1. Introduction
 

  What is time? Time is something to pass away. However, a human being has some desire and does his best for his desire during time. He succeeds in changing his life for the desire or fails for the desire. In the meantime, his time is passing away. What is time? I watched a BBC documentary about time of space on TV. The young caster of the documentary explained that the time of space including our galaxy was not eternal. He said that space would become extinct in the tremendously far-off future. Therefore, as for human beings, all creatures on the earth, our galaxy and the entire universe, time of their lives is limited. They don’t live forever. This way, the young caster who is also an astronomer told proudly.

  But what is cosmic space? Is there any border of space? What exists beyond the border? We cannot help ending up going round and round as for speculating about time and space. We cannot finish our discussion about time and space with a sense of satisfaction. We are plunging into antinomy which Kant explained in the Critique of Pure Reason.
  So, I don’t want to consider time philosophically. I would like to consider what is time in the ordinary daily life for each person. For example, in the case of my life, I have retired from Chiba prefectural office and I am already 63 years old. When I worked at the government office, my free time was almost restricted by the official time. But now, I have more time to be able to use freely than my government employee days. In addition, I have come to understand about time more than before. Furthermore, as for my father who is suffering from dementia, his time is different from my time. That is why I would like to consider time from the viewpoint of each person's life.
  Time flies fast. Though I am free than before, I have to do various obligatory chores such as taking care of my father, maintenance of my house and cultivating crops in a field. I also visit Tara sometimes. I communicate with people related to Indian culture once a week by Internet. Sometimes I meet my friends, relatives and my children who work outside. My typical daily life is as follows. That is, I get up at seven and take a walk with my dog, have the breakfast which my wife cooks, give my father medicine and work in the garden or the field with my wife till 11 o’clock.
  After that, my wife leaves home for working at her family’s workshop. So, I prepare lunch and have a lunch with my father. After noon, I study various things such as Sanskrit, Esperanto and South Indian culture. At 2 o’clock, I make my father take a walk with my dog. After that, I make him afternoon snack. I do yoga exercise for about 40 minutes, study in my room, cultivate a field, feed my dog and take my father’s blood pressure. After that, I put the laundry away and prepare a bath till my wife returns home and prepares dinner. After dinner, I prepare my father’s breakfast of tomorrow morning. Finally, my daily obligation almost finishes. I watch TV with my wife or I study something with PC in my room till 11 o’clock and go to bed.
  Such is my typical daily life. That is time itself. That is why I explained it in detail. I get up and go for a walk with my dog. And after my wife goes out for work, I have to prepare my father’s lunch immediately. After lunch, I do various things but evening comes as quick as a flash. And night is falling. Thus, time flies through each day.
  My wife likes Korean historical dramas, especially Dong Yi. I also watch this drama with her. And I always think that I watched it as if I had watched it a few days ago, but I watched it a week ago in fact. Thus, time flies through each week.
  I take my father to the hospital for having regular check up. I always think that I visited the hospital as if I had visited two or three weeks ago, but I visited there a month ago in fact. This way, time flies through each month.
  My mother passed away in January this year but I think she died as if a few months ago. Almost a year has passed since she died in fact. Thus, time flies through each year. And during these periods, we get old without realizing it. This way, time flies fast through these units of time. Time flies fast. The essence of time is not figured out without digging deep into a phenomenon of our ordinary daily life. We should also consider time related to unordinary events based on the time of daily ordinary events. I would like to consider time in more depth next time.

                                                                                                              (08/12/2011)　

 

 

 2. Time for my father

  What kind of thing is time for my father who suffers from dementia? He seems not to have time consciousness that he has to do something for himself by today any more. I make a weekly schedule paper for him but he doesn’t try to think of today’s schedule by watching it. It seems that daily customary memories which he has constructed in his vigorous days move him. He gets up about at six thirty, puts his nightclothes on the bed neatly, takes a newspaper from a mailbox, nukes milk, bread and a boiled egg and peels an apple. After that he has a breakfast with these foods, picks up fallen leaves in the garden and takes a rest till having lunch. He goes through such a process smoothly every day. He takes a nap after lunch, takes a walk with the dog when I urge him to do so, takes an evening paper from a mail box after three o’clock, prepares a bath, takes a bath, waits a dinner, watches on TV after dinner and goes to the bedroom after eight o’clock. He is continuing such life like before he suffered from dementia.
  However, he does such daily conducts as if he did them at the unconscious level. He cannot have a conscious desire to have free time any more. He spends the time almost for sleeping when he has nothing special to do. A few things which he does freely after sleeping are as follows. That is, he puts his room in order profusely, picks up fallen leaves, weeds in the garden and talks to his dog about something. He has high blood pressure and takes various medicines. But otherwise he doesn’t have illness especially. However, recently, he came to say always that he had been very tired after some action. Therefore, he seems to have weakened after all. But such a phenomenon is the work of something like gene called life-span which is built into living things at large. Therefore nobody can stop approaching death which everyone meet sooner or later. Even if we can lengthen our life span by developed medicine, it won’t be much. We are the beings who have no choice but to die sooner or later. My father seems to progress toward it at an accelerated pace.
  He has recently tried to finish everything earlier as if he had got his time in advance. For example, when evening comes, he closes shutters earlier than before for drawing night to him closer. After taking a bath, he sometimes forgets to have a dinner and is misled into thinking that he had nothing to do any more except going to bed. Even if he has a dinner, he tries to go into his bedroom despite at 7:30 pm still. He seems to be frustrating to know that time progresses slowly saying that it was still daytime. The interesting thing is that after he finished picking up all fallen leaves in the garden, he picks the leaves of a beech tree and a red maple whose leaves have still turned gold and red. I told him that it was enough to pick up only fallen leaves because autumn leaves were still beautiful. He replied to me with a blank look ‘ Yeah-yeah.’ When he picked a broccoli, he also pulled up a big stalk of broccoli from the root, dug a hole in the garden and buried it. However the broccoli must have borne a lot of berries from now on. He seems to advance everything further and further and to want to make it the end early. However he doesn’t seem to have a peculiar desire and to try to pursue it.

  When the gardeners came to my house, he used to talk to them peacefully. But now, even if he passes in front of them, he seems not only not to talk to them but also not to be aware of their existence. It goes without saying that the field of his consciousness or the activating range of it has been getting narrow. His immediate memories seem to be cut off from his old memories. He forgets immediately what he did now. Therefore he cannot have continuous consciousness about his desires. One day, he told me that he wanted to go shopping with me because he wanted to buy bulbs of tulip. So, when I tried to go shopping with him, he asked me why on earth he went out.
  What does such a way of his spending time mean? He lost the memories of his present event but he doesn’t do so perfectly. If I teach something to him persistently and strictly, he can do so. For example, when I taught him many times to put his delicate laundries into a washing machine before he takes a bath, he did so for himself as his new memory for a few days. But after few days, he came back to his old habit. That is, he washed his delicate laundries by hand in the bathroom and dried them in his room. He doesn’t have will that he intends to input new memories into his time for sure. Of course he has common feelings. So, when I am angry with him too much, he also replies with angry seriously. He has an appetite too. Recently, he has pulled out a lot of Japanese radishes in the garden though I often reminded him not to pull out them. He likes grated radish. So, I gave him grated radish at meal everyday. After that, he came to stop pulling radishes in the garden. He has feelings as human being and he has normal health too. However he cannot unify them toward a certain destination as an intentional action.
  He came to have a habit of saying that it was natural to become senile because he was already 90 years old. I agree with him in a sense. Though dementia is a specialized tendency, anybody traces such a way like a senility with age too. He tells others proudly that he is happy because his son’s married couple takes care of him well. This way, my father’s time is sustained by depending on other person’s time. Of course, I cannot feel the consciousness of his time just like he feels it. But if he could not get any help from others now, he would not be able to live by himself. Nevertheless, he continues to live. That is because his time becomes entwined with the time of people who take care of him. I have to watch for his daily life as a family member who takes care of him. Even by only such contact, I am sustaining my own time by entwining with his time.
  At the same time, I know my father who was still energetic in those days, as his son. His past time is shared also by me. His present time and his future time bring me the idea that a similar thing may happen to me. However, unlike my father, I am given the time when I can still do something consciously with my body and soul. What can I do there? What is left for me? Thus, while I watch for my father's time, I cannot help having an interest in the process of time left for me.                                                               
      (01/01/2012)  

                                                                                                                    　　　

