First of all, let us review previous lectures.
In the lecture of before the previous one entitled “’Macro’ and ‘Micro’ for Haruki Murakami“, I presented a view below.
Further if you go back to the past in the way that the life of your parents had the same process of yourself and the life of your grandparents had the same one and so on, you must find the tremendously long chain of life which has never break in a tiny moment.
If it is the true, it does not seem to be ungrounded view that my life was the life of anyone else in a previous life like the reincarnation of Buddhist thought, or that my life is eventually connected to the birth of stars and the space.
In addition, in the previous lecture entitled “Coordinate Axes of the East and West“, I pointed out that, using the coordinated axes setting “tie with nature” on the vertical axis and “geographical movility” on the horizontal axis, the second quadrant can be regarded as the “Eastern World” and the fourth quadrant as the “Western World”. Then, the first quadrant marked “A” can be a dual-meaning world of both of the East and the West. Also if one sets up the other axis of the “divine depth” third-dimensionally on the first quadrant further, I pointed out that the third-dimensional part can be seen as another dual-meaning world fusing of two worldviews of Buddhist reincarnation and of Christian Absolute.
I named it “unknown multi-dimensional world” and foretold that a detail discussion would be presented in the next session i.e. this lecture.
After completed the review here, now, let us proceed to discuss the “unknown multi-dimensional world” fully through the manner of removing the restriction in the lecture of before the previous one and using the “move” and “abstract” thoroughly.
Well, according to the knowledge of the latest astrophysics (of course within my understanding), the human being currently knows is only 4.4 percent of all materials that make up the universe, and the remaining 96 percent are completely unknown and mysterious dark energy and dark matter [Hitoshi Murayama, From what the universe is made up, (Gentosha Shinsho) p.224]. Incidentally, this “dark” does not mean literally “dark”, but just called so because “it is unknown and invisible”.
This means that the part where the light of science illuminates is only 4 percent, the remaining 96 percent, i.e. most of them are in the state of the “dark” or “non-scientific” or “pre-scientific”.
To speak from a different angle, the four-dimensional time-space is within the scope of this 4 percent and the remaining 96 percent is still a world of complete enigma. The above mentioned “unknown multi-dimensional world” also belongs to the latter world.
In addition, the dimension of the space is said to have up to surprisingly ten dimensions rather than four dimensions of our world [ibid, p.201]. This means that a world which human being cannot conceivable at all “spreads” over six dimensions further and being left unknown.
Incidentally the tree-dimensional world without time-dimension is the world of still and unmoving. If a man of three dimensional sees a man of two dimensional its image must be a paper-thin figure.
On the contrary, if we imagine the world with ten dimensions from our four dimensional world, it must be invisible and no shape to our eyes. It must be more than “dark” and something like far more unthinkable in which even the so-called “supernatural phenomenon” are seen naturally.
If this is the case, the “unknown multi-dimensional space” should be a world of that what a vast and limitless it is, although to express in this way itself must be unimaginably too small.
To express commonly, it can be a world of “anything OK”, or “you can do anything.”
So I, in a self-flattering manner, want to launch a “quasi-scientific” work below, being inspired by the spirited, free and limitless “unknown multi-dimensional world”, of course I know it is not a “science” in rigorous sense but definitely deeply related to my life given.
In the first, let us start an episode about a Japanese movie, “Departures”.
This movie which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2009, was not a boring work of course, but the hidden truth which occurred during the film adaptation was not known so much in spite of its big hit.
The story which was the base for the movie is a novel entitled Nokanfu Nikki [Dairy of Coffinman] [published in 1993 by Katsura Shobo; English version, Coffinman, (Buddhist Education Centre, 2002) translated by Wayne Yokoyama].
The original writer, Aoki Shinmon, however, did not accept to be the original story writer for the movie, because the script provided was too much adapted whereas he was asked to acknowledge the adaptation again and again by the filmmaker.
After all, the film was produced as a different work which remade the original, therefore, his name does not appears in the movie at all.
To be short, the movie, “Departures,” contains only a half of the original in terms of quantitative volume. This means, rather, the most crucial massages of the original do not represent in the movie almost at all.
