Dust In The Wind

Kansas sings 'All we are is dust in the wind'....

We are not even dust in the wind actually.

Some facts about our existence.

1. We live for 80-90 years, the universe is approximately 13 billion years old.

2. We are inconsequential on the cosmic scale. Take a look at the following animation, made by using images from rense.com.

The Sun's diameter is 109 times that of the earth....i.e. its volume is 109*109*109=1.3 million times the volume of the earth.

You need 1.3 million earths to fill up the volume of the Sun!

The above graphic shows that the Sun is invisible on a scale on which Antares (photo 5) is a supergiant. Antares' diameter is 700 times the diameter of the Sun...i.e. its volume is 700*700*700=343 million times that of the Sun.

i.e. You need 343 million Suns to fill up the volume of Antares!

Let us look at some more facts.

A star named "VY Canis Majoris" has the largest diameter out of all known stars, 1800 to 2100 times that of the Sun.

i.e. You need 9.3 billion Suns to fill up VY Canis Majoris!

Let us look at some other facts.

A star named "LBV 1806-20" , located approx. 40,000 light-years from the Sun, is 38 million times brighter than the Sun.

i.e. you need to put together 38 million Suns to get the brightness of one LBV 1806-20!

If the Sun is as bright as a 1 watt bulb........LBV 1806-20 is as bright as a 38 million watt bulb!

Despite its phenomenal brilliance , LBV 1806-20 is virtually invisible from the solar system. Its distance from us is so huge that its light gets obscured on the way.

The distances within our galaxy are so huge that even a star that shines brighter than 38 million Suns is invisible to us!

Antares, VY Canis Majoris and LBV 1806-20 are just three stars.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has 400 billion stars...

And the Milky Way is just ONE tiny galaxy among more than 130 billion galaxies in the known universe.

Total number of stars in the universe is estimated to be: 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. (50,000 billion billion).

Kansas rightly sings...'All we are is dust in the wind'......but isn't our pride beyond imagination?

So the questions are........

Where do we stand? What is our importance, if any, keeping in mind the frightening scales of distance and time, in the cosmos?

Kansas sings:

"Just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do
Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind,
Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky..."

(Sarah Brightman singing 'Dust in the Wind' and 'Who Wants to live Forever'.)

The Illusion Of Suffering Part 3 (Thich Quang Duc)

On June 11, 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk from Vietnam, burned himself to death at a busy intersection in Saigon as a protest against repressive policies of the Catholic Diem regime. Buddhist monks asked the regime to lift its ban on flying the traditional Buddhist flag, to grant Buddhism the same rights as Catholicism, to stop detaining Buddhists and to give Buddhist monks and nuns the right to practice and spread their religion.

While burning, the monk Thich Quang Duc showed no signs of discomfort, pain or fear. He was at peace. It is said he was not under the influence of any drug at the time.

Assuming that this incident happened exactly as is reported...it points to something.

It points to the illusion of suffering. In my view.

So the question arises...HOW he could self immolate without feeling pain and discomfort and fear.

The answer could be that he had seen through the illusion of pain, fear, suffering and all such emotions. He had realised that such emotions cannot be real.

So what is the evidence that this HYPOTHESIS (that pain and suffering are an illusion) has some substance to it?

There can be no undebatable evidence really. Only pointers.

Many spiritual teachers say we humans are going through the 'dream of suffering'. Plenty of them say it. Not just one or two.

Our experience with sleep proves that only when the dream is over does one realise that it was all a dream, and never happened. We were just THINKING that it was happening. (If we think something is happening, it does not mean it is happening, of course.)

This...to me...is a very strong pointer.

But the strongest pointer is that mystics have been talking about the 'dream of suffering' for thousands of years.
___________________

The fleeting nature of this life is self evident. The audio-visual quality of memories of what happened just 10 minutes back are no different from the audio-visual quality of memories of what happened 10 years back.

CONCLUSION:

The audio visual quality of memories of what happened 10 minutes back, logically speaking, should be stronger than the audio-visual quality of memories of what happened 10 years back....but is it?

This question opens one's mind to a huge number of questions. One answer forms, then another one forms, the mind dances.....but this question is worth remembering, from time to time.

Just the mere consideration of this question, and WATCHING mental-emotional reactions as this question is considered is a good way of seeing how one's perspective towards this question evolves.

As one's perspective towards this question evolves, a certain amount of detachment from life occurs. Which is always a good thing.

The Face Of Sanity

Sanity exists, in this world...!!

Control Freaks and Love

This post is just hypothesis, a flight of fancy. It is important to WATCH mental-emotional reactions that appear as this post is read, nothing more. No conclusions need to be drawn on how the blog owner looks at life and people!

In engineering, there is a term called 'degrees of freedom'. It refers to movement---lack of it, or ability for it, in a mechanism or machine part.

All engineering is about limiting and controlling the 'degrees of freedom' in a machine (or mechanism), so that it works in whatever way the designer wants it to work.

So a machine is nothing more than a set of components that control each other, communicate with each other in a strict manner, and move in set, predictable patterns.

So what are people who enjoy limiting the 'degrees of freedom' in other humans?

The graphic below, of a machine like skull and bones, has 'meat meter' written on its forehead. This is a very accurate representation of such people, because such people are just 'meat meters' who meter and barter human meat on a daily basis.

Such people can't be called alive, because they do not treat other people like they were alive.

They are machines because they want to control, restrict, and want others to be like them---move in set, predictable patterns that THEY wish to see. Such humans are nothing more than the 'Central Processing Unit' that controls and runs a computer.

Such people (machines pretending to be humans) treat even their own children like they would treat a machine. Control, restrict, bend, crush.

Machines in human form have robotic emotions. If one watches such people carefully, one will realise that one is talking to some kind of a machine...the proof will evidence itself in terms of the more or less predictable and C-grade emotional reactions in such people....and a total lack of mercy. Only pretense of mercy. Machines in human form just 'operate', optimise the flow of human meat through their systems. That's all.

No one who is sane will admire and respect a control freak who's passion in life is to take away other people's freedom and restrict them in some way. Restricting or wanting to restrict another human even in ONE way means that you have a 'machine' controlling your head.

So there is no such thing as 'conditional love'. It has to be unconditional. Machines put conditions on their environment, not life.

A person who is a control freak is not a free person. A control freak responds to control. A person who wants to control also wants to be controlled, although it may not be obvious. It is not human, it is just a machine. Binary machine. The binary states being 'Control me' and 'I want to control you'. These are signs of machineness. Nothing else.

Attributes of a machine walking around in human form:

1. Stresses too much on discipline and protocols and procedures.

2. Wants to control, restrict, bend, optimise, barter.

3. Wants to spy on you because it wants all the information possible on you, so that it can control you.

A great song by Pink Floyd....named 'Welcome to the machine' has the following lyrics.

'Welcome my son, welcome to the machine....
Where have you been?
Its alright we know where you've been.
What did you dream?
Its alright we told you what to dream.'