 3. Time which we cannot help being aware of

  Time flies. In the first chapter, I described such time as transition of our tangible daily life. In the second chapter, I described the meaning of encounter between my daily life and that of my father’s. My father seems to be impatient of a day which doesn’t come to end well instead of passing fast. Time changes its speed in response to the shape of each person’s consciousness. This time, I will consider why we cannot help being aware of time among our various daily lives. 　
  Of course, time which I describe is not objective time, that is, time formed by rotation of the earth. Time here is one that each person is aware of. Time of the earth’s rotation or time of a watch determined by us based on the earth’s rotation is related to the principle of the universe or to the concept of generation and extinction. I cannot deal with such time, now. But I would like to consider such time in relation to our consciousness of time, sometime.　 　
  A long time ago, most Japanese were farmers. They cultivated rice to maintain their lives. They plowed the ground, let water flow, planted seedlings, developed them and harvested them. They did such a line of labors every year. That was a life in response to the time of rotation of the earth. And the village wide festivals at the time of rice planting and harvest every year showed the expectation and thankfulness to the God as for rich harvest. 　
  Such annual festivals for worship of God conversely showed that they came across poor harvest due to bad weather or social struggles many times. In order to prevent such disasters, farmers didn’t miss annual festivals and at the same time they devised various things such as weeding, perfect management of water and insect pest control etc. They saw over their rice paddies everyday and worked out various things to do. 　
  This way, they spent everyday’s lives. If they didn't do something, they couldn't earn blessings of harvest. If they didn't try to do something, they couldn't spend happy lives. For those purposes, they should spend time usefully. With such consciousness, many farmers have lived. For their family’s happy life every year, they have lived while taking care of various things. Such lives have constituted their consciousness about time. Speaking in the extreme, time consciousness of human beings has existed in order to get rid of disasters and angst of their lives. 　
  On the other hand, how is time in the eyes of person who has no disasters and no angst of his life? As I earlier said, it is certain that as for my father’s time his consciousness about dealing with disasters and angst of life has come to diminish. He seems to have only physical time based on the rotation of the earth. But sometimes he doesn’t feel even such time and mistakes night for daytime. One day, he suddenly got up at midnight, changed clothes, opened shutters and tried to go to mail box for getting newspaper. He has no conscious meaning about such conduct. 　
  However disasters and angst are of great concern for the lives of many people. So, time for them is weaved with conscious meanings. That is because, if they didn’t so, they couldn’t live as they think. We have plenty of daily troubles and problems. For example, I am vulnerable to oral ulcer soon enough when I ate too much or got very tired. Therefore it is my great daily concerns to be careful for health in my daily life, to exercise moderately and to keep my mouth clean, so as not to suffer from it. Furthermore, seedlings of onions in my garden have not grown well because we have had little rainfall recently. So sometimes I have to sprinkle 200 seedlings of onions with a lot of water so that water may penetrate into these roots. That is no small labor for me. 　
  Next, how about problems except for daily life? That is problems for which each person tries to achieve self-actualization that suits each one, I should say. In my case, this way, I have built my web page and try to write what I want other people to read, based on what I have experienced until now. But, is it good for me to do so? Is it nothing but mere amusement at old age? Is it useful to write such things after all? However, if I will write, should I write while aiming at what I ought to write truly? I am struggling having always such questions. That is my real situation.　 　
  Looking back at my past, I can recollect the bitter experiences pressed for time one after another. When I was young I moved from town to town due to my father’s job. As soon as I made friends and was familiar with the town, I moved to another town. And I had to continue to fight in the time in order to get used to that place. At school, as everyone used to feel so, when a final examination came, I used to study hard, thinking that I wanted to pass through that period fast and to become free. 　
  The most considerable concern when I was young was the opposite sex. What a hard time I have had in order to tell the desire to my favorite girl! In my high school days, I determined to ambush a girl of the unrequited love in front of a school gate early in the morning and to pass the love letter. I experienced such feeling as if I had already died till I carried it out. However, she took no notice of me after all, and my try has ended in vain. 　
  And I have been attacked by a sense of an intense regret after I had found the weakness of my mind and arrogance later. Furthermore, though I determined not to become such a man again and tried to send a new life, I have committed the same fault again as time went on. I have experienced such deadly cycle many times. But I think that these experiences were the long tunnel which I had to go through at any cost. Lost love, examination hell, sickness, poverty, a raw deal and guilt feelings. You will also have had such severe experiences in the tunnel of time from which you had never been able to break away by any means. 　 　
  However, if a person could do all things as he would like to do without such bitter memories and problems or without getting old like my father, what would become of human being’s time consciousness? There is a SF novel named ‘ Methuselah’s Children’ written by Robert Heinlein. The content of this novel is as follows. People who never aged in spite of having been several hundred years old, by artificial selection had no choice but to get out of the earth where other people who felt jealous of them lived. So, they boarded a space ship and wandered seeking for a star of permanent settlement.
  Lazarus Long, captain of space ship, got the space ship to arrive at a star. The star was filled with woods from which people of the ship were able to get all kinds of foods freely anytime. So they were satisfied with such a life as they got foods from woods and only ate these foods. Seeing such situation, Lazarus thought that if they continue living in the star, they will go bad and lose original humanity there. He got them to come back to the ship and they wandered to other stars again. Human beings who wander in the time of space may come across the danger of losing even time by choosing the place where they can live in peace. 　
 The satisfaction with the desire of foods is not a only problem. But human beings have also other desires such as sexual desire, desire to possess, greed for power and hunger for fame. If they were satisfied with these desires easily, they would be plunged into the crack of time. If so, human beings cannot come to fight in the stream of time again. 　
  One of novels by which I have been impressed is the one written by the Nobel Prize winner. That novel was the work when he was at a desperate situation, that is, before his winning Nobel Prize. He won the prize because that novel was estimated well. But there was no novel worth reading among his works after winning the prize. In a sense, his time has stopped due to obtaining power to be praised by people forever. I recall that a famous literary critic told as follows. That is, if a person became famous or he was praised by mass media or by the public, he is supposed to be defeated by history at that point. 　
  The public creates celebrities in all ages. The public backs up them and kills them. Thus history of race has been constructed. But essential time for human beings will continue to live through fight in the stream of each person’s time. To desire to become famous, to get a higher position or to win love are all nothing but expectation outside oneself. That is, if you could realize such expectation, you would be relieved very much because you are freed from the travail you have had so far. But such a thought might be nothing but illusion. You should find original yourself inside you, not outside you. Such a continuous effort is working for true self-actualization. Such working is true fight against time given to each person. 　
  Therefore, it will be very difficult for a person, who happened to live under full sail, to put himself in a stream of his essential time in his early days again. However, a person who continues to live under full sail all through his life must be very rare. Even so, such a situation will fade away sometime. And everybody has to face to death by himself. Till that time, for a human being, to be pressed for time is to live in his time. At last, one day has passed. One month has passed. One year has passed. Under such situations, a human being comes to know the limit and purpose of himself and try to live his remaining short time toward death.  

   Stricken on a journey,　　
   My dreams go wandering round
   Withered fields.
   (Translated by Donald Keene)   　

  This Haiku was written by Basho Matsuo. This is thought to have been his farewell poem. However if he had been on the verge of death really, he would not have been able to wander even in his dream. He had still been fighting vividly against time given to him. That is why he was able to wander around withered field even in the dream. But when human being is on the verge of death, his time will weaken its pace rapidly.　　 　
 Veda defines Ahsrama (four ascetic training periods). Samnyahsa (ascetic wandering freely) is the last stage of Ahsrama. Samnyahsa is the stage where time consciousness of human being weakens gradually. I don’t think that the human consciousness of this stage is so good as reaching enlightenment. Isn’t it the time consciousness like that of my father definitely? 　
  But I cannot know about my father’s time consciousness truly. Saying “ I’ve become useless.”, he sometimes mourns himself who is not able to remember new things. And saying “ I’ve become already old, haven’t I? “, he sometimes tries to get other people to accept his present situation. At that time, I feel his will that he is still going to live in his own way in the stream of his time. 　
  However I sometimes come across my father’s eye with which he looks at me vacantly. Then I come to think that such eye conversely is so sharp as skewering my effort of fight against my daily time. I always find problems to do and I always give meaning to them. So, I compel my father to live within my own solution. He seems to follow my demand obediently. But he might be looking at the world of people who are too sensitive to their own time, from the place which I don’t know.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　      (10/02/2012)

 4. Encounter with others and the time

 When I worked at the office, there were always some women’s part-timers in the office. A woman’s part-timer who has already a daughter of a member of society used to participate in our drinking party after work. One night, she told us a some funny thing at the party. She said that she had been thinking of a man whom she had never forgot even for a moment every day for 30 years. One day, she was able to meet him for the first time in ten years. At that time, she looked at his skid-top and found him to have become a man far from her image which she had cherished continuously. So, she laughed not knowing what she should say to him. And she thought that she might have got over her depression about him somehow. But I was not able to ask her whether she had come to estimate him as a man different from before or I was not ask to her whether she continued to think of him as much as before. I think even she was not able to answer it. That is because her experience is involved in the mystery of entangled time with others. That is the problem of how her time and his time have entangled each other and have reached to the present situation. 　
  It is not abnormal at all to have continued to think of a certain man for her one-way love for 30 years. We come across an irreplaceable person of opposite sex sometime and continue to think of that person while having a dream that we can live with that person. Such a situation is rather a most common way of human life, we should say. Why did she come across him? Why isn’t she able to love a man except him? But a person who loves him is not only she. Others also love him. There are many obstacles for her to get over in order to live with him. Nevertheless, she never forgets him at any cost. Thus, her desire to him will occupy a great position in her daily consciousness of time.  
  In this case, strength of entanglement with their time depends on how strongly he is interested in her. If he has no interest in her, the strength of entanglement becomes weak obviously. However if her desire to him is strong enough one-sidedly, her time comes to tangle in his time in some way. 　
　