Speaking the perspective of the filmmaker, it might be an unsuitable aspect for a movie. It therefore seems to show the limitations of movie media. Whatever the reason, the movie only describes some experiences of the coffinman which was written as a sort of introduction for the original.
Then, let us look at the core part which has been omitted from the movie. The disregarded part is religious, ethical, philosophical and even scientific meanings of the death of man which Shinmon Aoki eventually reached through finding some corruptions in religional world and spread prejudices on the death.
In the chapter omitted from the movie, he wrote:
A religion that is not scientific is blind.
Science without religion is dangerous.
So said Albert Einstein. . . But it’s also a fact that science today has developed at such blinding speed as to leave us bewildered.
Erwin Schrodinger, the father of quantum theory, says:
The subject and the object are one. It does not mean that the dimension separating the two has crumbled with the recent findings in physics. Why this is so is because that dimension never existed in the first place (English version, p.112)
Yet, Shinmon Aoki, touching upon the “light” that he experienced during his coffining work, says:
This Inconceivable Light is immeasurable, reaching everywhere without limit. It penetrates all things and has neither shape nor form. It exists in eternity. If we think of it as a light that comes to us from eternity, then it’s constantly near us, constantly shining upon us.
Just as I was wondering whether or not such a light exists, one day, on February 23, 1987 to be exact, just upstream of the Jinzu River that flows next to our house, a tremendous event occurred at Kamiokande, the Tokyo University Space Radiation Facility located one thousand meters underground in the Mozumi mine shaft, that caught the attention of astronomers and physicists everywhere. The big news was that a mysterious elemental particles was observed that was neither light or photon. It had no form or shape, it could pass right through anything. It had come whizzing by from 160,000 light years away, and went right through one side of the earth and out the other into outer space. This mysterious particle was called a neutrino, the existence of which was theoretically proven but not seen.
What made me interested in this mysterious neutrino was one of the characteristics of this elemental particle discussed in the newspaper write up: that it was born the moment a star in the universe dies. In the final, dying moments of a star, 99% of the massive energy released as the gravitational equilibrium breaks down is whisked away as neutrinos, the remaining one percent becoming shock waves that disintegrated the star, and so the star dies. And then, becoming a supernova, it once again begins to sparkle. By this time the neutrinos are whizzing their way through space at near light speed.
For instance, the neutrinos that burst from SN 1987A, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, continued flying through space at near light speed, and on February 23, 1987, they passed through the earth from the southern hemisphere and exited from the north. What is remarkable is that, at a density of sixteen billion neutrinos per square centimeter or upward of ten trillion per person, they went speeding through our bodies in that instant. Unimpeded, incomprehensible, unlimited, without shape or form, just like that.
Especially noteworthy is the fact that, in the Big Bang or the explosion of a supernova, the generation of neutrinos takes place the instant the life and death of a universe or a star draw ever closer to one another. That is, as a star is about to die, the neutrinos burst forth at light speed, and in the next instant the matter supporting the structure explodes as the star dies, after which a new star is born again from the debris of the old.
In addition, the sun and earth, and even the living creatures on earth, all arise from the debris of stars that exploded and died in the ancient past. Even for humans, who were born in this way, it could well be the phenomenon of that instant when Life and Death merge – imprinted onto our lives – that triggers the homing instinct and the instinct to replicate ourselves, like the salmon that swim upstream, to the very womb of Creation that stood witness to the birth of the universe.. (ibid, p.118-20)
Exactly, this is the part which did not be picked up by filmmakers, although not completely impossible but not be expected to help a big hit. I think that this is the very core part (or its portion) of what Shinmon Aoki wanted to express which he held through the way at the cost of his copyright to the film adaptation and the part which I am noticed very much.
Because of those experiences of the mysterious “light” due to the death of a person, Shinmon Aoki became to “hunt” religious books, and he reached Shinran [a Buddhism sect leader] in the end.
I was impressed by those expressions cited above which he wrote after his encounter with the teachings of Shinran during those days of coffinman witnessing deaths every day. As to details of those experiences you may read in the original book. In addition, I was greatly admired that it must be trustworthy of his decisive mind in order to defend the core expressions even giving up to claim own copyright through refusing again and again the repeated requests to the film adaptation. He is not a scientist, of course, but he has a power to be able to combine between the facts which current science is being elucidated and the facts he has experienced.
