Some years ago in India, a student and his master were walking home along a dirt road.

The two walked mostly in quiet with the student breaking in here and there with questions about this and that.

Then the student, in the middle of his sentence, stopped and froze. Off to the side of the road lay the ravaged carcass of dog, its flesh rotted and ribcage exposed.

The master could tell that his student was visibly shaken by this “horror” and spectre of death.

Without hesitation, the master said in a strong voice: “Look! Have you ever seen such a magnificently white breastbone shining in the sun?”

The student shook his head as if trying to clear his thoughts, then looked at the master and then back at the remains of the dog.

The two men continued their walk, passed the dog who taught from death, and on toward their village in the distance.

The Einstein-Rosen Bridge

What does physics have to do with art? When a mathematician transcends thinking and enters the realm of pure awareness, he becomes an artist. Universe and its laws were, after all, brought into existence by the Great Creator. Einstein said: I want to know the thoughts of God.

In 1916 Einstein first introduced his general theory of relativity, a theory which to this day remains the standard model for gravitation. Twenty years later, he and his long-time collaborator Nathan Rosen published a paper showing that implicit in the general relativity formalism is a curved-space structure that can join two distant regions of space-time through a tunnel-like curved spatial shortcut. 

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I was in a Russian specialty food market looking for a hearty bread.

I went to pay at the cash register, which was near the front door.

As the clerk was putting my bread in a bag and getting my change, an elderly black man and a much younger big Russian fellow arrived at the door at the same moment.

The older man held the door open so the younger could enter the shop.

The Russian man said in a half joking manner and in a heavy accent: “Oh, you are holding door for me because you are doorman?”

Without missing a beat, the smart black man said: “No. I’m holding the door for you because I am a gentleman.”

I was at a dinner party. The conversation was lively.

My turn came around and, as I began to speak, I felt I had uttered a near cliché.

“That one’s free,” I said to the group. “The next one will cost me.”

“What do you mean?” said a fellow on my right.

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When I was living in Brentwood, California, an artist friend who had worked with Oscar Janiger on a book had invited me to meet the well-known psychiatrist.

Oscar was a pioneer in the study of LSD’s potential for liberating the intellect and creativity. He gave LSD to some 1,000 volunteers (1954-1962) before it was made illegal. Oscar was interested in how LSD juiced up creativity, raised consciousness, and for its value as a tool in therapy.

Oscar had a comfortable home in the Santa Monica Canyon area and one of the largest personal libraries I had seen—nearly 20,000 volumes and he seemed to know the location of every title.

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