Music of Orpheus made even nature sit up and notice; or as we have been told by accounts that Tansen the immortal singer in medieval India by singing certain ragas could make rain come down. Likewise we exercise our reason in Science and Art to create a semblance of reality. How true is it? Or rather how much of Truth has been skipped in transcribing reality in human terms?
How we arrange our universe is based on certain assumptions: All life forms seek pleasure and avoid pain. We project our emotional ‘bank’ into getting the best of pleasure and avoiding it in pain. Of the latter we only need to look at higher percentage of divorces. Entire gamut of human experience is arranged on this assumption. When our pet dogs wag tail we know the signal, but in case of cats we say it is a brush off. Our experience mostly bears our assumptions as true. When your Rottweiler or pit bull badly mauls a child out of the blue one might assume there are always exceptions to the rule. What are we to make of it? There is a bubble of ignorance in our knowledge of the world about us. Interest from our emotional bank is supplied from our perception of self and nature. But where is the account-keeper that must account for other species as well?
What makes animals extra-sensitive to earth tremors? How sound is it to judge their extra-sensory perception by our reason alone? It does not make an exact fit. In our failure to match them is a good reason to let the nature of miracles existing at a dimension beyond our rational powers.
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In the way we compare material world on the basis of reason can we compare our emotional responses to material objects evoke in us? Ecstacy of St. Teresa of Avila vis-a-vis that of Midas whose touch turned matter into gold? One over some abstract feeling based on faith the other over something concrete as gold.
Or take attitudes of man against his external world. The adage ‘when in Rome do as the Romans do.’ prompts some to let go their scruples in order to add to their experience. They want what life has to offer to the excess. On the other hand St. Paul may consider his belief stands in the way of eating unclean food of the gentiles. Who is right? Comparing value of experience with value of faith is a vain exercise. Man who makes use of thermals of human enterprises to become wealthy and St. Teresa who left her homeland to work with the poor and terminally ill in the slums of Kolkotta work on two different perceptions. The former works for this world to be seen and admired for his ‘smartness’ . He must however realize he cannot take his gains with him when he dies. The saintly nun converted her opportunities for another world. Which is right? There is seemingly no yardstick to get the reading right. Evenso both nestle each other.
Like the world here and now and the world to come duality of these is reflected in our chromosome in cells. It is a discrete packet with ends called Telemia. Everytime cell divides the telemia ends get shortened. There is a limit to which such cells can undergo division. In short death is worked as part of life. Period. Can we call this supersymmetry?
When Paul Dirac established the most general theory of quantum mechanics and it is from his equation we have this notion of an antiparticle to each particle – i.e. the positron as antiparticle to the electron.
Without arriving at this notion by experimenting, -a fundamental creed of Science to solve a problem only by undeniable proof, Dirac worked out by unerring mathematical logic, only reliable tool at such quantum level. Is this super symmetry consistent all throughout? If antimatter and matter were so constituted we might say universe will cancel itself. There are many imponderable forces in flow to which Science shall never be able to fathom fully without giving element of uncertainty its due place. For a Christian faith is not uncertainty but giving the pulse of life in him or her a sound anchor.
What is faith but giving life that pulsates in us to get up and go about without fully understanding our physiology? A baby whose impression of the world is backed up even before he is conscious of what shall follow, the same growing up phase as any other infants. What loads its interior impulses even in so naked stage is its own, something that stamps it as an unique being. One might call it soul or its essence. Experience is merely molting wings but the direction in which it may want to strike out is not answerable to any known maps drawn up before. Whose hands drew it up? One need to suppose the answer for which goes farther in time and space. If we were to reason of experience we need to ask if there is a cut off point like the Pillars of Hercules, ‘No Further?’
We are star children since every element of our bodies has been bequeathed to us from interstellar events. Faith is therefore is much more than material facts that can be examined as a fossil or fitted to an original form. (To be concluded)
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