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Speaking of 'wild surmise' as I was yesterday:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2012/07/poetic-license.html
here is our Autocrat's description of it:
"...Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. After looking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had been stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity, and fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space that I had to spread these to fit it."
And here is RKN's:
"On the whole my memories of America are happy ones. I enjoy them in retrospect. If I were to maintain a single outstanding experience, it would be my visit to the Grand Canyon. To call it a visit is not right; a better word would be 'pilgrimage'---I understood why certain areas of the canyon's outcrops have been named after the temples of Brahma, Shiva and Zoroaster. I spent a day at the canyon. At dawn or a little before, I left my room at El Tavaro before other guests woke up, then took myself to a seat on the brink of the canyon. It was still dark under a starry sky. At that hour the whole scheme acquired a different dimension and a strange, indescribable quality. Far down below, the Colorado River wound its course, muffled and softened. The wind roared in the valley; as the stars gradually vanished a faint light appeared on the horizon. At first there was absolute, enveloping darkness. But if you kept looking on, contours gently emerged, little by little, as if at the beginning of creation itself. The Grand Canyon seemed to me not a geological object, but some cosmic creature spanning the horizons. I felt a thrill more mystic than physical, and that sensation has unfadingly remained with me all through the years. At any moment I can relive that ecstasy. For me the word 'immortal' has a meaning now."
I guess that is as close to poetry as RKN ever got in his writings.
Scientists, at least physicists, must have experienced this 'wild surmise' at the brink of their arduous efforts on the edge of fruition.
We have Oppenhimer's famous quote from Bhagavad Gita while witnessing the first man-made fission bomb:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3sbh5NxaAk
And we have the feelings of the astronauts when they first saw our earth as a tiny blue sphere hanging out there...our 'home'...e.g.:
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But of course, most of us are not that fortunate to have wild surmises on such spiritual scales...but we do have our tiny moments when some such feeling touches us tangentially, if that...
As I said in an earlier post:
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Speaking of 'wild surmise' as I was yesterday:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2012/07/poetic-license.html
here is our Autocrat's description of it:
"...Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. After looking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had been stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity, and fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space that I had to spread these to fit it."
And here is RKN's:
"On the whole my memories of America are happy ones. I enjoy them in retrospect. If I were to maintain a single outstanding experience, it would be my visit to the Grand Canyon. To call it a visit is not right; a better word would be 'pilgrimage'---I understood why certain areas of the canyon's outcrops have been named after the temples of Brahma, Shiva and Zoroaster. I spent a day at the canyon. At dawn or a little before, I left my room at El Tavaro before other guests woke up, then took myself to a seat on the brink of the canyon. It was still dark under a starry sky. At that hour the whole scheme acquired a different dimension and a strange, indescribable quality. Far down below, the Colorado River wound its course, muffled and softened. The wind roared in the valley; as the stars gradually vanished a faint light appeared on the horizon. At first there was absolute, enveloping darkness. But if you kept looking on, contours gently emerged, little by little, as if at the beginning of creation itself. The Grand Canyon seemed to me not a geological object, but some cosmic creature spanning the horizons. I felt a thrill more mystic than physical, and that sensation has unfadingly remained with me all through the years. At any moment I can relive that ecstasy. For me the word 'immortal' has a meaning now."
I guess that is as close to poetry as RKN ever got in his writings.
Scientists, at least physicists, must have experienced this 'wild surmise' at the brink of their arduous efforts on the edge of fruition.
We have Oppenhimer's famous quote from Bhagavad Gita while witnessing the first man-made fission bomb:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3sbh5NxaAk
And we have the feelings of the astronauts when they first saw our earth as a tiny blue sphere hanging out there...our 'home'...e.g.:
"The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly
alone, our home that must be defended
like a holy relic. The Earth was absolutely round.
I believe I never knew what the word round
meant until I saw Earth from space."
----------Aleksei Leonov, USSR
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But of course, most of us are not that fortunate to have wild surmises on such spiritual scales...but we do have our tiny moments when some such feeling touches us tangentially, if that...
As I said in an earlier post:
my Father used to seat me on his tummy when I was a kid of 3 or 4 and say:
"I have only one wish for you to fulfill...take me to Kashi (Benares) once in my lifetime."
When he was a kid, he had heard of Kashi from one of his run-away uncles called Kashi Mama and dreamed of it from then on. It took me 40 years to fulfill his wish. I escorted him and my mom on their pilgrimage to Gaya, Kashi, and Prayag. We reached Kashi pretty late in the night and checked into a Guest House booked for us by my friend NP. Next morning, we traveled in a rickshaw to Assi Ghat as advised by our host and took a boat and reached Dashashwamedh Ghat after a half hour of ghat-seeing. And I was slyly watching my Father's face as he read out the names of one ghat after the other as we passed them...and as we reached the end of our boat-ride and got down to meet Lord Vishwanath, his voice was trilling and eyes full of tears...it almost looked like the end of his life's inner journey to him.
Many students from moffusil schools and colleges told me that when they cleared IIT JEE after an arduous struggle and entered IIT KGP, their feeling was indescribable...bola jabe naa, sir!
Well, I went to KGP from a full-fledged University with awesome buildings spread over many square miles; so the scale was not a factor. But, the first time I entered its Central Library, it was a revelation. Many magazines whose titles were sweet hearsay like Punch, Life, Time, Newsweek, New Yorker, Scientific American were lying scattered on the tables like so many vegetables in Bolai Dukan. And as I turned left, there was a sort of lectern:
It held biggish Webster Volumes I and II with light strings to hold them in place, and it was there for you to flip through standing...I almost felt like stealing the whole ensemble and take it home.
I thought, like Montmorency, I reached Heaven.
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