Scar Tissue

One of the top issues worrying leaders across various fields – political, social, religious in Kerala today is that of the state’s alcohol epidemic. Recent articles in the newspapers and media have been drawing attention to this.

The leaders in each field are debating amongst themselves, making public pleas and so on to try and bring about a change in social behaviour. Ban on arrack, tight control and near elimination of toddy and close monitoring on the number and functioning of the IMFL outlets are some of the policies currently in place to try and restrict alcohol consumption. Inspite of these policies, the state has been repeatedly achieving an ignominious feat. Its quantity of alcohol consumption is breaking new records each year. Alcohol related ill health and social degeneration is wide spread. The amount of farming done is rapidly declining due to alcohol related inertia,  medical expenditure on treating alcohol related diseases is huge, the sale of fertile land to commercial purposes so as to fuel the seller’s drinking habit is indirectly resulting in the amount of green cover and fresh water rapidly reducing, etc.

Alcohol is consumed across all classes of society – be it the farmer, the skilled labourer, the new corporate yuppie or the old retired NRIs. Geographically barring the Muslim dominated areas of North Kerala most of the other areas are prolific consumers.

What are the causes of this epidemic?   There could be a number of them – some of them are as follows:

 The abundance of money that Kerala’s gulf returned population brings in. The life of alcohol deprivation and the stress of making as much money as possible in unfriendly conditions ensures that when these people return home they hit the bottle like there is no tomorrow. The fact that they now have lost all connection with their roots and also cannot go back to the gulf fuels the drinking urge further.

 Another reason is that Kerala is a state that had implemented prohibition for some years. As with all such experiments aimed at repressing society, the lifting of the prohibition created a wave of alcoholism.

A third reason could be that toddy and arrack used to be the traditional forms of alcohol consumed by the common man. Barring the issues with adulteration, it can be argued that these forms are less addictive and harmful to Kerala’s common man and overall economy. Having cut off these sources may have actually pushed many to the addictiveness of IMFL but then the state gets much more revenue from IMFL than it gets from toddy if we chose to ignore the hidden losses

Then there is the spiritual aspect of the loss of god. Traditionally fear of god used to be an effective deterrent for alcoholism. With the communist wave, god was removed from many minds thus removing the constraint that fear of divine reprisal for sins brings. Among the Christian communities, the early missionaries brought wine along with the religion. The community is notorious for its hypocrisy when it comes to the subject of alcohol consumption. The churches preach severe abstinence which almost mirrors orthodox Islamic views but the flock strive to emulate their white Western brethren’s drinking behaviour.

Possibly the biggest reason could be the vacuum in the minds of Kerala’s people for which its leaders need to be squarely blamed. They have not inculcated a way of life in the common man’s philosophy where a person uses his energies constructively for the betterment of himself, his family and society. Concepts like yoga, the arts, nature, sports and other such areas where man directed his energies and found bliss have been nearly completely eliminated. The leaders approach of blindly aping the economic philosophies of China, the Middle East and the West without acknowledging the evils and terrible drawbacks of these societies has led to generations of people who have now lost contact with their roots and the beautiful way of life which was native to Kerala.

What the state needs is a major moral, social, philosophical and spiritual upheaval to get back on its feet again. When a man understands the bliss of a healthy body, mind and spirit, then he will make his own conscious decision to change his behaviour for the better. But what is going to bring about this change? There first has to be leaders to point the way and whom the people respect and are willing to follow.

 But then it could be argued that this is the problem with the whole world today and not just Kerala isn’t it?

Dropping Guard

India is unquestionably one of the rising superpowers of the world today. Along with China, it is growing at a breath taking pace on the world economic stage.

The frenzy for resources to support economic growth in the Asian continent has posed some interesting military alignments. China is pushing against India ever so inexorably as their paths are likely to cross sooner or later. The United States would like to keep as much a check as possible on both India and China so as to maintain its global dominance. Both China and the US will not hesitate to leverage any opportunity to stall each other or India if it comes to conflicting interests on resources. Pakistan is a country that lacks sufficient independent economic thrust and fully recognizes this. It takes aid from both the US and China in return for its support on destabilizing whoever the aid providing entity wants it to focus on. India is looking to strengthen its position with the US and Japan. Remember, wars are only fought for control over resources, no matter what noble ideals are used to justify the deed.

In the light of this current scenario, India has recently gone on a high defence alert and has been out in the open market spending billions on defence related purchases through which it hopes to create a deterrent to any nation harbouring interests in its resources. Though the percentage spent on the defence budgets may not be as high as compared to that of other nations, it still is a significant amount when considering the needs of the majority of the country.

When India got its independence, it gained huge respect on the world stage for its non-violent methods. This has been oft used as an example in the following decades as a symbol of man’s potential. It is said that Gandhi did not want independent India to have an army and wanted India to be an example to the world but the ruling elements of the country were not ready for such a bold step.