 Lady of Rokujounomiyasundokoro in the Tale of Genji has a strong grudge against Genji. That is because Genji didn’t love her any more. Therefore, her strong desire to him appears as a grudge against him or his new lover. Thus, strong desire which a person has daily and continuously comes to tangle in the time about an object of one’s desire and about things around it, in some way. 　
  In ‘Joseph and His brothers’, Thomas Mann’s novel, grudge and desire of woman approaches Joseph of a main character in more fierce way. Muto Em Eneto, a woman of great beauty whose husband is sexually unavailable as a eunuch of ancient Egypt, has great desire to Joseph, a beautiful younger who is a slave of her house and agonizes herself. Joseph’s time is almost conquered by her strong desire. But, Joseph has a narrow escape from her temptation. In ‘Joseph of Egypt’, the third volume of the novel, Mann describes that scene as follows.

　

 “Joseph was able to shake himself loose from her and to escape from her at the last moment. That was because he had recalled his father’s shadow at that time. However the thing which he regarded as having seen at a corner of the room was not the figure with unified personal character. He saw it rather inside its spirit by its spirit. It was a metaphor and an image of caution. And it was rather the father’s image regarded as common thing. That face was watching Joseph anxiously.”

　
  This is an impressed expression. It is not a Joseph’s free will for him to have been able to escape from her temptation. What have determined Joseph's time is nothing less than a mystery. Why did the image of his father, Jacob, appear? Mann puts such Joseph’s fate in the epic time of the Old Testament. Even if Joseph fell to either way, it was unavoidable. That is, even if he remained in her house, it was unavoidable. But his time didn’t advance to such a course.

  Why? Why did his father’s image appear as a metaphor of caution? Nobody knows about it. 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 　
 On the other hand, what a severe grief it was that Muto Em Eneto had not been able to win his love! But Mann relieves her in the fourth volume, ‘Joseph the provider’, though she was treated as a wicked woman in the Old Testament. She suffered unhappy love but she came to generate awareness which was not able to be replaced with anything, by the fact that she endured severe sadness. She had power to recover from sad situation. She was even thankful to Joseph who had given her the deep emotional scar. 　
  She recalls as follows. She drew Joseph’s time into her side and plagued him because she had devoted herself to the desire for him madly. She intended to draw not only Joseph but also his relatives, friends and his everything which existed in his time, into her time. And she succeeded in doing so in some degree. But why didn’t she block in front of him at that time? If she had done so, she would have won his love quite easily. Why? Why did she keep quiet and leave him alone so that he wanted to do? How long she suffered such agony madly! 　
  After she continued to ask herself this way everyday for a long time, she suddenly recovers her time for some reason. This is also nothing less than a mystery. She reached to the highest place of mind, which is given to only a person who has endured a hard struggle. This relief scene of Joseph and Muto Em Eneto is this novel’s highlight which Mann wrote with a lot of soul. She who recovered her own time thinks as follows.
“I should not plague Joseph any more in my mind or in my time. I should not draw his time or his original life place, with my mind. How painful the desire to Joseph is! However the desire can hurt a partner with that alone.”
　　 　

 When the world of the New Testament appeared after Joseph’s tale of the Old Testament with time, Jesus said, “Whoever looks on a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
  By the desire in the mind, anyone already stretches the tentacle of one’s time to another person’s time. But a true way of life is not being preoccupied with such an entanglement. Instead, a person should get over his bitter experience of such an entanglement and should come back to the original path which his time can trace, by the guide of God. That is a true way of life. You should not even envisage the image of desire in your mind. That is because there is also the time when you need such seriousness as you have no choice but to express your severe preparation. I think Jesus seems to have said so. 　　　　　　   　

 Thus, I sometimes expressed the relationship between a person who imagines and another person who is imagined, as an entanglement of each time. Why is it time? Because I wanted to express the following things. 　
  That is, time is a unified stream which builds each life as each time. In that stream, mystery of building of each time is hidden. And each one experiences an entanglement with another time by encounter with another person. And each one experiences breaking such an entanglement, too. By doing so, each one can enrich each life more and can make one’s life focus to the life of original oneself.
　 　
  However it is certain that a brief moment which gave Joseph and Muto Em Eneto a trigger which they came to get their time was an event beyond their will. What does it mean? Hegel expresses it with the word of ‘Guardian deity’ as follows.　　 　 　
 “How does human being’s mind have the feeling about totality of oneself? The style which shows it is a relationship between oneself and one’s guardian deity. We should understand human being’s particularity that human being gives decision about one's action and fate in every state and relation, under one’s guardian deity.”　
  According to Hegel’s idea, Guardian deity is inputted into individual from the phase of a fetus in a mother body. It exists in the root of each personality, creates each character or face and builds the expanse of each person’s life and death. That is, it determines each person’s life and time.
“My inner particularity is the oracle. All determinations of individual depend on this message of the oracle. Therefore, even a waking intellectual consciousness which is moving in each common order is provided by one’s guardian deity with its very strong way.”
  Hegel expresses the appearance that something beyond one’s will is building one’s time, even this way.
　　　　　　　 　

 By the way, there is ‘In Search of Lost Time’ by Proust as a novel by which a writer expressed the mysterious existence of each individual’s time. A main character ‘I’ comes across Albertine as his ideal woman after he experienced various love affairs. But ‘I’ finds she is homosexual. ‘I’ confines her in his house in order to prevent from her contact with homosexuals. Nevertheless, his mind never calms down. While looking at her sleeping face, he thinks that he never gets her love at any cost and he worries himself about that. However, she dies before long. So, the entanglement of two person’s time comes to an end. And ‘I’ thinks as follows. 　
“ A person who plagues us is connected with a certain divinity by each us. A woman whom we love agonizes us and brings out deep lively feelings from us.” 　
  Why did I come across such a woman? Why was my life or my time fated by the encounter with her madly? We, human beings, have risen from this question and anguish since ancient times and have built each time or history. 　
  Next time, I am going to think about death which makes our time come to an end.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　      (13/03/2012) 　

 5. Time and Death (1)

  My mother died of pancreas cancer last year. A few days ago of that day, she told me that her whole life was condensed and appeared in her mind at a stroke. It is often said about near-death experience that a person will recall a string of his all memories from his child age, in the moment of death. Conversely, to live and send a life means that choice of memories is being done somewhere. That is, to recall all memories at once will be suppressed during his life. Phenomena of forgetfulness and some mistake appear to be brought by suppression of memory, simply because of sending a life, as Freud analyzed.
  What do these phenomena mean? On the last chapter, I quoted the concept of guardian deity by Hegel and I said that each human being had something like embryo which shows the route which he should follow just because of himself, from the phase of unborn child. That is, to live as one human being is to live as if the expanse of his own life or his own time reaching to death was given in advance. Such expanse of life has a final phase in advance as if a plant grew from a seed. But rather its concrete growing process seems to be realized by suppressing representation of all serial processes as if one leaf or one branch stretched partially. And a human being will be able to revive a series of this growth at a stroke by the start of his death. He seems to put an end to his life like this. 　
  However, I don’t know whether everybody has near-death experience in the moment of death. That is because there are various forms as for death. Death has three forms roughly separately. 　
  One is the death which occurs due to struggling with illness or due to a senile deterioration. A person loses energy gradually and becomes shriveling. The death through such a situation is the most fundamental form for human being. 　
  Second is the sudden death which occurs due to an acute illness, an accident, a natural disaster such as an earthquake and a war. 　
  Third is the intentional death such as suicide and death penalty.   　

