Life is nothing but a half truth

How many times did you want to say something to somebody on his or her face and could actually do so? Well the answer would be a ‘no’ most of the times. Quite often we want to say something but end up saying something else. Or maybe choose to keep quiet.

Bestselling books on assertiveness notwithstanding, the fact is that we seldom, rather very rarely, say no when we want to say no. Why? Well, life coaches and personality development gurus ask you to put your best foot forward. And we, too, believe in it. But in trying to put the best foot forward, we usually put the wrong foot forward.

But that is one part of the story. The other part is that life puts you in such situations where you have to be politically or socially correct, whether you like it or not. Only kids do not care two hoots about being politically or socially correct. But these days even that little class is nearing extinction with the so-called play schools giving them courses in window dressing and training them in the art of make-believe. The real world gives way to the surreal. An oft-stated monologue of Jacques from the famous play of Shakespeare, As You Like It, is worth quoting: “All the world is a stage and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and entrances. And one man in his time plays many parts.” If we see around us with eyes and ears open, and with head and heart in tandem, we realise that we are all actors, playing to the script written by someone else. The problem is not that we don’t realise this. We do but then there are compulsions of appearing right rather than being right.

So you love him or her, but you cannot say. You cannot even say that you hate him or her. So rigid are the trappings of society to which we are all tied. This was the crux of Rousseau’s famous words, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

But can there be a way out? Difficult to answer but yes at least do not indulge in self-deception. Be true to yourself. Yes, a lot of struggle is required for being true to one self. But it is worth it. These beautiful words of Nietzsche sum that up neatly: “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by tribe. If you try, you will be lonely often and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning one self.”

This requires a good bit of training. Training of the mind to listen to the heart. Training of the heart to tame the mind. And if we can achieve this we will cease to be miserable and discover our real nature. Ecstasy is our very nature, to be ecstatic is natural, spontaneous. It needs no effort to be ecstatic, it needs great effort to be miserable. The irony is that we prefer to choose the latter over the former. The simplest fact of life is to be, but we rather strive to become.

And in the process we neither succeed in being nor becoming. Being is not possible because we try to become. We can’t become because that is not sustainable.

Gandhi as an Environmentalist

While we celebrate one more birthday of Gandhi as the world non-violence day, the country at large seems to grapple with a dry and warm September, another truant monsoon and looming threat of global warming looking menacingly at us. Well, it may do well to remember Gandhi as an environmentalist.

Many, of course, would look at it with mild scepticism, yet Gandhi was without doubt a moral ecologist. Even a cursory glance at Gandhi’s life would prove that he was a practicing ecological yogi who through his simple lifestyle and ethical conduct inflicted minimal damage to mother earth. As a true yogi, he practised yamas and niyamas that pertain to environment and ethics of resource use. Yamas are the principles that guide human behaviour in relation to other humans and living creatures and non-living materials. The five yamas are ahimsa or non-violence towards all living things,satya or truth, asteya or avoidance of destruction and vandalism, brahmacharya or celibacy to control mating instinct, andaparigraha or not amassing wealth beyond requirements.

The niyamas are self-based codes of conduct that emphasise cleanliness of mind, body, and surroundings, contentment, austerity, self-introspection and prayer.

Gandhi believed that there is divinity in all life and thus was a votary of conservation. His principle was simple. Since human beings had no power to create life, they therefore had no right to destroy life. His lifestyle was a highly sustainable one focusing on simplicity, austerity and need.

Today as we talk about sustainable development, Gandhi’s views appear highly contemporary. His focus on swadeshi, indigenous technology, village economy and austere life are all relevant as we are facing the wrath of nature due to rampant destruction of natural resources in the name of development. It is now being realised that the choice posited by the developmentalists was a misconceived one. It is no longer about healthy economy versus healthy environment. Rather, it is of healthy environment for healthy economy. The misconception that there is disagreement among scientists about damage due to global warming is a motivated campaign backed by small but powerful lobbyists of special interest groups. Such disinformation campaigns are a part of larger designs of vested interests.

Gandhi’s advocacy of an uninterventionist lifestyle now seems to be the answer to the present day problems of global warming. The phrase “health of the environment” is not just a literary coinage. It makes real biological sense because the surface of the earth is like a living organism. Without the innumerable and varied forms of life that the earth inhabits, our planet will become like other parts of the universe — drab and lifeless where living things cannot exist.

The Rigveda says that the earth is the mother and the heaven is the father who united to bring about the cosmic act of creation. The earth bears foodgrains in her womb. May those who desire foodgrains worship the earth. Similarly, it has mentioned the significance of forests and herbs by dedicating hymns to the goddess of forest. Mother earth needs to be respected and preserved and the vedic hymns were to remind mankind of this.

Gandhi was a votary of this view and a lot can be learnt from his life in this regard too. He was certainly an apostle of applied human ecology who practised life without meaningless consumption.