Then, let me proceed with my “quasi-scientific” effort being encouraged by his power.
Accepting his view that when a star dies, 99% of the energy released are carried away as neutrino and 1% detonates the star, I imagine that when I die, 99% of myself also carried away as neutrino or other similar micro particles – probably at a speed close to the light velocity and penetrating anything – and then its 1% eliminates my body.
If this is true, the death of myself, that is, the disappearance of my body must be a journey into the space which may have ten-dimensional scale described above. Aside from whether the so called “consciousness” is accompanied with the disappearance, it can be imagined that the departure may mean the complete escape from the bondage of this world (yo-ko-se-shi-world as mentioned earlier [no English version yet]).
Conceivably, the man’s is the life which adapts to the particular environment of the earth. We cannot declare that there is no life which adapts to a completely different environment in somewhere else in the space.
By the way, humans cannot live without breathing oxygen and discharge CO2. If you look around in the global environment, there is, for instance, a “reversal” life system which discharges oxygen and sucks CO2. They are plants.
In our conventional view, our death has been perceived as loathsome and inevitable misery which marks the end of life. However, even if we terminate our life activities on this planet, as Shinmon Aoki describes, I, who change into fine particles of “unimpeded, incomprehensible, unlimited, without shape or form”, may whiz into the space with a penetration and speed close to the light velocity.
I wrote a series of essayes called “A Step Into The Old” in this site earlier. In the final episode, entitled the “return to the beginning” [not English version yet], I concludes as follows:
If you see the exit phase of the life at the end of aging as the reversal stage of the entrance phase which takes process of birth, growth, sexual activity and reproduction, the phenomena of the “return to the beginning” can be smoothly acceptable as the physical process of reversing and the activity to move into the space.
In other words, this is an imaginary view that you may not see a death as the end of everything any more and you can see it as a passing point where a cosmic life moves from a period [on the earth] to the next stage.
If this is the case, a death is not to be sad and loathsome matter rather it is to be a great pleasure which means a gigantic scale of new departure.
Therefore, I want to call the life, which terminates itself at its death, as the “fixed life” in the context described above, and call the life after that as the “moving life”.
Of course, the latter “moving life” must be the life of “unimpeded, incomprehensible, unlimited, without shape or form” which is the life outside the scope of our perception within the four-dimensional space of us. At least we cannot observe and measure it scientifically.
If we recall our childhood, however, we, Japanese, have been familiar implicitly with the world of after death and the “moving life” because of the Buddhist thought which has been heard occasionally from childhood together with the notions of “afterlife” and “soul” which, believe it or not, have been “personified” in our daily life.
As readers already noticed, the two naming of the “fixed life” and the “moving life” above can be said an extended application of the global or secular subjects which have been the main themes of the Amphibiology Lecture =The Third Century=, i.e. “to move” and “not to move”, into the “unknown multi-dimensional world”.
Also, in the series “A Step Into The Old” mentioned above, I described a death as a “reproductive activity” in a different dimension to re-reverse it like “thanatos → eros“.
Alternatively, as I moved to Australia with the idea of geographical border and has developed the Amphibiology into its The Third Century, these namings can be seen a version-up or its preparation of the Amphibiology into the “unknown multi-dimensional world” drived by a thinking on the end of my life on the earth.
As Shinmon Aoki mentioned earlier, Erwin Schrodinger, the Nobel Prize astrophysicist in 1933 had a famous experience through which he had a hint for his quantum theory from the thought of the East but not of the West in which he had reached limitations (not mention its details here). In other words, as discussed in the last lecture, the development in the quadrant marked “A” which designed to fuse two axes of the East and West also shows that a real fruit is realised in this aspect as well.
In this context, too, the method of “binocular vision (stereo view)” which is the key methodology for the Amphibiology seems to work fruitfully.
By the way, the year 2014 is the 30 anniversary of the move to Australia for me.
I recall that the thirty years has been long enough. This suggests that the binocular view also should be prepared a dimensional phase change provided by the thick accumulation of time.
In this sense, too, I think that it is the time to conclude the Amphibiology Lecture =The Third Century=, at the same time when I have reached to a node as discussed above.