  As for first one, namely the shriveling death, Shinobu Orikuchi who was a famous folklorist in Japan explained somewhere as follows. That is, ancient people thought that death was nothing but extinction of energy. Therefore, they threw a dead body into the sea without making a grave. I think such an idea about death is very important. For each person who lived each time or for each person who made an effort in order to send a meaningful life, death is the end of each time and makes the fight of the individual in his time quite meaningless. 　
  There was a famous movie named Amadeus which depicted the life of Mozart. In the final scene, the corpse of Mozart was put into a cloth bag, which is bound with a string, and it is thrown away to the large pit together with those of other human beings and lime was sprinkled on them. In this case, not into the sea but into the pit, the corpse was thrown away just as a body which had been meaningless and had lost energy. Mozart who has left a lot of splendid music for us was thrown away as a mere body. This is a fundamental of death. Death takes away everything meaningful of life. And such a form of death is an ideal final target of teachings of Veda, the ancient philosophy of India. 　
  As I have often quoted so far, Veda has a way of thinking called ‘Four consecutive life stages’ which teaches an ideal way of human living. At ‘The renounced life’, the last life stage, it teaches that we should finally throw away all possessions, wander around in the forest or the wilderness and play. And this stage is not an ostentatious stage of realizing something important but a stage where a person loses energy gradually and becomes matter. I assimilated such process to the life of my father who suffers from dementia in the third chapter. Definitely, my father has weakened day by day. And I am taking care of him so that he may send daily life in his own way though he is getting weaker. 　
  There are legends of Ubasuteyama, a dumping ground for a grandmother, in various parts of Japan. This legend is often told as a tragedy such as poverty but we should rethink it as the way of burying for a shriveling dead body.   　

  Second form of death is the sudden death which occurs due to an acute illness, a traffic accident, an affair such as a murder, a natural disaster such as an earthquake and a war. Then, what kind of meaning does it have for the time of each person? It is a death about which we are hard to announce previously unlike the first form of death. We have no choice but to call it an unhappy death. And we think that they had hard luck but think that we still don’t become so. Thus, we have a sense of security. However, we also think that we have to be careful for sending a life because we don’t know when our family members or we ourselves have such accidents or disasters. 　 　　　 　
  The thing which we should think here is a relationship with guardian deity which is given to each person since he lived in his mother’s womb. A lot of young people died from the giant tsunami of the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. Their lives would not have shriveled but would have been filled with energy because their dreams and their family's expectation had soared and because they had thought that they would make their own times in the future. But they died suddenly. What has become of expanses of their lives which had been given by guardian deity? Wouldn’t they have been able to live longer and to have times at which they were able to achieve some sort of self-realization? Wouldn't they have been able to do so only because of imperative need of their guardian deities? I think nobody can say such a thing.

  In the aircraft accident of Osutakayama in 1985, there was a woman who had been able to survive though almost people had died. Would the difference between people who had fates of death at that time and people who didn't have these fates at exactly the same time have become the real difference between life and death? I think nobody can say such a thing. 　
  The important thing is the feeling of a living person who came across other person’s sudden death. As I wrote above, he thinks that he didn't have such an accident luckily and he still has time to do something. Thus, death lets living people be aware that death takes all things mercilessly anytime. At the same time, death lets them think about fate that they are living now in this way, too. 　
  I paid attention to a text of ‘Child’s eye’ by Kunio Ynagida, Japanese founder of folklore, in the annotations of ‘The letter from Taranome-ann’. Yanagida comes across the scene that a child packhorse driver gets hit by a rear wheel of the carriage because he cannot follow the abrupt movement of horse. At that time, Ynagoda feels innumerable question and assertion about the serious affair of a person inside the color of the child's eyes for only a brief moment. And he thinks that he came across that place at that time because he had various unscheduled events from morning of that day. He thought that a series of events seemed to be as a kind of fate.　 　
  Why did I do so there? I came across that scene at that time. What does it mean? If I had done another action, what would have happened to me? In this way, when a person comes across another person’s sudden accident, he ruminates about the mystery of his own fate, too. 　 　 　

  And the third form of death is the intentional death such as suicide and death penalty. There are various forms of suicide. For example, there is a death for getting away from severe disease or mental distress. There is a self-burning for protest against war as we used to know during Vietnam war. And there are suicide terrorism of Arab radical, seppuku (suicide by disembowelment) for self-assertion like Yukio Mishima (Japanese famous writer) and martyrdom for emperor's death like General Nogi. On the other hand, there is a death which is given intentionally such as death penalty by power of the state and sacrifice of ancient Maya etc.. This form is different from the former two forms in the sense that life is cut off intentionally by oneself or by power not involving oneself. 　
  However when we come to think of why a person did such an intentional action, the third form of death seems to be resolved into the former two forms. That is, suicide for getting away from severe disease or mental distress is evidently accompanied with situation of lacking in zeal for one's life. Therefore, It seems to be similar to shriveling death of the first form. Such a suicide victim may think that he may die anytime because he continues to have heavy insomnia etc.. 　
  The intentional death except it seems to be similar to the second form of death such as an acute illness, an accident, a natural disaster like an earthquake and the death due to a war in the sense that a person is driven into death by various affairs or accidents which occur around him. Therefore, it seems to develop as the intentional death though it has no suddenness. 　
  However about death penalty, we need a special discussion though I cannot consider in detail here. The prisoner whom the death penalty decided doesn't know when punishment is carried out. But if such a situation continues for a long time, his time in the meantime will become intolerable for him. Can we consider such time a part of execution of the punishment?
  　
 In this way, I looked at the form of death by dividing it into three. All of three are death surely in the meaning that the flow of every person's time is intercepted there. Then, is there any essence of death common to three in addition to it? That exists. That means that what’s called death eliminates a special thing thoroughly. 　
  Among the third intentional death, the suicide for protest and self-assertion obviously tries to give one’s death the meaning, assuming that it is special. Such an intention surely exists as a motive for death. However, death itself never admits such a special thing. If we die, nothing will be left. Even if we chose honorable death, the honor and choice are problems on the side of life opposite to death. Even if the desire for the dead remains on the side of living people, it fades away as time passes. Death thoroughly eliminates the special existence of those who are going for death. 　
  However, people will say as follows. That is, death is not such a thing. A person dies but his works or achievements may impress us, encourage us and remain forever. For example, works of Kenji Miyazawa have given various impressions to people after his death though those works were not recognized while he was living. Therefore, didn't he strive for works which he thought just to remain after his death rather than he was recognized in those days? 　
  I don’t know about that. Kenji packed his works full into a trunk and visited Tokyo for promoting his works. However, his works were not recognized anywhere and he came back to his hometown with hopeless mind. Even if he tried to make his works recognized, it is true that those works were not recognized. We, living people, only reconstitute the honor of Kenji Miyazawa. He only finished his life which is not recognized, over his own time. We try to think that Kenji will be pleased that he is recognized by us in the next world. However, Kenji is not in the next world.  
                                                                                                                (20/04/2012) 　

 6. Time and Death (2)

 However, there are philosophers who wonder about that death eliminates a special existence thoroughly. Kant said somewhere that there should be some sort of salvation in the next world in order to deal with inequality about good luck and bad luck of people in this world. And he said that to aim at the next world suited a function of reason, a rational mind. Bergson also said that we, human beings of this world, communicated continuously with something of the next world and said that clarifying it was the subject assigned to us. Various religions from ancient times admit some sort of existence of personality in the afterworld. I hear that there are also many people who throw down the whole body on the ground around Mt.Kailas seeking for happiness of the next world in exchange for their struggle in this world.　 　　　　　　　 　
  I cannot say that the personality similar to that of this world exists in the next world continuously, in considering the essence of time. That is because I think that the essence of death is perfect abandonment of the personality of this world. 　
  However, as I cited ‘Joseph and his brothers’ written by Thomas Mann in the last chapter, ‘Encounter with others and the time’, the one that had protected Joseph from the temptation of Muto・Em・Eneto was the image of his father, Jacob. Where did the image at that time appear from? There will be also an idea that some sort of Jacob’s spirit in the next world may have watched Joseph with care. But I don’t think so. I think that something like guardian deity which is given to Joseph himself and leads his time protected him. Then, what kind of thing is guardian deity which had already grown in the embryo or the fetus when Joseph dwelled in his mother’s womb? 　　　　　　
  I explained that guardian deity was a great element which forms each person’s time. I think that each time cease to exist by death but something like spirit which fought in each time is handed down to the next generation again. Is guardian deity something which reflects some sort of spirit which is inherited like that? 　
  However, if so, my idea about death exposes inconsistency. I said that death cuts off the fight against each person’s time when each person was living. Death rejects continuity and specialty thoroughly. On the other hand, I expressed that guardian deity's concept was something which overcomes death and is inherited to human beings' future. Isn't my idea contradictory? 　 　

