Ghosts. Yes, ghosts. I am not talking here about the CMS or some other software, or something, anything else than the mysterious, haunting object that is depicted in horror movies. There is not much to it but I love telling the back-stories.
TLDR: Jump to the bottom and watch the video with the given link and start thinking!
So as if happened, I came across a few concepts very close to one another on different websites, rather social media. I don’t have the link to those places, but I sure remember what they meant.
Below I will take you through the reasoning, the bits and pieces, which are a bit unrelated and still, connected to it all!
What is time?
I remember this question was being asked a LOT when Interstellar (the movie) was released. Of course I too had that question - How the hell can time slow down? And of course, the underlying question - What is time, afterall?
I think it was Quora where someone whose bio line mentioned that he was a physicist mentioned something like the following:
Whenever you think of time, think of ‘rate of change’. Since a Black Hole has exceptionally strong gravitational force, it slows the motion of everything, down to the molecular level. Since all molecules have slowed down, the rate of change of everything slows down and hence the perception of time passing slowly in comparison to earth, where everything is changing at the regular rate!
Jupiter!
Indians, especially the followers of Sanatan Dharma, usually just called Hindus have a pretty vast library of ancient scriptures ranging from Vedas and # Upanishads to Ayurveda and Surya Siddhanta and everything in between. In addition, India has been a place for various religions and ideologies and I for one like reading about anything that gets me curious.
Sanskrit is considered one of the oldest languages and one of the most structured ones. Many of us learnt the basics of it during our schooling and I must say it was a pain in the rear when I was reading it. It’s like each noun can have 27 or so forms depending on context and a verb could have more. I don’t remember the details now, but looking back at that thing, all I see is a sincerely crafted language which without all the school curriculum pressure would feel really beautiful.
Sanskrit was created, nurtured and kept alive in India. It is an ancient language. It predates most other religious texts and is so close to perfection that I don’t think it has changed in a few centuries, all while Oxford Dictionary keeps getting new words added to English all the time. I am not saying Sanskrit is superior. You can get in that debate and fight or you can focus on something I want to point towards - one word, one specific word from Sanskrit, a language which has a near perfect structure, and has remained pretty much unchanged and comes from the time when words in language were used to derive as much meaning as possible. The word from Sanskrit is - “Guru”.
Guru is a beautiful word. Guru is often used to depict a learned person.
Guru as a teacher
There are multiple layers of teachers in Sanatana Dharma. I am not an expert but this is more or less the hierarch, from bottom to top;
- Sikshak (Teacher): A “Shikshak” is someone who gives you “Siksha”. Someone who imparts lessons.
- Adhyapak: I don’t think English separates Sikshak and Adhyapak. A Adhyapak is someone who can make you do “Adhyayan”, or “Study”. It is more than blabbering lessons. An Adhyapak is someone who will help you understand things.
- Acharya: Remember, Sanskrit is old. Back then, there must have been very few things that you could only learn theoretically without knowing anything practical and observable about it. An “Acharya” is someone who can teach you the “Acharan” of someone. This roughly translates to teaching how to utilize what you understood as a lesson in practical life. Maybe this is why, I see a lot of useful patterns in the ancient scriptures from my country.
- Pandit: I do not know the depth of this word, honestly. In the time that I have been alive, a Pandit has been reduced to what would be called a “priest” in western cultures. But looking at and meeting some great pandits, I believe that this was someone who could tell you how things that are beyond the scope of “practicable” work. I say that because the next level is both higher as well as deeper.
- Dhrista: Most people encounter this word only when Dhritarashtra gets mentioned. The meaning of this word is “seer”. Dhritarshtra was blind and his name meant “the ruler with the eyes”. I am not sure why he was named like that. The point though is that there is nothing like a “Philosophy” in ancient India - an established set of texts around “thought”. Rather, we had “darshan shashtra” (roughly translating to “a book by someone who has seen”). It is really difficult to translate these concepts one-on-one to any other language because the context gets lost. And then, there was “Guru”.
- Guru: Guru was the highest level. It was not a simple term I believe as I express a bit later.
Guru as a Planet
Our week names are named after celestial bodies . The name for “Thursday” is known as “Vrihaspativar” (वृहस्पतिवार) or “Guruvar” - the day of the “Guru”.
Interesting, you see? Guruvar is named after “Guru”. Most people I asked “Have you ever thought about why Thursday is named after Jupiter?” say they don’t know, and never cared to know about it either.
You see, Jupiter is the largest object in the Solar System (except the Sun, of course). It has the strongest gravity and that is where I feel the word connects which Guru. Now there is the last part which, as I see connects Spirituality, Astronomy and maybe wisdom.
Guru as an effect
The Hindi or the Sanskrit word for Gravity is Gurutwakarshan. The word literally means “attraction of the Guru”. These three things got me thinking - what is a Guru?
I believe the usage of the term “gravity” as some kind of charismatic attractive force comes from this same origin.
- Gravity is not exactly considered a force, because no work is really done to exert it - the same way a true Guru never tries to impress or attract.
- Gravity is instead considered as a medium of bending of space, and thus time! There is a hindi sentence I remember from my schooling - Guru ke saanidhya me samay ka pata nahi chalta (गुरु के सानिध्य में समय का पता नहीं चलता) - meaning “one feels like the time stands still near a Guru”. It made sense to me.
The part where bending time is a property of Guru, and that gravity can bend “space” made me start looking deeper. And then I found another comment on the internet.
Most scary things in the Universe?
I think it was on Reddit somewhere, I don’t remember where but the question was around “What is the most scary idea in your head?” And someone had answered with a single sentence - “That 4th dimensional beings exist.”
Got me thinking deeper on what our eyes see, how perception gets trained into our heads and so on. It was a deep rabbit hole, the kind which you don’t even wanna come out of. But I did. I ended up imagining a lot of stuff and came with a lot of explanatory details in my own head and then I came across a video (link at the bottom) on YouTube, made none other than one of my heroes - Carl Sagan. The beauty of that simple explanation is profound.
Go watch it and start thinking - What if Ghosts are in fact 4 Dimensional beings. The term “Ghost” was so well incorporated in the movie Interstellar that I just can’t explain. But honestly, do watch the video and think - what if all the paranormal visions people claim about are just a 4D creature visiting us? The “hunch” people feel are just those beings talking to us from the higher dimension? It was both bone chilling as well as relaxing. Sort of - if there are evil 4D beings, there must be good ones too.
While I have my own set of experiences and understanding, in a sane 3D world, there is no way you can prove anything about 4D beings without sounding total batshit crazy and I am not even trying to prove their existence either. This post is only to express my thoughts, and to maybe ask you if you too find it just as intriguing as I do. Enough hints. Go watch the video now.
Video Link: 4th Dimension