Let there be light?

The August 30th, Edition of the Hindustan Times, Mumbai had a column titled “Higher Knowledge, Clearer Concepts” by Asish Arora. This was one of their regular columns called Inner Voice which I assume has to do with some airy, “spiritual” topics and so I happily skip over it everyday.

For some reason I did read it that day and was confronted with this opening passage:

When we were in the junior classes, we were taught that light travels in a straight line. In the higher classes, we learnt that a beam of light can disburse in seven rays. After that we learnt that there are two more rays besides the seven which are invisible. Later, we learnt that light does not travel straight, it is a wave. Again we learnt that it is not even a wave, it is a particle.

The column goes on to talk about how one progresses similarly in “devotional life” (whatever that is.)

I wanted to laugh at first. I don’t care what Mr. Arora opines on “devotional life” or spirituality and “paths to self-realisation.” They’re all pretty much a load of crock to me anyway, but his idea of light is wrong in so many ways! But I suddenly realised how this was not funny at all. If an analogy is all he wants to draw, there are plenty of them available, but making things up out of ignorance or malice is a no-no.

His blathering ideas on the nature of light annoy me more because if any of his readers are not aware of the reality, they would tend to assume that Mr. Arora being so well-versed in “self-realisation” knows what he’s talking about and so end up believing his account of light too!

All of this from a newspaper whose advertising tagline is “Let There Be Light!”

*sigh*