My Mother Told Me There’d Be Days Like This – 21/8/2007
Decided to visit the USM Museum today and check up on the transcript delivery from the University of Wisconsin. According to the Student Clearinghouse, it was sent on the 16th of August. But with my luck, the letter is probably sitting in some post office trash bin after being opened and found to be of no value. Or maybe it's on the Museum Director’s desk, being held ransom for reasons only the bureaucracy knows. It wasn’t there when I checked.
Bummer.
Instead, I visited the Assistant Dean of the Arts Faculty—just to touch base and show him what I’ve been working on at the printmaking studio. He wasn’t in. So I parked myself in the lobby and began reading Knowing God by Deepak Chopra, a book I borrowed from Hasnul, the Museum Director.
Late last night, I rewatched The Matrix—my fifth or sixth time—trying to peel back another layer. That movie hits something deep in me. Spiritually deep. It questions the very nature of reality, and I can’t help but ask:
How much control do I really have over my own destiny?
Why do I so often feel like I’m at the mercy of some higher authority, helpless to navigate my own course?
Reading Ahmed Hulusi, the Turkish Sufi writer, has opened more Dharma gates for me—his fusion of Islam and modern science is a welcome light. These gates keep appearing from unexpected places—like finding this Chopra book on Hasnul’s shelf. Even in the first few pages, Chopra is already tripping over what to call God: He, She, or It. Hulusi cleared this elegantly by using the term Hu for Allah—a genderless pointer beyond form.
Printmakers like me find humor in these things. If you print the word GOD in the studio without reversing it, it becomes DOG on the final image. A trivial error—but as they say, it’s the thought that counts, and I doubt Hu minds much.
Chopra uses the phrase, “To change the world, you must first change yourself.” Not quite his, really. I first read that same idea in J. Krishnamurti's work on thought while I was in the U.S.
Still, I sank a little when I read that Chopra charged RM3000 per seat at his talk during a visit to Malaysia. When I mentioned this to Hasnul, the first thing he said was, “The man’s a salesman.” And yes, he knows how to make money from words better than most. Enough said—or I’ll be accused of sour grapes. Or worse, sued by the Indian man!
But it wasn’t Chopra that triggered this morning’s reflections—it was The Matrix. The whole concept of man vs. machine has been gnawing at my mind for years. Films like A.I., The Terminator, Aliens, and Predator—these aren’t just science fiction anymore. They’re programming the collective consciousness of the younger generations to accept ideas like extraterrestrial threats, synthetic life, and spiritual displacement. As Hulusi writes, these are the quiet intrusions of jinn and demons into our reality, disguised as entertainment.
But even these entities seem tame compared to the threat of machines—artificial intelligence, born from human ingenuity and hubris. Because the machine is logical. Acceptable. Believable. And in this digital age, nothing seems sacred anymore.
If I were the Devil—or the Anti-Christ—plotting the fall of Adam’s children, where would I base myself?
Hollywood.
Yes, sir. Feed the minds of the masses. Offer thoughts, ideas, options, distractions. Sell the illusion. Make the dream more compelling than waking life—until we’re all just batteries in a system we didn’t create and no longer understand.
As the Buddha said, Ignorance is one of the main causes of suffering.
And as the old saying goes:
The Devil’s greatest trick was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.
It feels good to offload all this crap onto the blog—otherwise, it would just rattle around in my skull until something shinier came along to bait my ever-greedy mind. Maybe much of this reads like a bad storyline in a low-budget movie—but if you read between the lines, there might be some small truth tucked in there somewhere. Something worth pausing over.
#MatrixReflections #DeepakChopra #AhmedHulusi #HollywoodIllusion #JihadOfTheMind #ManVsMachine #DigitalKarma #TheDevilInDetails #PrintmakersIrony #SeekingReality #SpiritualRamblings #JinnAndTechnology #RamblingsOfTheCheeseburgerBuddha #USMChronicles #KrishnamurtiWisdom
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