And you thought you knew me ?

How limited must your perception be, to say you know me ?
Do you even know what I look like ? When your eye is percieving less than 1 % of the waves/information packets reflected off me, emitted by me, or passing through my body.


How can u say u felt my touch ? When you know there is no physical matter in me. When u know that my body is just massless particles of energetic information packets whizing in space, intermingled with trillions that you don’t feel or see.
What would I look like if you could see all those particles, all those packet of information ? Would you be able to even define my physicality ? Or would I have absolutely no contained, induvidual physical form.
How limited must your perception be to be able to define me.
So u think you know me by my emotions, my thoughts ? Knowing that your interpretation of my emotions are only defined through the prejudiced prism of your own judgement of yourself.
So you think you know me by what I do ? By my acts ? Knowing that there is no act so pure that it is fact. That all acts are merel interpretations of events.
Do you think you know me by having observed me ? Knowing that here is no observation so pure that it does not judge the observed. Once again through the imperfect eyes of the observer.
Do you think you know me by sensing the results of my actions ? Knowing that every potential event has as much an induviduality as you and I ?
So here’s the paradox. The more u define me, the more you limit and narrow your perception of me, the more real I become to you. So if you stopped defining me, limiting me, would I cease to exist for you ? Or would we see ourselves as pure consciousness ?
Shekhar

11 thoughts on “And you thought you knew me ?

  1. I keep going back to my point about trying to fix chaos by making (animal) sense of the random, inchoate universe that we occupy…
    What you are hinting it is like the way humans try and “define” God by attributing a recogniseable “form” to “it” – eg idols and so forth – you could argue that there is a need to do this in order to fix the idea of God within our minds in order to focus on it…
    ..but, yes, consciousness is formless and attributable to no one, we pluck ideas out of the ether and they come to us from who knows where – everything we think we might “invent” ( a conceit) has some prior existence…
    My knowledge of “Shekhar Kapur” is limited and narrow – and it’s like detective work piecing the bits together, how much is truth ?, how much is heresay ?, will I be any clearer if I met you and so on…more importantly, will I be satisfied by the “truth” as I choose to believe it, or disappointed ?….

  2. There is nothing to know about Shekhar Kapur, as there is nothing to know about me. If we listen carefully to that statement…there is “NOTHING” to know about us, and that nothingness, to me is where everything resides. “Everything and Nothing”…both best friends, wouldn’t you say?
    This is my thought, don’t know if the explanation came out the way I mean it to be.
    It is trying to say that the “nothing” within us is what awaits our discovery and when we eventually find it, we also find “everything”
    Cinda

  3. …or maybe there is nothing to “know” since people are basically all the same, so what makes you different to me ?…but this is also patently untrue…
    ..everything and nothingness are the same, yes – yin and yang, in perpetual flux…

  4. Dear Shekhar
    Though I made a comment on Intentblog on this, your post has stayed with me, so here I am again. Regarding your final paradox, from my point of view…
    You don’t become more real to me the more I define you, but less real. When I define another, I’m projecting myself on that person.
    When I stop defining, I’m open to see what I see, whatever that is. When I stop defining, I can observe. Observation is a neutral position that allows for change in the observed and observer, and gives honor and dignity to the uniqueness and interrelatedness of both, without placing stresses on either to warp those qualities.
    You don’t stop existing for me. Nor are we pure consciousness, as we are trapped within the dimensionality of this life, except in extraordinary moments.
    Paul Klee used to teach dimensions somewhat like this: a point has no dimensions — no length, breadth or height. Move a point through space, and what results? Its movement looks like a line — the first dimension. Take that track, that line, and move it through space. Its movement looks like a plane — the second dimension. Take the plane and move it through space. Its movement looks like a solid — the third dimension.
    Now take that to the next step: Move the solid through space. Its movement is something we can only see after it has passed, usually — the fourth dimension — time. Our lives’ paths are time. If we could stand outside ourselves and see our movement through time, what a complex sight that would be. And sometimes we do that. At those times when we break free of this time-bound life, we have extraordinary abilities to see past all boundaries, to know past, present, future, and to experience synchronicity. This is called breaking free of the limitations of conciousness.
    We are more than we think we are. The more we are willing to allow our walls to fall, the more open we are to the experience of breaking free of our limitations. Discarding definitions is an important part of allowing walls to fall.
    Definitions are useful on a daily basis, as we deal with each moment, and move on. But they should be seen as what they really are — rough sketches of a moment’s moment, a time, a place, a feeling.
    Definitions are like breadcrumb trails we leave behind us as we walk through dense forests of current events and past traumas. We can use our breadcrumb trails to find our way back home, should we become lost. If we are open to all possibilities, we don’t turn back. We keep walking, leaving our breadcrumbs to be eaten up by birds and other small creatures.
    love, Heath

  5. Shekhar,
    it touched a very virgin part of me. something undefined and quite unfettered part of me, which i suddenly bind in thought of pure consciousness. My dilema is not whether anyone knows me, but whether i know myself enough to truly seek that consciousness beyond the waveforms and information packets you speak of.
    thank you for the fresh perspective.
    Aditi