  I said earlier in the description about the time for my father as follows. That is, my father’s physical strength has weakened gradually but this is the work by something like genes, which are given to general living things and limit their life times. Therefore, nobody can evade death which comes to us sometime. However genes in that case are those of the cell of the body destined to aging and death, not those of germ cell. Germ cell is inherited into a new life by encounter and combination of man and woman. Moreover, it develops a new nature by the union at the same time succeeding the past human being's nature. For that purpose, human beings have no choice but to die as the cell of the body.
 However, something like guardian deity dwells in each person’s time. But I don’t know how it is regenerated toward the future, unlike with germ cell. That is because one’s own quality is inherited only through one’s children biologically and because the germ cell which was not able to bind together with other sex cannot help dying out even if it conceives the personality and the mind which are irreplaceable for human beings. Therefore, as a problem unrelated to biology, I cannot move this problem forward now here. As for each person’s particular time, death makes all things come to nothing and leaves nothing in the future. I have no choice but to say that the concept of guardian deity is something universal which is unrelated to such a biological specialty.   　

  However, there is also a symbolic tale which negates even such an idea. That is a Kafka’s short story named ‘Before the law’. The content of this story is as follows. 　
  A man asks a gatekeeper who stands in front of the gate of the law to put him in the gate. But, the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man wonders why he cannot enter the gate though the law is opened to any man. He comes to think that the gatekeeper is a great obstacle for him. However, he makes up his mind to spend his time in front of the gate because he believed his word, “Yet now, I cannot admit you to enter the gate ”. Long time passes. The man grows old and doesn't have much time left. The man says to the gatekeeper, “ Everyone strives for seeking for the secret of the law. So, why has no one except me requested entry in these many years?” The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and he answered the man, “ This gate was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.”　 　
  In this novel, we can grasp an essential relation between time given to each person and death. The world, the public, family, neighboring people, these all were given only for the man who stood still in front of the gate of the law. Furthermore, the law, the gate, the gatekeeper, these all may be an alter ego of the man. But the man is dying out. Everything is lost according to his death. The world, the idea about the world, human beings who think of the idea and human beings’ future are also lost.    Nevertheless, a person tries to search for the meaning that the specific existence called self is alive until he becomes extinct. Even if he cannot find out the meaning, he is convinced that his will which tries to search for it is the proof of his being alive.   　

  I had a deep dream which made me realize the will of living, two times. The first was approximately 30 years ago. It was a strange dream. I was having dinner downtown in front of Osaka station with a friend. I show him two ballpoint pens there. Both of the human beings whom I confined into the ballpoint pens before may be alive. If they were dead, it would mean that I had committed a murder. Should I take the ballpoint pens to the police for criminal investigation? Maybe they both will be alive because the ballpoint pens still are warm and can be written. The friend asks me where I have confined them, but I don’t remember clearly. When I was going out, the rumor that I am a murderer has already spread out among people. The manager of the restaurant gives me the inhuman treatment and drives me into the basement of the restaurant. I meet someone’s searching eyes in the darkness of the basement. Former prisoners and women were crouching there. I begin to talk about something with them in a low voice soon as if it continued forever. And I am gazing at the dark crouching bodies which are talking together including myself from one corner of the ceiling which intersects with the closed stairs which leads to the ground. I cannot get out of here forever. Forever! I feel sadness that I lose my time here. I don’t have time to open up by myself any more. I was attacked by the feeling of despair as if I fainted. And I woke up. I touched a floor gingerly with my hand. It was the tatami floor, not the cold concrete floor in the basement. I opened the shutter. It was a beautiful, clear, sunny day and very windy. I have never been filled with unlimited joy of having free time and deep emotion of living so far like this time. That was because the dream was so serious and realistic that I was not able to consider it as dream.   　

  Another dream is the one that I saw a few years ago. I fall from an astounding high cliff with a car in this dream. It seems that I drove far beyond the road and fell off accidentally. I think that this is the end while falling. I cannot survive any longer. This is the end of my life, I think. What a life it was really! I reflected so but when I fall, I stay only in the clear consciousness that this is already the end and that I cannot return to the original life. I feel sad and terrible. It is so if I reflect. But some sort of sad feeling remains. I cannot return any longer. I cannot return to the present daily life or the real world. I have no choice but to fall into a bottomless abyss. The clear consciousness that I cannot return any longer. The clear consciousness that I am a goner. And the clear consciousness like abandonment that I am hopeless because I cannot return any longer. With such consciousness, I fall off as if I was inhaled. That was a feeling about which I can do nothing. It took time a little for me to know that it was a dream also at this time. And, I was filled with the deep emotion that I still have free time to do alive.　　　   　

  Everyone must face death by oneself sometime. However, death is totally indifferent to a fight in the time of the current person. There is nothing beyond death. Nevertheless, a person tries to know his limitation and significance toward death and to live his limited time as his own time. Even if a person died out in front of the gate of Kafka’s law, or even if the life in which a person tries to know about the law is all of his living, he is still going to continue to live his time.　　　   　

  Now, I think that I talked about time that each one lives, to some degree. However, I have not talked all about time yet. That is because I have still left a lot of parts which I cannot talk about and which are vague. Those parts are as follows. That is, though I told that death cuts off all specialties, I cannot talk sufficiently about the problem of spirit like guardian deity which is inherited forever like Veda also teaches it. And I have to contemplate the meaning of severe throwing down the whole body on the ground with which people aim at the next world. However, I think I don’t have to force logic about these problems for the time being. 　　　　　　   　

  Though I will give you trouble to read my dream again, please let me introduce another dream at the end in this chapter. I watched that dream several months before my mother died.
  That was a dream that my aged parents had gone out by themselves to stay in a cold country like Northern Europe. I think that my wife and I made an arrangement for their staying. My parents seem to have already gone out alone and to live over there. Therefore, my wife and I go to that cold country in order to check their appearance. That place was situated in a desolate seaside area. There was an office like the shack for immigrants from foreign countries. And the very small poor huts were located in a line next to the office. My parents were sitting huddling together in one of these huts. The inside of a hut is the width of about 1 meter around. So, they cannot lie at all there. In a gloomy earth wall, my parents are sitting down alone peacefully. I ask them whether they are safe. They answered that they were OK. But my father says that he feels cold a little because the ceiling has a broken hole. When my wife and I leave my parents, my wife asks me whether they feel cold if as it is. I answer her that they are OK and that they can live conveniently because their hut is located near the office. However, I think while walking around. That is, I wonder if both of my parents can lie there as it is. I wonder if they can also sleep there. After that, we arrive at a busy town before long. We find a hotel which is equipped with comfortable beds. And we can hear even a pleasant chat from another hotel. Why couldn’t I reserve a room at such a hotel for my parents? What a merciless thing I did for my parents! I regret intensely.   　

  Several months later after I had this dream, my mother dies and my father’s dementia advances. Death of the person who is special for a living person is painful. The thought that nothing was done for the deceased by us is still more painful. That is because time of a living person also has been formed being connected with that of the deceased. From now on, the living person who was left behind will face his left-behind time by feeling death as the more familiar one in this way.  (To be continued.)
                                                                                                                      (20/04/2012)



 7. Bergson and Time

  I have written my idea about time six times so far. That is, I have described the idea about the feeling of time which passes routinely, about the feeling of time at which we associate with the others and about the relation between time and death. The feeling of time which rules me realistically is the routine feeling even now. I have to visit the hospital and to get three kinds of medicines for my father who suffers dementia. When such medicines decrease, I sigh alone thinking that one month has already passed and that I have to get medicines at the hospital. However my sigh is not because it is troublesome to go to get medicines but because I spend time given to me without doing anything meaningful. Someone might tell me that it will be good because I live a peaceful life everyday in spite of a monotonous life. But time for a human being does not seem to be such a thing. We have a feeling of regret or abandonment against the time of passing away. Nevertheless, we have a feeling of preparedness against the time to come. Doesn't a human being live a life through such a repetition? Isn't it a human being's time?
  I have written various things on my website. But I have also the feeling of what the use of having written articles which people seem not to read is. Doesn't time only pass by rapidly as it is, for me? On the other hand, I think it necessary to pile thoughts hidden in my monotonous and common daily life, one by one. Isn't it a little resistance against the time? I think that such a work is also necessary in order to consider a question which looks abstract like the time.

