more bending of time and space

As a follow up to my last blog article, I'd like to write a little more about the whole time and space phenomenon. Is it constructive to view Osensei as some sort of super-being? Is it constructive to completely ignore the fact that he was apparently capable of things that "normal"people are not?

I am for today going to take another tack. We tend to assume that human intelligence is the ruling factor on the planet. Technology has given us a strong illusion that we are in control of things and nature in particular. But what if the mind is basically a filter, ie a limiting factor? I've heard that the human brain receives 400 billion pieces of information a second, out of which it processes a little over 2 thousand. What if things like space, time, and matter are all things that only exist within the 2 thousand pieces of information? What if a consciousness that was receptive to greater amounts of the 400 billion bits of information could create a universe where there was much less limitation due to the constraints of space, time, matter, gravity, etc.....? I feel we are in an age where what we call science and mysticism are uniting.


In my last blog we covered an instance where Osensei apparently teleported from the center of a cirle of attackers to the top of the stairs in a dojo in Osaka. Does that seem superhuman or even supernatural? Here's a story about an event that occured about 10 or 11 years ago. My god-daughter Alison, her sister Collette, and their mom and I were at a park just outside of downtown Campbell, California. It was a bright and very sunny day. In the course of just hanging out we bonded with a butterfly. It seemed to be hanging around us as it fluttered in the air. As we went to a tree it attached itself to the tree and spread its wings and body out against the tree's trunk. We all gathered around and just extended love and positive energy to this very special butterfly. It is indeed an extremely special thing to bond in this way with a creature of nature. We got so close to the butterfly that it joined us on the ground just spreading itself on the ground and enjoying the sun on this special, special day. What we forgot was that we were on a path. Suddenly a group of cyclists burst through and one of them drove right over where the butterfly was spread out. We were shocked and very sad. How could the butterfly from that flattened position avoid being run over? We sadly began to look for its remains. We were amazed to see the butterfly fluttering around us again. It was not destroyed.I would like to present the possibility that the butterfly somehow teleported itself away from the bicyclist. Not being bound by the constraints of the normal level of human mind, it was somehow closer to a very basic intelligence that allowed it to escape. And my sense is that things like that happen all the time.

Douglas Adams in his "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" introduces the concept that we are not the smartest species on the planet. Pets have an uncanny ability to sense when their owners are about to return. Tiger(eulogized in Dojo Friends)would send me energetic e-mails. I've had this with several other non-human friends. What if we are way behind other creatures of nature and what Osensei did in Osaka was something that happens everyday in the butterfly universe?

According to Nadeau sensei Osensei had a very human side. Frager sensei has told me that one thing everybody who writes about him misses is that he had an incredible sense of humor. He was a man. Once he was asked if he had special powers and his answer to that was no, he only had aikido. What is he were just expressing what it truly means to be human? Not human as limited but human as much more infinite and even unfathomable?

Since we were discussing super heroes, I am including a video from one of my favorite all-time tv shows, "Lois and Clark", which was about the very human side of being Superman, facing the joys and frustrations of dealing with love and life. Enjoy.