistic programming, was his start-point of well deserved fame.
In my own sharing at the event, I emphasized that Dick’s life was a testimony to knowledge being an embodiment of this integration, as an inward journeying -a spiritual process in itself. In hindsight, and on return from the event, I recalled another expression that Dick often used. “If anyone would ask, what’s the goal of awareness? Nothing”. Pithiness in his wit came through in what one of his oldest students in class had to say. Sr Maria recalled her class in 1977 asking Dick to close with a parting statement. “Chew what you eat” is what he said.
For this life well lived, people traveled in from Mumbai, Delhi
and Chennai too to celebrate his work with us. In the words of Dr Stephen Titus, Math professor, any
transformation should have evidence for “What did you see? What did you hear?
What did you feel? How does that make for observation of transformation?” Perhaps, we owe a debt to the evolutionary spirals of NLP too. Robert Dilts built on Bateson's work on levels of learning in systems. And Nora Bateson on her father's and grandfather's!
Perhaps, the evidence of clarity comes through most in Sr Cynthia Gonslaves, FMM and one of Dick McHugh's longest collaborators in NLP process work. "Dick had his flaws too, like any other human being. But he was genuinely uplifting and caring. His parting words after any major interaction would be 'All the Best'. " Leo Lobo revealed how he found nature's metaphor from the farms of his childhood near Mangalore come through in the work of Dick. We were all plants whose seeds were sown to be bright and healthy beings with a potency unique and nourishing to be part of our ecosystem.
Unlike Eisenkraft’s light at the end of the tunnel, life’s always strange, and not merely when a scientist stumbles upon a dis-confirming pattern. Or a grammarian’s calling out of a violation of speech in language. Never mind that the mathematicians caught up with the visionaries in the physical and metaphysical worlds.
By the end of his 60 minutes talk, he was not only sure he had primed his audience for their questions; he had also moved from the phenomenon to models and their predictive nature, looping the predictions all the way back to phenomena with the help of the fuzziness of quotations from Archimedes to Asimov.
If Archimedes said Eureka, it gives the science the character
of having arrived at truth. Asimov preferred to be stumped on a phenomenal
experience and face it with two words “That’s strange”. Between these polar
opposites of concrete reality and works of science fiction, the premises of
science spread from observation to the quest to explain relationship between
objects in the real world.
So what did Arthur begin with? “Only 6 phyla of 21 known to humankind have eyes”. Now, that speaks to something that Nature or ecology represents in evolutionary terms. But it piques our conditioned perceptual anchors to vision and sight. And while our visual cortex are expected to be different from other species, to know that anamorphic art began contemporaneous with understanding of light traveling the shortest distance in a straight line.
When Roemer uncovered an inter-planetary observation
in conjunction with earth’s opposition to Jupiter, by timing the eclipses of
the Jupiter moon Io,
Rømer estimated that light would take about 22 minutes to travel a
distance equal to the diameter of Earth's
orbit around the Sun. This would give light a velocity of about
220,000 kilometres per second, about 26% lower
than the true value of 299,792
km/s.
Thereon, the evolution of physics itself seems like between the observation of ‘strange’ phenomena, and holding forth models that could predict them. There have been struggles between those who knew math and those who did not even receive formal education. It was news to me that Michael Faraday was a mere book binder who sketched visions of magnetism from reading and reflecting through titles he bound. It took the math from Maxwell to find relevance to Faraday's concepts of magneto-electric fields.
Thereon, the evolution of physics itself seems like between the observation of ‘strange’ phenomena, and holding forth models that could predict them. There have been struggles between those who knew math and those who did not even receive formal education. It was news to me that Michael Faraday was a mere book binder who sketched visions of magnetism from reading and reflecting through titles he bound. It took the math from Maxwell to find relevance to Faraday's concepts of magneto-electric fields.
There seems at least three axes between electricity,
magnetism and direction, for example that several people pursued between
precept and observation. The dance between theorists and mathematicians as like
Fresnel- Poisson (the Arago white spot), Faraday-Maxwell prompted at least one teacher of Physics to
ask the speaker, if history of Physics were taught as an evolution of such ‘seeking’; would not the love for science among students be more wholesome? That’s when Arthur’s
recipe of 7 Es sounded right – Engage, Elicit, Explore, Explain, Elaborate
and Extend.