What happens if today India disbanded its defence mechanisms at a time when it is in the spotlight on the world stage as one of the key players for at least the next 2-3 decades? What is the worst that can happen?

Let us consider Pakistan  – a country torn by internal strife and barely able to govern its existing nation. Will Pakistan occupy Kashmir and then the rest of India? Will Pakistan have the resources to attempt such a feat and rule a country the size of India? What is more likely to happen is that the state of Pakistan will dilute and merge with India and be absorbed into the Indian way of life

What about China? China has a critical need for resources which it can obtain from India and help to fuel its growth. But does that mean that the Chinese army will enter into and try to occupy and govern the whole of the Indian nation? Will the Chinese try to implement their political system across a diverse nation like India and will it succeed? Will the Chinese bring about a revolution among the massive rural population in India and raise them above their current standards of living? Will China do more damage to India’s natural resources than what our politicians and businessmen are already doing? Will the common man stop being any less Indian than he currently is if China lays claim to the entire Indian sub-continent? Will a nation as big as China with its responsibility for the welfare of its teeming billions want to take on the responsibility to another nation with its teeming billions? Can China attempt genocide across a country as large as India? The impression I get is that most of our worst fears in this regard are not valid.

Will Sri Lanka try to invade India? Will the US or Russia try to occupy India? I don’t think so.

What about the internal factions looking to break up India into smaller fiefdoms – would they use the opportunity to try and break away?

Do we really need an army with its vast overheads or can we not divert this into areas where we can make a real difference to the lives of our people? Wouldn’t an act such as this truly show India as the greatest nation ever in the history of mankind and possibly serve as a catalyst to set about a series of positive actions including possibly global nuclear disarmament, cutting down of worldwide defence spending and the possibility of setting up a truly international army run by the United Nations? Wouldn’t an act like this possibly spell the end of all terrorism and militancy across the world? Wouldn’t Gandhi’s nation be able to hold its head high and say that as a nation we are now truly civilized?

Defining Your Key Thought Patterns

Who is your role model? I was asked this question a few years ago as a part of a corporate leadership training program. At that time the question took me by surprise and my response was that I had multiple role models for different facets of life – my parents, Gandhi, Sachin, etc, etc

This question made me think about the subject more deeply. It is good to have role models, even multiple role models given that we play many roles in our lives. But my view is that there is a need for a key role model against which you should benchmark your life and work towards being like. This role model is the ultimate arbitrator for you in the event of difficult and conflicting thoughts. If there is one person that embodies this then he or she should be your key role model. If not you may need to look beyond real life persons to mystical, mythical or animistic personality types that better fit your needs. Given that your role model could be a real or mythical person who embodies all the thoughts, attributes and actions that you would like to emulate , I would like to use the term key thought pattern to define this rather than the term role model. This key thought pattern or personality type that you decide to mould yourself to be like can be called your guru or god or religion. What you chose here will decide your life experiences.

Some of the advanced gurus say that it is better if you think for yourself and not follow anybody, to have an empty mind is the best approach. An empty mind is ideal when no action is required. No thought, no action – ultimate bliss.

Our minds are however filled with constant thoughts. Some of them require conscious action, some of them result in unconscious action by our bodies and brain, some of them result in other thoughts. In each of our lifetimes, we go through infinite thoughts and actions. We are the result of what we think, how our brains and bodies react to the thoughts and what actions we subsequently take as a result of it. As the Buddha says – as you think so you are. Typically in our lives we have no control over our thoughts or most of our conscious and unconscious actions. Most thoughts and actions nullify or contradict each other or lead to inappropriate long term results for the individual. This results in what could be called a wasted or unfulfilled life.

If you become conscious and aware and exercise a degree of control over the kinds of thoughts you have and its subsequent actions, you can eliminate a lot of energy which is negative to you. Now how do you do something like this? How do you control the nature of thoughts and type of actions you perform? The food you eat, the kind of people you spend time with, everything that you experience with your senses determines what you are. This subsequently forms the soil in your mind from which the seeds of thought sprout. How do you select and filter from the flood that hits your senses everyday what is appropriate for you and what isn’t?

This is where an appropriate thought pattern for you can help you. Having a pattern like this serves as a sieve for your senses so that from all that you experience you select those experiences that are good for you and these experiences then settle in your mind as the soil for thoughts that are ideal for you and actions that subsequently result from these thoughts.