  In chapter 6, I have thought about the relationship of time and death through my dream and my mother's death. I described as follows. That is, my mother told me that her whole life was condensed and appeared in her mind at a stroke. Bergson clarified this fact commonly known as a phenomenon of near-death experience from the nature of human memory. In order to survive the real daily life, a human being selects the memory which he should recall. However, he says that if a human being reaches just before the death, the limitation of such a selection comes off and his memory revives all at once.
  In his book, 'Matter and Memory', he says as follows. Memory is not a thing accumulated spatially somewhere including brain. Memory is vibration or flow like matter rather than accumulation. We grasp matter which vibrates and drifts, from spatial and fixed side. By such grasp, we can form our daily life world. Furthermore, memory is like a vibrating and drifting base like matter across a personal domain of human being. Nevertheless a part of it is expressed by being limited as a particular memory from the need of personal or social human activities. Both matter and memory are vibrating and moving. However, we cannot but confirm both existences from spatial and fixed view point by cutting a part of them. Then can't we catch matter and memory as original flow and movement? Can we grasp a flow of the pure memory which is not a thing cut as a thing necessary for our daily life? Bergson says that it is possible by the intuitive grasp.

  I described in Chapter 6 of "What is time?", as follows.
 "I explained that guardian deity was a great element which forms each person's time. I think that each time cease to exist by death. But something like spirit which fought in each time is handed down to the next generation again. Is guardian deity something which reflects some sort of spirit which is inherited like that? However, if so, my idea about death exposes inconsistency. I said that death cuts off the fight against each person's time when each person was living. Death rejects continuity and specialty thoroughly. On the other hand, I expressed that guardian deity's concept was something which overcomes death and is inherited to human beings' future. Isn't my idea contradictory? "
  Is there the life after death? A human being cannot explain it by his cognitive ability. On the contrary, the life of the individual is finished by death. Nothing is possible afterwards.
  On the other hand, I was not able to deny a thing called the existence of mind or soul inherited to the future human being, over the biological fact called the generative cell. There is a thing called guardian deity which Hegel thought, inside of the individual, and it decides the personal fate and the relations between individuals. Furthermore, doesn't it move a human being as the entirety towards the future? I described such.
  As summarized in the last of Chapter 6, I didn't try to bring the problem to an end by mere theory. That is because what I do not understand yet or what I have to investigate are not very few. However, by reading Bergson's works again here, I came to think that I might be able to progress this problem slightly forward.

  Bergson says that the life after death is possible for a human being. According to his idea, as long as memory and perception are not things limited to the physical and spatial domain such as our cerebrum, we cannot assert that memory and perception won't remain after our physical death either. However, what kind of meaning will memory and perception which exist even after death have for the personality of his lifetime after the cerebrum did not function by death? For, it is natural that we think that the same personality as the time when the brain was functioning also exists after death as far as we say that the life after death is possible for a human being. As long as it is not so, even if we say that only perception and memory continue posthumously, it has no meaning for the dead. Then, as for the personal identity between physical existence during the lifetime and post mortem non-physical 'existence', how can a living person or a dead person know it? About it, Bergson does not talk a lot of things. He says that he does not still understand whether such an identity continues for some time posthumously or continues forever. But what I want to think here is as follows. It is not the problem of the personal identity between life and death for the individual but the problem of what kind of meaning the thing such as soul inherited eternally has for the individual life. Bergson says about soul as follows.

 "When a powerful instinct declares that probably the personality is immortal, it is right that theories of mentalists do not shut an ear for the voice. However, where did they come from even if 'souls' with ability to run so independent life existed? We watch that a body produces from the mixed cells received from parents extremely naturally, in front of my eyes. Nevertheless when, how and why will those souls enter this body? If philosophy of intuition tries to watch physical life at the actual place namely on the way to the place which leads to the life of spirit, what philosophy of intuition has interest in will not be the individual creature any longer. The whole of life will appear as the rising flow while receiving the interference of the dropping exercise of the matter, from the first driving force which threw it in the world, all the time. A human being is located at the step of that flow. There is our special privilege-like situation there.
  On the other hand, this rising flow is consciousness and includes innumerable potentialities like every consciousness. These potentialities penetrate each other and, as a result, they do not apply to a category ( such as one or numerousness ) made for inert matter. The flow washes matter away and inserts oneself in its various interspaces. Thus, only matter can divide the flow into the individuality distinguished each other. That is why this flow drifts across the human who passes to several generations and it moves while being divided individually. This division was depicted in this flow dully, but would not have appeared on the face clearly if there is not matter. In this way, the various souls are created consistently, but in a sense they existed beforehand. The big river of the life was divided into brooks while drifting across a body of human being. The various souls are just these brooks.
  Such a theory gives power to take more actions or power to live, to us. For, when we stand on this theory, we do not feel that we stand alone among human beings, anymore, and human beings also do not seem to stand alone in nature which they rule. All creatures are related each other, and they entrust themselves to the same fearful driving force. In time and space, the whole human rushes fast on the side of us and rushes in front of us and behind us. Therefore the whole human is a certain huge army corps which is attacking remarkably. The attack repulses every resistance, and can get over much difficulty, probably even death."
   ('Creative evolution' Chikuma arts and sciences library, translated by Aida)

  The quotation has got longer because I wanted to introduce Bergson's thought about a flow of soul and intuition or a flow of matter and life. In addition, the individual is not the existence which stands alone. Potentially, all human beings or all creatures have relationship each other and advance fast toward the future. And to recognize it gives us power to live. He says so.
  Then how can we grasp the existence of soul flowing crossing a body of the human concretely? As I mentioned above, Bergson says that the memory itself exists on the base of memories cut by the cerebrum for the need of our daily life and that we can grasp the memory itself by intuition. The memory itself namely the pure memory can be replaced with spirit or soul. Therefore, we can grasp soul by intuition, he says.
  In this way, the reason why he strongly advocated 'philosophy of intuition' was because he presupposed criticism against the epistemology of Kant. He resisted Kant, saying that Kant arranged the territory field of the human recognition as reason, a rational mind, schematically and spatially though Kant understood the importance of intuition. If we fixed the territory field of the recognition to the spatial diagram, the human freedom is impossible, he says.
  Then, what kind of case is possible for a human being to grasp intuition beyond the ability of commonsensical, objective and spatial recognition? Bergson finds out it in the sense to bring aesthetic creation, namely aesthetic sense and consciousness or a creative will.

  Kant also understood the importance of intuitive ability enough. He seems to have researched the relationship between 'thing-in-itself' and the creative intuition. But we cannot always experience such intuition because we cannot recognize thing-in-itself in our commonsensical and daily life, he says. However, on the other hand, Kant admitted that our action and consciousness would have some kind of relations with thing-in-itself in the practical and moral domain. The practical and moral domain is that of relationship with others who live a common daily life in the same way as oneself. In an encounter with others or in the way of interacting with others, we come across various problems that we cannot solve only by a common-sense judgment. How can we face others who have possibility to interrupt our everyday life? How can we coexist with others? We human beings worry about such things and try to search a solution. However, the foundation of human original freedom unlike the dimension of the objective causation exist there, Kant says. We are apt to think that a human being is free when he is alone. And we think that not freedom but restraint increases when he is with others. However, Kant rather finds the freedom in the relations with others as true freedom or as the freedom to answer a moral request hidden in the innermost of the human heart. And he associates the freedom with thing-in-itself. But it does not mean that he analyzed the relationship between thing-in-itself and intuition positively beyond a moral domain.

  Bergson also does not say that the grasp of the soul by intuition is possible routinely. Rather, as Kant says, our way of thinking is ruled by recognition of spatial, scientific and intellectual causation about things routinely. Therefore, the intuitive recognition is rare for us, he says. That is because our human being society will terribly change compared to now when the intuitive recognition becomes routine and social for human beings. Human ability with the intuitive recognition, e.g., the ability of telepathy and teleportation is still a rare phenomenon in our world. However, Bergson says that a human being cannot but trace gradually the course that intuitive ability harmonizes with conventional intelligence with a new form towards the future. We can see the optimistic and hopeful tendency of his way of thinking about human being's future, there. On the other hand, he emphasized 'power of negation' except aesthetic creation activity as an example of the embodiment of intuition as follows.