Password to God

A curious tech savvy youth was trying to find out some answers to his doubts related to the existence of God. He went to a knowledgeable believer, known for his belief in God. The youth asked the believer if God was actually present everywhere as is claimed. The ardent believer forcefully answered that God is omnipresent.

To this the seemingly unconvinced youth put another question that if it was so why was he not able to connect with God. The believer answered this with a question; he asked the youth whether he used a laptop for his work. The youth nodded. Then the believer asked him what was the basic requirement for the laptop to connect. The youth said there would be a need for a WiFi connection. The believer then asked if having a WiFi connection enough. To this the youth said that a password was needed to get the benefit of connecting. It was to this that the believer said that the youth perhaps had himself given the answer to his question.

God’s presence is like the WiFi but to connect to him you need a password. And that password is faith. We do not know whether the young and curious enthusiast was satisfied or not, but the one basic requirement to get access to your connectivity to God is faith, unquestioning faith. If you have faith you will connect to God.

This is the crux of Saint Aquinas philosophy that “don’t believe so that you may have faith, have faith so that you may believe”. Religions are like WiFi connections which tell you about the availability of an opportunity to connect. But you need to have a password in order to connect. Incidentally, in the case of God there is only one password that works. And that is faith.

How to develop this faith is a difficult question to answer, but sages and seers, religious texts and scriptures suggest ways and means to understand the mechanism of faith. True, proving that God exists is indemonstrable but we need to remember that absence of proof is no proof of absence. It is the question of faith which transcends science.

In the Indian scriptural text Ramcharitmanas, Goswami Tulsidas writes that it is the faith driven by devotion that will decide whether you see God in an idol or not. Tulsidas wrote: “Jaaki rahi bhavana jaisee, prabhu moorat dekhi tin taisi.” We cannot by logic alone demonstrate all matters of fact and existence.

Perception in the words of famous psychologist William James is as dependent on the mental state of the individual as it is on the external stimuli. There are many realities that are believed due to inferred conclusion. God is also like an inferred entity, and connecting to God is a matter of faith. Faith needs to come first, before we can believe. Faith is pragmatically verified whereas science is experimentally verified. And many a times science also depends on faith. For instance the medical science. It does not work without faith.

Famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung said that in his more than 50 years of practice, he did not come across a single patient who had faith. Many people experience certain events that are nothing short of a miracle. And they are all acts of faith. Human mind is finite and to understand the infinite, the role of faith is critical.

How to cope with stress

Health is wealth goes the saying. What is the greatest enemy of health in these modern times? While media stories talk of many things, the one common thread would be stress. It is the public enemy number one. The one class particularly mired in stress is the working class, the executives, the professionals, the knowledge workers who seem too bothered about the burden of their company, their family and society they assume to be carrying on their shoulders.

Little wonder the Government is thinking of strategies to provide stress resilience to this all-important class. This column is particularly dedicated to that class whose health has become a primary concern. What are the real health related issues of this class? Ask any fast-paced, often on-the-run working individual and he or she would say in exasperation ‘work-life balance’, raising both hands in helplessness.

Recent studies suggest that a significantly large number of such class of population would be reeling under stress. More than 75 per cent complain of poor work-life balance. Some boast of a 24×7 lifestyle, some claim to be workaholics and some would tell that they are constantly on the run. But these are just facades under which they try to hide their helplessness.

So 24×7 they suffer from a conditioned insomnia while the workaholics turn into alcoholics and the ultimate loser is their health and their family. Researchers are today raising loud and consistent warnings against the growing cases of stress-induced health problems.

What is this stress? As a student of psychology for the last over four decades and working in the area of stress management, the considered opinion I hold about stress is that it is nothing. Just a way to look at things which in psychological parlance can be called cognitive appraisal. But just saying that stress is nothing will not help. It is nothing that becomes something severe overtime.

The impact of health on stress is real though stress per se is surreal. The big question is can something be done? And we cannot afford to answer in the negative. Something has to be done and done by you. One because it is your health and two because medical science is more or less helpless. Medical science deals with biological problems to a large extent and managing stress falls outside its purview.

Individual coping mechanism has to be geared up. It is a two-pronged strategy. The first is to learn to look inwards and practise the art of self-awareness. This will help in looking at things from a different perspective. Usually, our problems arise because we are looking at things from our own coloured glasses. These are tinted with our own assumptions developed over the years through our experiences that we have learnt to interpret in our own way. Self-awareness will help us remove those glasses and look at things objectively.

The second is to increase stress tolerance through some practices. Try to wake up early and watch the sun rising. The energy that you will absorb will keep you fresh and fit for the whole day. Develop a habit of exercising daily. Any activity that increases the flow of blood to the vital organs, like the head and heart, is helpful. The simple solution is ‘eat right, tweet right, retreat right’, that is, healthy eating, healthy thinking, and healthy sleeping.