Well, for one Arthur stressed that time and
space are not what we perceive it to be. That reminded me of the recent assertion
by behavioral economist Daniel Kanheman “It’s an empirical matter. It’s not amatter of thinking”. The progress of science rested more on how may we know
that which we label as ‘strange’ today? Had it not been for Feynman who
explained that the blue and orange wavelengths cancel each other out in a
straight line, we would be at a loss to explain light’s travel.
A schoolgirl of standard 5 in the audience took her
opportunity to ask as to why if light had no mass, would it not be able to
travel through a black hole? Her prompt came from the mentions of the speaker,
that light may not be as much a particle but a wave. I was instantly reminded
of how Leonard Cohen weaved this mind bending phenomenon into his lyric “Show
me the place”.
Show me the place, help me roll away the stone
Show me the place, I can't move this thing alone
Show me the place where the word became a man
Show me the place where the suffering began
“The troubles came I saved what I could save
A thread of light, a particle, a wave
But there were chains, so I hastened to behave
There were chains, so I loved you like a slave”
A thread of light, a particle, a wave
But there were chains, so I hastened to behave
There were chains, so I loved you like a slave”
Show me the place where you want your slave to
go
Show me the place I've forgotten I don't know
Show me the place where my head is bendin' low
Show me the place where you want your slave to go
Show me the place I've forgotten I don't know
Show me the place where my head is bendin' low
Show me the place where you want your slave to go
Born in Scranton, PA on 11th March 1930, he passed away 27th June 2018
in Baltimore, USA. This memorial service was at the Ashirwad Jesuit Residence
and retreat center off St Mark’s Road. The Rev. Stanislaus D’souza, SJ who
conducted the Mass reminded us of his pastoral meaning of the day – the commemoration
of John the Baptist ordaining Christ Jesus himself in the river Jordan. That
reminded me of John the Baptist surviving on locusts and honey in the wild, and
John the apostle. Dick McHugh would quote Richard Rohr of the movement in
gender in each of us as between the deep masculine of the wild journeying and
the deep feminine caress of the gospel – in keeping with being the message and
the messenger too. Dick had much in him that he attributed to his spiritual master Tony D'mello.
Dick was a rebel with a cause in the Jesuit Society himself.
His adornment of the Lacoste style T-shirt as unmistakably characteristic
chemise with a pajamas strewn from the Jesuit cassock was a strange ensemble. They bore an unlikely raiment
for a spiritual grandeur within him. To reframe from experience the Biblical
weight on “Love thy neighbor as Thyself” is an uncommon wisdom that priests and
nuns would find as a pivot in self-awareness. The psychological significance of
his take was – how could a person love another – without loving one’s own
self? Even Osho said, that it may be logically possible, but psychologically
impossible. To love another without making peace within one’s own self is a
sign of poor self-awareness. And an incongruent other awareness often the consequence. That’s when dysfunctionality begins. Mind, body and
emotional integrity in the self leads to larger ecological consciousness with others.
In my own sharing at the event, I emphasized that Dick’s life was a testimony to knowledge being an embodiment of this integration, as an inward journeying -a spiritual process in itself. In hindsight, and on return from the event, I recalled another expression that Dick often used. “If anyone would ask, what’s the goal of awareness? Nothing”. Pithiness in his wit came through in what one of his oldest students in class had to say. Sr Maria recalled her class in 1977 asking Dick to close with a parting statement. “Chew what you eat” is what he said.
Perhaps, the evidence of clarity comes through most in Sr Cynthia Gonslaves, FMM and one of Dick McHugh's longest collaborators in NLP process work. "Dick had his flaws too, like any other human being. But he was genuinely uplifting and caring. His parting words after any major interaction would be 'All the Best'. " Leo Lobo revealed how he found nature's metaphor from the farms of his childhood near Mangalore come through in the work of Dick. We were all plants whose seeds were sown to be bright and healthy beings with a potency unique and nourishing to be part of our ecosystem.
Unlike Eisenkraft’s light at the end of the tunnel, life’s always strange, and not merely when a scientist stumbles upon a dis-confirming pattern. Or a grammarian’s calling out of a violation of speech in language. Never mind that the mathematicians caught up with the visionaries in the physical and metaphysical worlds.
It’s indeed great to have been between twelves and thirteens this
January than to be at sixes and sevens.
What an interesting start to 2019. All the very best to you, dear reader.
What an interesting start to 2019. All the very best to you, dear reader.
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