 "Socrates's Daemon stopped Socrates's will at a certain constant moment. And Daemon did not order Socrates to perform what he should do, but prohibited him from acting. It is thought that intuition in the contemplation often acts in the same way as Socrates's Daemon, in our real life. At least, intuition seems to be shown in such a negative way and to continue showing that form clearly. In other words, intuition prohibits a human being's action. In his thought formation, a philosopher hears the voice "it cannot be", as the whisper in his mind. What a mysterious power this negation action of intuition is! Why didn't this power of negation get the attention of the philosophy historiographer more? He returns to inside of himself by coming back to intuition. The twists and turns of a certain theory have such comings and goings. That is, we lose our theory and regain it. And we complete our theory by correcting it without end. This is the real nature of a thing called 'development'." ('Thought and Movement' Heibonsha Publishers Ltd., Translated by Shoji Hara)

  This is the real nature of a thing called 'the soul'. We may be able to replace the last sentence like that. So, the emphasis of the negation action of this intuition will be one of the best achievements among the thoughts that Bergson expressed.
  I quoted 'Joseph and the brothers' (a novel of Thomas Mann) in 'An encounter and the time with others' (Chapter 4 of 'What is time?'). In this novel, the wife of an Egyptian eunuch having mad passion for Joseph approaches him. However, Joseph was able to escape from her by a hairbreadth. Thomas Mann speaks as follows.
 "Joseph was able to shake himself loose from her and to escape from her at the last moment. That was because he had recalled his father's shadow at that time. However the thing which he regarded as having seen at a corner of the room was not the figure with unified personal character. He saw it rather inside its spirit by its spirit. It was a metaphor and an image of caution. And it was rather the father's image regarded as common thing. That face was watching Joseph anxiously."
  This splendid expression shows the essential role of spirit and the soul for a human being quite simply. This is just 'prohibition by intuition', negation action of intuition. Bergson expresses this action as 'power of negation' in the development of the contemplation', namely 'the whisper showing impossible'. In other words, he images the power of negation as a thing promoting a maturation process in the personal thought formation, or as a thinking process to be able to go back to the original self. But, power of negation appears also in the scene of the action. Like Daemon of Socrates, power of negation wells up from nowhere and leads a person to his natural route by force. I expressed it in the concept of guardian deity whom Hegel showed, in Chapter 4.
  Tomas Mann makes Hans Castorp, a chief character of 'The Magic Mountain', experience the power of such Daemon. Hans continues madly asking for love of a Russian woman staying in the same sanitarium. But, on the other hand, he hears a whisper from the depth of his mind. It says that love with her will never be achieved. When we meet the opposite sex and ponder what kind of meaning the encounter has for us, it is possible for anyone to meet the scene of the whisper of such a mind. There is something that makes you think that you will never be able to marry even if you demand the partner madly. That is, some power to urge strongly saying that "It is not so" and "It is impossible" seems to move the individual. What is that? It is intuitive conviction for the individual and is some kind of conviction to have no choice but to play a certain personal role there. Furthermore, the individual who cannot but accept such a negation will be located at the tip of the flow of eternal life toward the future, namely the tip of the flow of spirit and the soul, though he is not conscious of it at all, Bergson says.

  Mann states that the reason why Joseph was able to escape from the wife of the eunuch at the last moment is because he recalled his father. Besides, it was not the image of father as the specific personality but the image of father which has wide and universal meaning. Here, the power of the refusal by intuition is not roused by the image of a particular personality. It moves the individual definitely as symbolic representation which wells up.
  However, on the other hand, Bergson says that even after death, a personal existence has the possibility to communicate with other personalities who still live. And as I mentioned in the beginning, he says that we are not able to know yet whether such a post mortem personality exists temporary after death or continues to exist for a long time.
  In this regard, I recall a famous opening scene of the Bergson theory, 'The impression' which Hideo Kobayashi continued to write. Just after the end of World War II, mother of Kobayashi died. Several months later, he fell off the platform of Suidobashi because of heavy drinking. It was such a situation as he might lose his life, but he was saved miraculously. Kobayashi says that he watched glass shining in an outdoor lamp on black coal cinders at that time and found out clearly that his mother had saved him. That was strong intuitive conviction of Kobayashi. So, thinking about an implication of this conviction, he began to write a Bergson theory. However, his Bergson theory finished unfinished, and he refused its publishing in his will.
 
  After my mother died, I also had such an experience as I could suppose that there might have been protection of late mother although I had not such conviction as Kobayashi. That experience began from the event that my bag disappeared suddenly at the ceremonial hall where I performed a funeral for my mother a few days after her death. I was not able to find it anywhere in the ceremonial hall. The person in charge looked for it hard because a lot of valuables were included in the bag. Nevertheless, it was not found anywhere. I thought that my bag might have been stolen after I had left it somewhere. I gave up searching for it and intended to go through procedure at the police and the bank. After a funeral, I went to the crematory, and my mother became the ashes. Then, my family and relatives moved by car to the graveyard in order to lay her cremains in a tomb. It was a event which happened when we were on the way to the graveyard. I got a call from the person in charge of the funeral hall on my mobile phone. He said that my bag had been found. I heard my relative who had worried about the loss of my bag speak smilingly in the car as follows. That is, my relative said that my mother who had gone to the other side had found my bag. I asked the person in charge where it had been found. He answered that it had been found at the corner of a large parking lot. However I was not able to understand it no matter how hard I thought about it. That is because it is never thought that I dropped it when I came out of the car. Later, I found that all the contents of the bag had been left like before. However, at that time I answered with laugh to my relative, saying that it might be so. That is because I was greatly relieved to hear that my precious things had been found.
  A person who has lived for 65 years more like me meets an event considered to be clearly mysterious sometimes. I wrote the memory of my childhood age about a mysterious event in the text of 'the letter from Taranomeann'. As for my university days, I remember that I played cards in the summer camp held by a certain circle till late at night. At that time, I was able to guess a card before turning it up as much as three times. I was not able to understand it, but I felt the mysterious sense that the kind and number of the card appeared to me for some reason surely.
  In "The impression" by Hideo Kobayashi, a famous explosion case to come out to an autobiography of Jung is introduced. When his teacher Freud quarreled with Jung intensely, a strong explosion suddenly occurred in the bookcase on their side. When Jung told Freud that this explosion was related to our heated argument, Freud denies it thoroughly. Jung speaks about it as follows. "No, you are not right, teacher. I can predict that such a loud blast will occur again in a few minutes in order to prove that what I had said was true." As soon as I said so, an identical explosion was caused in a bookcase as expected. I do not know what gave this conviction to me till now. However, beyond all doubt, I knew that I would hear an explosion once again."
  This event shows that the mental movement of two people, Freud and Jung, had an impact on materials on their side. Furthermore, it shows that Jung was able to foretell the event although he did not understand that reason.

  As for the mysterious event that is not thought in our daily life, Bergson investigated that realistic possibility by his idea that memory and perception are not shut in spatially by our individual human body. Furthermore, he found that our ability called intuition which can sense a flow of matter and mind and can communicate with them is useful for such a research. Then, as Bergson said, will we be able to advance to the future human society where the human intuition and intelligence delicately fuses by 'Élan vital (vital impetus)' which he expresses, beyond a limit of the ability for human recognition that Kant systematized? Or will we advance to such the mental existence as cannot be called the human being society?
  As I wrote about Kant in the annotation of ' The letter from Taranomeann', I was greatly impressed to have read 'Critique of Pure reason' in my university days. By preaching the antinomy between limitation and infinity which a human being recognizes, Kant clarified the existence of thing-in-itself which is not bound by such a space-time idea. At the same time, he clarified a limit of the human recognition ability that a human being never be able to know the contents of thing-in-itself.
  Bergson says, "The world where we live exists in fact as the thing by the constant choice in the quantitative dimension or by the choice limited by our action ability. Therefore, even if another world corresponding to different choice exists at the same place at the same time, it is perfectly acceptable."
  I think that its idea is connected with the process that Kant derived the existence of thing-in-itself.   And as I said in the beginning, at the same time, Kant preached that a human being can participate in the mystery of thing-in-itself in the practical and moral domain. Moreover, he says that it is the existence ground of a human being who should be free. Kant speaks as follows in 'Critique of Pure reason'.

 "If we are going to still save freedom, we have no choice but to think that the existence of things or the causal relation which obeys a law of the necessity of natural rules as the existence of things merely belongs to a phenomenon, as long as the existence of things is ruled in the time. At the same time, we cannot but connect the freedom with the existence of things as the situation which is directly related to thing-in-itself. Such a separation (between time-space and thing-in-itself) accomplished in pure theoretical reason is extremely important in this way.
  Thus, all steps which we consider about pure reason match up precisely with all elements of the theoretical reason criticism naturally as if it was thought exhaustively so that each step gives this proof with careful foresight even in the practical range that does not consider detailed speculation at all. And this fact really deserves surprise."

