Of heroes and super "Hiro"s

I’ve really been enjoying the NBC tv series “Heroes”. It is about some ordinary humans that suddenly develop super-human abilities. And they are all being drawn together to face or avert an Apocalyptic crisis.

As usual, abilities such as this create as many or more problems as they do rewards. It is very well done and has my highest recommendation. One link that this has to aikido is that one of the heroes is Japanese, Hiro Nakamura. He has the ability to bend space and time, and, apparently, the ability to teleport himself through both space and time. The actor who plays him gives him a character of being very “yasashii” or cute, as opposed to heroic. He in a very more warrior mode bearing a sword comes back from the future to offer guidance and direction.

According to the people who knew him Osensei had the ability to alter time and space. He used the term “katsu hayabi”, which he said was the speed which transcends time and space. On one occasion in Osaka, I believe, he had a circle of students attack him. He suddenly disappeared and was then standing at the top of the stairs in the dojo. People standing on the stairs reported that they had not seen him pass them. When asked to do it again, he apparently replied that to do so again so soon would take years off his life, considering the amount of energy such an act would require. People attacking him would often comment that he would seem to disappear then re-appear.

So, was Osensei also some sort of super-human being? He told people that they could become like him in a few months, and that it did not take years and years of linear training. What if he represented some sort of evolved being that represented the next step of evolution for our species? Was his work essentially to show us our own hidden potential and what we all truly were? What would a whole world populated by beings like him be like?

On one level or another, I believe that is the message of the tv series. The message is that possibly we are headed towards a phase of evolution where a radical transformation is needed for us to continue. The destructive event being worked towards in the show might not be destructive at all and only a metaphor be a for this. It is said that the end of the world for the caterpillar is just the beginning for the butterfly.

I am including a short video of Osensei.