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Authors: Pearl S. Buck
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would, I could do nothing to change what had already happened. The aircraft contained me, controlled me, and isolated me.
In a curious way spirit must sometimes follow body, just as at other times spirit leads. Now as the body yielded itself to the will, the spirit found it easier also to yield to the same command. Life can be inexorable but death is always inexorable. The next step is to recognize inexorability. The past becomes static. It is history and the facts of history cannot be changed. What has been done is done. One can learn from the past, one can treasure the past, but it cannot be changed. Twenty-five years had been lived in happiness, but they were lived. The End had been written. One does not go on writing a book after those two words have finished it. Another book has to be begun.
It cannot begin at once. There has to be time for total relaxation, total recognition of inexorability, total realization that the life of the past is over. Only then can new strength be summoned. I doubt even that it can be summoned. It has to grow from the very sources of the being into a new will to live. As far as the will could go that night, as the jet darted its way among cloud and stars, it was only to command the body to yield and the spirit to withdraw. At last I slept.
I looked at my watch. It was three o’clock in the morning. Time was meaningless in this swift flight and the sky was already light. I had left Tokyo the night before, Sunday, but I would reach New York on Monday morning, after another day and night of living, if not of time. I was beginning to understand the relativity of time to space and speed. What miracle that Einstein was born in coincidence with the practical experience of jets and rockets in space! My mind, unable as yet to face the profound change in my own life, explored the meaning of eternity, time without beginning and without end. Whatever exists now, has always existed and always will, the universal and eternal law only that of change. And yet change can be frightening. If death is only a change, then what is the change? He knew and I did not. At a moment in his sleep he had died. He was at one instant alive and at the next instant dead. That is, at one instant he had been this, and at the next instant that, the same and yet different.
Where is he now?
Einstein proved to us that mass is interchangeable with energy. This sentence, so simply written, resulted in the awakening of my own mind to the new age. It was more than an awakening of the mind. It was the conversion of my soul, the clarification of my spirit, the unification of my whole being. I had a new conception of death, a new approach to life. Like Saul of Tarsus, I was proceeding on my way when a light broke upon me, a burning illumination that changed my course. This equation, which Einstein crystallized into a few brief symbols, is the key to our universe and doubtless to many more beyond. What was once mass can become energy, is potential energy even while it is mass. Is this the scientific proof of what we call soul?
While the heart bled in private, my mind turned and twisted itself in searching. I reflected upon the miracle of the magic machines, the computors, the thinking mechanism expressed in concrete material. They are built upon the principle of the human brain, but the brain is infinitely more complex, the nodes infinitely more numerous. The brain can create new ideas, the machines cannot, as yet. Nevertheless the principle is the same. We know how to build brains in crude materials, if not in human stuff.
True, there are two schools of thought among the scientists who create the machines. Some believe the machines can be developed into true brains, equal to the human brain and in a few ways even surpassing it. A human brain, for example, would need a lifetime in which to arrive at certain astronomical mathematical conclusions. The machine, given the necessary input, can reach the conclusions in minutes. Other
In a curious way spirit must sometimes follow body, just as at other times spirit leads. Now as the body yielded itself to the will, the spirit found it easier also to yield to the same command. Life can be inexorable but death is always inexorable. The next step is to recognize inexorability. The past becomes static. It is history and the facts of history cannot be changed. What has been done is done. One can learn from the past, one can treasure the past, but it cannot be changed. Twenty-five years had been lived in happiness, but they were lived. The End had been written. One does not go on writing a book after those two words have finished it. Another book has to be begun.
It cannot begin at once. There has to be time for total relaxation, total recognition of inexorability, total realization that the life of the past is over. Only then can new strength be summoned. I doubt even that it can be summoned. It has to grow from the very sources of the being into a new will to live. As far as the will could go that night, as the jet darted its way among cloud and stars, it was only to command the body to yield and the spirit to withdraw. At last I slept.
I looked at my watch. It was three o’clock in the morning. Time was meaningless in this swift flight and the sky was already light. I had left Tokyo the night before, Sunday, but I would reach New York on Monday morning, after another day and night of living, if not of time. I was beginning to understand the relativity of time to space and speed. What miracle that Einstein was born in coincidence with the practical experience of jets and rockets in space! My mind, unable as yet to face the profound change in my own life, explored the meaning of eternity, time without beginning and without end. Whatever exists now, has always existed and always will, the universal and eternal law only that of change. And yet change can be frightening. If death is only a change, then what is the change? He knew and I did not. At a moment in his sleep he had died. He was at one instant alive and at the next instant dead. That is, at one instant he had been this, and at the next instant that, the same and yet different.
Where is he now?
Einstein proved to us that mass is interchangeable with energy. This sentence, so simply written, resulted in the awakening of my own mind to the new age. It was more than an awakening of the mind. It was the conversion of my soul, the clarification of my spirit, the unification of my whole being. I had a new conception of death, a new approach to life. Like Saul of Tarsus, I was proceeding on my way when a light broke upon me, a burning illumination that changed my course. This equation, which Einstein crystallized into a few brief symbols, is the key to our universe and doubtless to many more beyond. What was once mass can become energy, is potential energy even while it is mass. Is this the scientific proof of what we call soul?
While the heart bled in private, my mind turned and twisted itself in searching. I reflected upon the miracle of the magic machines, the computors, the thinking mechanism expressed in concrete material. They are built upon the principle of the human brain, but the brain is infinitely more complex, the nodes infinitely more numerous. The brain can create new ideas, the machines cannot, as yet. Nevertheless the principle is the same. We know how to build brains in crude materials, if not in human stuff.
True, there are two schools of thought among the scientists who create the machines. Some believe the machines can be developed into true brains, equal to the human brain and in a few ways even surpassing it. A human brain, for example, would need a lifetime in which to arrive at certain astronomical mathematical conclusions. The machine, given the necessary input, can reach the conclusions in minutes. Other
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