  Kant preached a limit and restriction of the human being reason (a rational mind) but he didn't necessarily call for practical reason as the supplement morally so that Hegel and Bergson criticized it. From the beginning, he accepted the human moral element which becomes involved in thing-in-itself or the element which brings original freedom to a human being, as the essential ground of the pure reason . Furthermore, Kant stated with posthumous works as follows.
 "As for the greed for the academic study, it is nothing but unnatural. Because the risk of the academic study is proved. Therefore, it should be judged rather as follows. That is, we have ability of the wisdom that is beyond our fate of this real world, and therefore the future life ( afterlife ) will exist." ( Consideration memorandum about feelings of the beauty and the sublimity ; Posthumous works of Kant )

  What is the risk of the academic study? I am not able to understand clearly what Kant was going to say by the text because I didn't refer to the original of German. The meaning which we are able to think about it may be as follows. Human being's life is not a thing which is covered only with a domain of the academic study. It is only a scholar that is satisfied with a scientific system and theoretical construction. Essentially, people's life consists of various intuition and various senses to take in neighboring environment with the body itself other than the objective recognition ability. Just as Bergson says, possibility to bring us a sense which leads to the future life is hidden there. We cannot expect it in the academic study.
  However, Bergson tried to swell such an expectation by Kant criticism in a field of the academic study called philosophy and the science. That is, Bergson had no choice but to express his thought in the modern flow where the risk of the academic study is deepening more and more. The formation of the journalism world is unavoidable as far as it is human being society. From the ancient times, the celebrities such as a politician, a scholar and the entertainer have been bred there. By the scientific development including a computer and the Internet, the world of the journalism came to increase the authority or power more and more, and came to cover all of the face of the Earth exhaustively while penetrating into our everyday life deeply. Scholars who became famous are invited to the societies and media of the world and can announce their theories. They are pleased with it, too and get an illusion that their theories become rich by interchange with the culture of each country. A certain famous French modern thinker ran around the world and gave a lecture and argued with a local scholar there, and the result became the book. I read it, but was not able to find such constructive thought as he found out before he became famous, nowhere anymore there. Will the deep contemplation occur in such a place?
  As we see in the life of Kant who hardly went out of Königsberg of East Prussia, the place of the true contemplation seems to exist in the everyday familiar life. But now, there are scholars who lose such a life and fly around the world. They are freed from small agony of the everyday life and fly to the world while showing a smile to academic societies, believers and mass media who jump at their theory. But, the place of the original contemplation cannot be unrelated to the agony of simple everyday life. Detailed everyday worries always rotate in our head. We worry about the evaluation to others, or the correspondence to others. Still, from such an everyday trouble, we can come across the event that a ray of light shines, I think.

  As I said in 'Travel to South India', I owe the source of my thought formation to two things. One is that I was greatly moved by a book of Kant. The other is that I traveled to south India and learned the thought of Veda from Acharia. Bergson criticizes Kant and says " Listen to a whisper of intuition which inheres in human beings! And jump! The whisper never exists in the world of the pure reason." However, a human everyday life is originally the world of Kant, that is, the world which is spatial and fixed. Therefore it is basic to fight there though we are troubled, struggle and stagnate. we cannot say that our life is continuation of development and is always artistic and esthetic leap.
  However, Bergson often says, "If we broke the system of a sense and the consciousness, and could bring our perception back to the root, we could get new ability at that time". Of course, such a conclusion comes from his theory, but, on the other hand, it shows another aspect of him who is also a journalist as well as a scholar. More than that, I feel friendly feeling towards Kant who continued preserving everyday of simple repetition to maintain daily life.
  Of course I think that Bergson understood such a thing in some degree. On the contrary, Kant's thought hidden in morality and thing-in-itself might have had a Bergson-like element than Bergson. But Kant was not going to talk much about it due to the limitation of the times or the creed of his own. In the times of Kant, the fair evaluation to African and Indian people had not been yet accomplished and Kant oneself did not doubt the intellectual advantage of the European over African races, etc.

  However, the times has already changed. Now, among the people of developed countries, we are not able to find the dynamism of the physical ability like Africans, easily. Africans are able to adapt their body to outskirts environment intuitively. Such an ability should be evaluated than that of a European in a sense. In addition, the Indian philosophy that was brought by the Vedas from ancient times can sound a sharp alarm bell against the gap between ideal and reality in the mature democratic society.
  I visited south India twice several years ago. I met Archarya at the Hindu facility and learned a lot of things from him. We can go down from the world of the consciousness where we are troubled routinely to the world hidden in the innermost of the self by walking a way of hard self denial , just in this world, he says. And he says more as follows.
 "When we gradually reduce the desire, time to get away from a desire completely comes over. Then, our physical sense disappears naturally. And only self itself is left and shines. It is not necessary for us to leave for the outer world to arrive at such a stage. According to the teachings of Veda, an ideal of the liberation is realized just now here. Things like chance happenings will never happen in this world."
  A person who overcame the desire that he should get over by a steady effort of himself can achieve a sense of fulfillment in this world. To that end, we don't have to leave for the outer world. Overcoming the difficulty of our daily life now here gives us a meaning in all events naturally, he says. There is nothing special in it. There is neither intuition nor mystery nor the leap there. A person finds the desire which should be overcome inside of the self and solves them in his everyday life plainly. Everyone has tried to live such a life which is moral or understandable religiously from ancient times, and I feel like that such pattern is unchanged for human beings all through the ages.
  Most of problems in our heads are various trivial daily duties and moral relations with others routinely. The morality to be related to thing-in-itself which Kant expressed was power which has no room where hypocritical humanism enters and by which we can endure routinely.

  What kind of value did Bergson find in this world where we have to endure? It is an achievement of Bergson to have connected 'Élan vital (vital impetus)' with possibility of the human freedom. However, it is quite difficult for us to know how Élan vital works in our present daily life world or whether it leads us to a certain direction. He says, "Cut off a real social bond! And put the body to the intuitive world!" On the other hand, he tells that the reason why human being society built a nation is because originally a human being needs such social bond instinctively like the insects such as white ants. Furthermore, he says as follows. People of religion and mystics have personal meaningfulness in this real world but our society is kept because they are rare. If the personality like them occupies the majority in our society, it is not a human society any more.
  However, nobody still understands with what kind of sense we can live in the place which is not human being society anymore. There may be the world where there is the weirdness that we have not experienced ever. Élan vital (vital impetus) that Bergson expresses reminds us of only a bright future image absolutely. But, true freedom may be accompanied by the secession from conventional friendly consciousness and sense. We may experience such sense as we current humans cannot endure. Can we endure it really? Is the freedom that we usually think about not only a convenient idea for us? Furthermore, even if we preached significance of intuition, how does intuition differ from our strong desire, intention, or mere idea? And how are these concepts connected to each other? Such a question still remains as a problem.
  One of the reasons why Kobayashi was not able to finish writing the Bergson theory seems to be in such a place. There might have been unreasonableness in the point where Bergson and Kobayashi tried to supplement that blank by the cutting-edge result of physics. Kobayashi said a similar thing somewhere.

  As I spoke in the beginning, the achievement of Bergson who let us pay more attention to the human future by a new opinion about relationship between memory and matter and about the significance of intuition is big.
  On the other hand, the time of my everyday life passes without any complications before we can even say something. During that time, I live a life by being affected by the extension of the way of thinking of Kant and by a simple thought of Indian Acharya who teaches us that we should devote ourselves to severe self-study, overcome a desire and plan self-realization in this world.
  Acharya says. We have to always feel as follows in our hearts. All people are united existences and we have to give love to all people. However, in the karma, each is different in the action. This is the teachings of Veda. Furthermore, he says. That is, each lonely step of an individual who trains oneself hard is harmonized each other and connects with each other somewhere in a flow of the whole human beings.　
  Bergson has also said. "All consciousness is memory. However, all consciousness is future expectation. The attention is expectation, and there is not the consciousness that does not show some kind of attention to life. There is the future there. The future calls to us. Or the future attracts (pulls) us rather. By such a constant attraction, we are made to go ahead through the time and this attraction becomes the cause that we continue action. All actions are to invade into the future." ('Energy of the mind' Heibonsha Publishers Ltd.)
  In our everyday life, we each one never stands alone in spite of each one's lonely struggle. The consciousness of each other's pain and joy permeates each other somewhere and becomes connected to each other somewhere in a big flow of human beings.
  On the other hand, I still hold hope there and I will be able to continue to think about what the time is, in my own way from now on.   (To be continued.)
                                                                                                                      (28/01/2014)        

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