He was standing near the sun. There was brightness everywhere, almost blinding him. He could see the rays going away – far away to distant lands, giving light, feeding happiness.
But he couldn’t stand there for long. Some strong force was pulling him away. He clenched his teeth, tightened his muscles, held his fists in a tight grip, He tried .. to hold on for longer. It broke. But he wasn’t ready to give away, not yet. He leapt, stretched his hand and grasped a light ray. In a moment he wasn’t himself. As the luminous shaft shot ahead with break neck speed, his vision became blurred, he ceased to think.
When he opened his eyes, he was far away. He was still riding on the light ray. But there was no sun, no planets in the vicinity. It was mostly dark. At a distance he could see specks of light from stars, light years away. He could feel that he wasn’t traveling as fast as he was in the beginning. Was the ray weakening ? A dread swept through him. What would happen ? Would the light die leaving him in groping in the darkness ? Without being able to see something, to hold somewhere ?
It came back suddenly! The talk. That was a different time, a different age, a different place. SN was talking. “You can see light only when it hits some object – say dust, and gets reflected. If there was no dust, no matter, i.e if there were only vacuum here, we wouldn’t see light. So, actually the universe is full of light. We cannot see it because of vacuum. In vacuum, light travels till infinity. It never reduces, never falters.”
He looked down. The light ray he was traveling on, it wasn’t there ! It struck him then, there are infinite rays of light around. He just couldn’t see them. He reached his hand above and felt another ray. He jumped on to it. The traveler continued his journey.
Header Image - “Infinity” by Phil Dolby via Flickr.