A Sensitivity to Things

If  a tree falls on Google Maps and nobody sees it fall, did it fall in the real world?

An interesting conundrum explored in this short video by low-end production team The Vacationeers, whereby fictional users of a virtual world, by the click of a mouse, cause change in this world, a post-modern, Web 2.0 allegory if you will to the ageless Indian philosophy of Advaita Non-Dualism, a system of belief and practice which resolves existence and non-existence, self and others, this world and the one beyond to a single, undifferentiated reality. It’s kind of like imagining the entire universe as never ending menu of pizza toppings, baked upon a single, infinitely sized pizza.

“If a man considers that he is born, he cannot avoid the fear of death. Let him find out if he has been born or if the Self has any birth. He will discover that the Self always exists, that the body that is born resolves itself into thought and that the emergence of thought is the root of all mischief. Find from where thoughts emerge. Then you will be able to abide in the ever-present inmost Self and be free from the idea of birth or the fear of death.”

“The world is illusory, Only Brahman is real, Brahman is the world.”

“There is nothing wrong with God’s creation. Mystery and Suffering only exist in the mind…”

“That which is not present in deep dreamless state is not real.”

—Quotes by Ramana Maharshi on Non-Dualism

Heady stuff, and hyper-intellectual mind-candy explored in better detail on film by The Matrix and A Scanner Darkly, which coincidentally both feature the exceedingly cosmic Keanu Reeves—although even this fan of serendipity defies drawing a bow long enough to find cosmic parallels in that.

Yes, the idea that an action in Google Maps can cause change in the real world may be completely non-sensical, but like most science fiction you can not deny that it is hyper-fascinating. And, as in the philosophy of non-dualism, what could be more fascinating than the idea that thought alone can change reality…

Quarter acre sections; a sky tower that doesn’t really go all the way to the sky; spotlessly clean suburbs; rolling, semi-green, semi-bald hills covered in sheep and mountain bikers; speedos for fashion rather than the beach; xylophones; a calypso beat, and druids in a city where almost nothing is older than 150 years—just some of the eccentricity galore in this irrepressibly happy, undeniably strange music video from Auckland, New Zealand band Bressa Creeting Cake—the only group with a truly awful pun for a name to win a national music award.

Or to describe Palm Singing in the words of the band:

“A very happy holiday song full of gaiety, summer, and love for one’s fellows.”

Strange backyard rituals around a bonfire aside, who on earth could possibly bad-mouth that?

My friend “Krazy Karl” was once a member of this band—before he made a stand for sanity. I need no longer wonder where the “Krazy” came from…

In New Zealand, the concept of “six degrees of separation” may not have been invented, but it always applies, and my crazy musician friend and Bressa Creeting Cake are just one example:

• I work with the guitarist from semi-famous rock band Garageland;
• I went to school with semi-notorious rock band Shihad;
• Jemaine of HBO comedy show Flight of the Conchords was in my film classes at university;
• A workmate was trying to sell a concept for a board game named based on this very concept—that you can connect one person to another through six degrees of separation or less.

Here in the land of four million people and forty million sheep, everybody really does know everybody…

Today in New Zealand, the 22nd of January, it is Sir Edmund Hillary’s funeral, the final laying to rest of a national icon, and the only New Zealander to be immortalised on the face of a bank note while still alive. He was also the first person in 1953 to scale the face of Mt Everest.

Disparities of timezones and the passage of sidereal time mean that for the rest of the world it is yesterday right now, the 21st January, when “Sir Ed” has yet to be buried, and it is still Martin Luther King Day, the celebration of another man who scaled a lofty peak—the highest ideals of human equality and brotherhood.

What better time to revisit his famous, nay immortal August 28, 1963 speech at the March on Washington, better known for the very phrase he is remembered for—“I have a dream…”

May every dream for peace and equality come true…

Martin Luther King’s speech “I have a dream”

A Tribute by Sri Chinmoy to Martin Luther King

“Martin Luther King, beloved king of the heart-world, unhorizoned vision of the mind-world, hero-warrior of the vital-world, life-sacrificer of the body-world, to you my aspiration-dedication-life bows.

“The Saviour-Son gave humanity the lesson of compassion and forgiveness. India’s Mahatma Gandhi, with his message of non-violence, proved to be an excellent student. In America the Absolute Supreme chose you to be His unparalleled student, to love divinely the soul of His creation and to serve unreservedly the body of His creation.

“We, the members of the United Nations Meditation Group, bow to you lovingly, devotedly and soulfully.”

Sri Chinmoy
29 November 1977

(Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King at the United Nations. The programme was attended by Mrs. Coretta Scott King.)

Reprinted from Mahatma Gandhi: The Heart of Life by Sri Chinmoy (1994).

Martin Luther King Resources

• Speeches by Martin Luther King at WriteSpirit.net
• Biography of Martin Luther King at BiographyOnline.net