How to find a thought pattern or personality that is appropriate for your life and how to incorporate it into your daily thoughts and actions? This is definitely not an easy task. Your thoughts at any point of time are typically influenced by your most prominent desires at that moment. Most of us go through various personalities or thought patterns as we are tossed about by our desires till we finally settle on a confused composite which makes up our personalities if at all. Some of the thought patterns that we go through are typically our parents and teachers in our childhood, followed subsequently by a romantic hero or deity and subsequently by a person who is successful in a career we are interested in pursuing such as a sports person or corporate leader (invariably in today’s world it is somebody who has made a lot of money)

The ideal thought pattern is not a passing fancy but something that you try to embed in the core of your personality or being. It is a seed that you are trying to plant into the depths of your being which will determine who you will be for the rest of your life. It is the criteria based on which you process the experiences that your senses flood you with. It is the sieve that provides the soil for your mind and also the creator of your thoughts and actions. It is effectively your god, your guru, your personality.

Seeding the thought pattern into yourself involves studying the nature of the thought pattern, how the thought pattern affects the clothes you wear, the food you eat, the way you interact with others and everything about you. In a new experience, you try to apply the thought pattern to see how you should react. In ancient times, native people tattooed on themselves the symbol representing the spirit which they believed they embodied so as to concentrate these energies

If the thought pattern you have chosen is appropriate for you, it starts to obsess you and take control of every aspect of your life. If such a thing happens and you start finding that you are much more happier and experiencing life in a way that you have never done before then you have probably found your guru.

Once you successfully seed your thought pattern, then you need to look at your body as a vessel or vehicle that will be driven by the energy associated with this thought pattern. The pattern drives you and you feed the pattern to energise it.  The food you feed your body, the clothes you wear, thoughts you think, actions you perform all fuel the flame that energises the being within you making it more concentrated, pure and effective. This flame gradually concentrates until a point where like the external sun it ignites to become a self sustaining fusion reactor within you, your sun, the source of all your life. You will then find yourself achieving things that you could barely dream about before. You have then found your god, your religion, your source of limitless energy. All your thoughts and actions are focussed and aligned and you find yourself achieving goals effortlessly without complications and hurdles

J Krishnamurti used his body as a vessel that could be filled with the energies of Lord Maitreya so that it could be directed according to the nature of Lord Maitreya. Jesus believed that his body was the temple of god and devoted his entire life  in this direction.

My thought pattern is Shiva. What is yours?

Ardhanareshwara: Being One

Every one of us is half male and half female. A reproductive organ and its accompanying hormones may result in physically one aspect expressing itself more. Along with this expression, the enzymes and hormones that are needed to fulfil this role result in physical masculine or feminine features. The mind as a result of these expressed chemicals, physical features and society gets conditioned to think in terms of a particular gender. But underlying this, each of us is both masculine and feminine. We are the result of the union of male and female. Only when within our bodies and minds we recognise this and work towards balancing this do we reach equilibrium. Famous psychologists like Jung, Freud, William James and their research on the unbalanced anima and animus (or logos and eros or yin and yang) highlight the dangers of a lopsided approach to ourselves. The state of nature today which is universally attributed to the feminine and its plight in the face of the masculine aggressions of man show what a precarious state we have put all of life into.

The Ardhanareshwara is an ancient image conceptualized to heal and balance the human mind and body. This is a form of Shiva and Shakti in perfect union and represented in a meditating posture. The  expression is one of ultimate bliss. The power that this image represents is vastly complex and for this to work we need to apply it at multiple levels within ourselves, our bodies, minds, personalities. If there is conflict that exists at any level it leads to destruction of body and mind as would any conflict between Shiva and Shakti. The sorry state of the world today can be pinpointed to a conflict between these two elements within us. A child born out of disharmonious parents is in disharmony. The world is filled with these beings and they destroy themselves, society, nature and life.

The solution to this is for each person to look within himself or herself and to reach harmony within themselves first before attempting to unite with another human being to produce a child or to interact with the world around them. A child born of harmonious parents will have a higher probability of being balanced and harmonious. Such a being will have a harmonious relationship will everything that he or she comes in contact with. Some people try to resolve the gender conflict within themselves at a physical level by dressing up or making physical changes to appear like the opposite sex. This is a surface level approach to the problem. Recognising that we are essentially two parts made one and giving our bodies and minds the space for both these halves to flower and blend harmoniously is the approach that needs to be taken. It is no shame for a person to show attributes of the opposite gender. Our sages depicted Krishna, Vishnu, Shiva  at different times using attributes of female personalities to highlight how difficult situations can be handled with feminine grace and astuteness. In Chinese philosophy only when the yin and yang are balanced will the world be in equilibrium. In Western science, balance between the two lobes of the human brain, the so called Logos (masculine) and Eros (feminine) is key.

So let us try to be ardhanareshwaras from within and bring equilibrium to ourselves and the world around us.