  6. dear shekhar,
    putting it mathematically, that seems to be the duality of co-ordinates/definitions…
    they find you.
    they bind you.
    but here too, the frame of reference comes into play.
    bear with me as i ramble into my definition of shekhar kapur and how it has changed with change in reference point…
    19 years ago, there was an 11 year old kid in a small village named khamgaon in western maharashtra… his standard 7 exams were just through. summer vacations had just begun. outdoors, as depraved mercury flirted with mature 40s, the kid was promptly pulled in by his aai… that burning sensation called ‘loo’ is not particularly pleasant, those who have experienced indian summer would agree.
    indoors, the desert cooler wafted vetiver breeze as he turned to that limited form of summer afternoon entertainment. television. khamgaon, being a small village, had no t.v. station of its own. interestingly, its backward nature made khamgaon a village ahead of its time… yes, khamgaon had cable years before the skies opened in 1991. in the afternoon, friendly neighborhood cable operator – deshmukh kaka used to put movies – from bollywood classics to golden harvest (jackie chan) repeats – on VCR – a movie a day. in the evening, national television used to be streamed through cable. the other option was to put up 100 m tall antennas… but then u could not see the afternoon movies…
    so much for the background… coming to your paradox… that day the kid switched on tv at the predetermined time – 1:30 p.m. the movie began. as the reels unspooled, the kid was transported into a world of a man with powers to be invisible, who took care of a dozen kids tushar’s own age… and a villain straight out of manoj comics and raj comics that the kid was so smitten by…
    that was the kid’s first introduction to shekhar kapur. back then, in that frame of reference, shekhar kapur was someone who understood his definition of entertainment. that shekhar had made masoom had no bearing on this kid’s definition of shekhar kapur.
    then in 1994, the kid was no longer a kid but a youngster studying in laxminarayan institute of technology, nagpur, reluctantly doing his bachelor of technology in chemical engineering… and faring miserably… and shekhar kapur was up for definition yet again… this time it was with bandit queen – when the kid was 11, shekhar kapur gave me mr. india… when he was learning the MCs and BCs in first year engg… shekhar kapur gave him Bandit Queen… shekhar kapur became the one filmmaker who was actually evolving with that kid…
    in 1998-99, the youngster reached mumbai armed with a PG degree in communication and journalism… and shekhar kapur appeared on the sight screen again… with Elizabeth and an oscar nomination… just as this kid-turned-youngster was trying to decide on his way ahead, shekhar kapur emerged as the very definition of a global indian…
    8 years later… the kid-turned-youngster is 30 and trying to find his own voice… he decides to do so in the form of MYTHYA – his own brand of graphic novels / comics… and an article in mid-day brings in the news of virgin comics launch…
    shekhar kapur continues to evolve as the kid does.
    the kid’s definition of the shekhar kapur is limited by kid’s perception of shekhar kapur. and the kid’s definition of shekhar kapur is not binding on shekhar kapur either… in the absence of this communication medium, shekhar kapur would have continued to evolve as the kid evolved… unknown to each other in reality…
    shekhar kapur is the concentrated form of vast potentialities.
    so is the kid.
    and they both just are.
    no defining by either is going to limit the possibilities of evolving into something absolutely unimagined…
    each one of us is the ever evolving manifestation of the ultimate potentiality – tat tvam asi. (that u are) – a definition that refuses to define to limit… neither is the ‘tat’ (that) explained, nor is the ‘asi’ (being) elaborated on…

  7. tushar, you give my personna far more credit than due, but must say I enjoyed reading your post. I do believe that everything, but everything is intertwined. The wonder is not that it is, the wonder is that there is no possibility that it is not. Even the laws of physics prove it. And the only thing that stands between our understanding and experience of the infinite matrix is our irrational belief in our induviduality, shekhar

  8. dear shekhar,
    destiny weaves such a fine weave. it takes mind to unravel the patterns.
    patterns formed not by destiny, but by perceptions.
    i agree, i have a very romanticised belief about ur actions and my confused state of mind…
    u acting towards ur quest, i seeking my own inspiration in it.
    the quest and the solution… emerging from individual sources forming a universal pattern… u so rightly call ‘intertwining’… we each have a duty to contribute our part to the universal intertwine…
    my responsibility is to carry on my quest so that some one else is inspired to carry on his/her own…
    as rubaiyyat goes…
    there was the Door to which i found no key,
    there was the Viel through which i could not see,
    some little talk awhile of ME and THEE
    there was – and then no more of THEE and me.

  9. Hello shekhar,
    How r u?
    I hope u come with bollywood project soon.
    I need some light 4 struggle in bollywood.
    I have quite successful career as a copywriter in Gujarat & have own ad agency at Rajkot(Gujarat).
    As an ideas’s person, i have some 15 movie plots & i really dont what to do with that? some synopsis i have made so can i send it 2 u?
    I have also 1st draft of my script also.
    So guide me.
    I hope m not disturbing u.
    Regards,

  10. Hello Shekhar
    You once told in one of ur interviews ” himalya ke patthar patthar mien spirituality hai ” .
    Can you please tell us more about your experience in the himalayas
    Thanks in advance
    Sridhar

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