A Taste of Organized Religion

The auto rickshaw drops us off behind a long line of cars. We walk towards the convention site and all around us there are men and women in sparkling white clothes.  Occasionally everybody turns to look at someone emerging out of a high end car that pulls up. Prestige and one upmanship are very important aspects of social life here

A SUV pulls up and the door opens to reveal a white man in a shirt that somehow seems whiter than everybody else’s. Whispers go around that this is one of the key speakers – an import from the west paid to address the congregation. Most people do not understand English but having a foreign speaker adds punch given the quality of local speakers.

The convention is more than a 100 years old and draws lakhs of people each year. It is held on the banks of the river Pampa every February when the river is in ebb and the river bed is exposed. The crowds that attend the convention which lasts a week are some of the richest Christian businessmen, plantation owners, NRIs  in India. The convention earns a lot of money through sales of books, music, donations, etc. The speakers speak about social and moral issues, correct behaviour and the kingdom come. The attendees sit through the sermons and then go back to their tasks of making money with renewed vigour.

This is organized religion for you. All the constituents get together periodically to stimulate and milk money from the cash rich flock so that it can flow through the right channels. The spiritual founder is deftly used to instil fear of retribution so that the miserly wealthy can be made to part with a little of their money. A large part of the money is required to sustain the religious organization, its offices and assets. Everybody goes back with the feeling of a job well done and a lighter conscience. This scenario is played out in all religious gatherings be it Christian, Hindu, Islamic, etc.

 Is this what the spiritual founders of these organizations visualized when they embarked on their paths of introspection, minimalism and rebellion against their social norms? Jesus Christ (as well as Buddha, Osho, etc) was a rebel. Long haired, wearing the simple robes of his time, accompanied by a band of dreadlocked, bearded and fierce looking men as well as a few women of social disrepute, he wandered the towns, deserts and the countryside. Converting water to wine, possibly indulging in cannabis, defending adulterous women are some of the feats associated with him. He detested the greed for money and the usage of the temple of god as a trading place. This man possibly bore no resemblance to the benevolent and mild looking man with Greco Roman features that we see in pictures adorning many houses today. There would probably be much more similarities with the Aghoris and sanyasis who frequent the riverside crematoriums of Varanasi.

What impact do you think Jesus would have on the psychology of the lakhs of convention attendees clutching their money bags, dressed in white and proclaiming abhorrence of wine, women and intoxication if he were to make an appearance in their midst today? Most people would probably try to drive him away from the site or leave in fear themselves.

You could say that the man and his philosophy are as far away as possible from the people who now walk around claiming to be his most fervent devotees. Today’s orthodox Christian says that any desire of the body is a sin and needs to be killed. The only desire to be cultivated is the desire for money. The more money you have and of course donate to the Church the greater Christian you are.

Spirituality as pursued by Jesus and others like him was an exploration, understanding and celebration of the body, mind and nature within which man existed. This body, mind and nature are treated as the house of god and actions are taken to ensure that this space remains blissful for all life energies. The world is filled with God’s creations and our bodies are just a part of it. Our bodies and minds should only take what is absolutely necessary so that other creatures are not deprived of the minimum required for life. Bodily desire is natural and should be treated as such. It should be quenched and not suppressed since the only way to conquer desire is to quench it. Suppression will only result in a violent backlash of psychological regression that will damage body, mind and society. A blissful body becomes a sacred space for blissful energies to reside in making each of us god like and our bodies temples of god.

The pursuit of money is the root of all evil in every spiritual philosophy since it is a desire that is seldom quenched. The arrival of money only initiates a thirst for more money. Accumulation of money deprives other creatures of what is as much theirs as yours.

Isn’t it strange then that in today’s world we seem to be doing exactly the opposite of what our spiritual leaders espoused and that too in their name? Money today is the ultimate focus and all creation is a means of making money and an opportunity to get rich. Persons who try to live the philosophy of Jesus are most likely to be outcast or terminated – e.g Osho, Gandhi, etc.

The system has found a way to make the rebel another of its tools. One of the key techniques is to elevate the founding leader of a spiritual movement to a god status. Through this one activity, the man who did what he did ceases to exist and has become a legend or a myth. Once the leader becomes a god, then the movement is ready to become a money churning machine. Followers will then revere the leader as a god. Actions performed by the leader become miracles and myths which are out of the reach of ordinary persons. Christ the god is to be worshipped, idolized and offered sacrifices. His deeds are all acts of God. The ordinary man can never attempt to follow his steps because who can emulate God? We then have an excuse to slip or stay in our levels of mediocrity and remain the way we are without attempting to change the way we live since there is a supernatural being that will do all this for us. All we need to do is to pay periodic sums of money and continue to focus on making money. Buddha the man and Jesus the man aimed to show that if we raised our energies we could be phenomenal beings but what our political, religious and economic leaders have done is show how even they can be used as raw material to make money just like the rest of us.