46. Turning A Blind Eye

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Arogya and Adhyatma seem to be two sides of the same coin. If society is considered as a whole, both of these seem to deteriorate together (as is happening now) or both flourish together. And as mentioned in earlier posts, the distinction between them vanishes if we go on probing deep into the definition of health. Lately, I have started noticing something strongly common between people's approach towards these as well - turning a blind eye to things well within our scope and always blaming out-of-bound things.

Whenever I gave lectures on health to the health-home participants in our Yoga campus at SVYASA, I have always observed one consistent thing. Most people do not take the ownership for their disease. As I proceed with my lecture, I go on listing several factors that cause/trigger/aggravate diseases (not the contagious diseases, but the NCDs which are more prevalent today). Such as stress, irregular food habits, lack of exercises, addictions and lack of overall regulation of the daily routine. These factors cause majority of the diseases of our times. I explain quite logically how each of these factors cause impairment in the system and cause it to breakdown over the years (as briefly explained in the earlier posts on health). Although things are so firmly put forth, finally some in the audience casually turn a blind eye towards all that. They start blaming pesticides, food preservatives and pollution for their disease. Although they are also a factor to be considered, this attitude is very funny. Ignoring a hundred things which are very well in their own control, they focus on pesticides which is not in their control at all. And then finally they pass the judgment "Disease came because of that, we cannot do anything". Drinking ten cups of coffee every day, eating irregularly whenever food is seen (like a cow!), using cell phone for hours together, talking news matters (such as someone killing his mother in some corner of the country!) and worrying over it every day, not performing any type of bodily exercises - they do not want to change any of these which are very well in their control. But they only want to worry about the pesticides in the food over which they do not have any control! It is very lazily convenient to blame something which is out of our control and say "I am not well because of that, so nothing can be done. I am not responsible for the disease". So I tell them: First take care of all the things which are well within your boundaries, and even after that if you fall sick, then let us worry about that later. If all the self-generated factors contributing to the disease are taken care of, what will pollution and food preservatives alone do? Will they cause all the diseases by themselves? What will be the percentage and intensity of the disease due to these external factors alone? If you look at it, they have a very small effect compared to the self-generated causes. If we have self-regulated everything else, these external things alone cannot harm us to the extent we are projecting them to. It is stupidity to sit and cry worrying about them, ignoring everything else that we can change ourselves.

And of course, heredity is a master excuse given by most. I always ask them one question. How many generations back can we trace this to? 2,3,4? Somewhere someone should have given a beginning, isn’t it? Somebody in our ancestry did some or all the mistakes listed above (improper life style) and became a prey of some disease. And along with their wealth, their diseases also flowed to us. If they had the power to begin, why don’t we have the power to stop? If we have the power to store information in the DNA and make things go wrong, why don't we have the power to erase it and make things right? Doesn't it look like plain common sense?

But they argue further! "Scientists have told that genes cannot be modified" they say. For decades scientists fed this negativity to the world and now the common public is not aware what exactly the truth is. Gene encoding and gene expression - are two things. Just because something is stored in the genes does not mean that they will express themselves always. Now scientists are finding that gene expressions can actually be changed by our own regulation of life. What encodings of genes express themselves can be controlled by us. We can suppress them or aggravate them - it is fully in our control. And some scientists are even saying that prolonged regulation can change gene encodings as well. And by the way, do you know how much of the total genes scientists have understood? Less than 2%! And they called the rest 98% as junk DNA! How intelligently stupid! Just because they didn't understand what that 98% is doing, they called it junk. Who knows what is in that 98%? And without knowing such a big portion of the genes, how can we pass a judgment on them? In fact, lately scientists are slowly finding that the remaining DNAs are not actually junk and they play a vital role in regulatory aspects of the genes themselves. You may find details on the net. But anyway, to me, it seems childish to go on probing deeper and deeper like an unending play. It is better to regulate our life at the macro level which will automatically make necessary changes at micro levels of our body, instead of learning a thousand theoretical things about the genes and not following any regulation in our life! It is better to just to go and eat the mango instead of meticulously counting the number of trees in the orchard!

If my parents had diabetes, that particular gene encoding may pass on to me. But that itself does not guarantee that I will become diabetic. It does not mean that I have to accept it as a final death sentence of the supreme court. I can very well regulate my life in a good way and totally suppress these encodings from expressing themselves. I can even change the encodings by prolonged regulation of life and not allow it to pass further to my children. But hardly anyone in today's world regulates their life so well so as to make this happen. And just because no one in today's materialistic and lazy population is trying to do it, scientists called it as impossible (I call lazy population because everyone prefers popping a pill over 30 min of exercise). But the fact is that it is possible - we are the masters. Samskaras (tendencies i.e. gene encodings) are created by us, they do not create us.

This way, by giving so many reasons, people are not ready to take the ownership for their ill-health. They are always busy listing other remote factors for the disease. This happens so because, if they blame the external factors, then they can just sit idle saying "I cannot do anything about it". They can say that all solution must come only in the form of swallow-able pills. Laziness and negativity go hand in hand. Modern medicine is thriving mainly because of this negative attitude and laziness. It always wants to make you feel helpless. "You cannot do anything, it cannot be cured" doctors say so easily when you go to them for diseases such as diabetes, asthma etc. And the patient too is somewhat happy not taking ownership of it and spends the rest of the life swallowing some pills.

This negative tendency is not limited to health alone. This very much defines us in everything, and therefore it has infected our spiritual life as well. The negative approach that we have for health is exactly the same when it comes to spirituality. I have already written plenty of things in these lines in relation to spirituality. How we give plenty of excuses for not doing things, how we are not ready to take ownership of our stagnations in spiritual pursuit etc. I have even heard people say "I am not getting a proper Guru, that is why I am not progressing", or sometimes much sillier ones as "There has to be tiger skin for proper meditation. I cannot meditate without that".

Yoga-spirituality is the exact opposite of this negative tendency. In Yoga therapy, first, one has to see the facts logically and accept responsibility for the disease. Once intellect is repaired with the notional corrections, cure follows automatically. If one has wholeheartedly accepted the responsibility of his disease, he will automatically start moderating his life style and will cure himself over time. It is not at all magical. It is plain and simple common sense. After all, our natural state is to be healthy, not diseased. When things are normal and soothing, body heals itself. There is nothing miraculous about it. We should start seeing the obviousness of it and therefore naturally become positive.

Same thing applies to spirituality. One has to simply start following whatever practices are within one's limits. Worrying about things that cannot be followed, that are not within our purview is of no use at all. It only creates stagnation. Follow whatever is possible, and then see how things change as in a chain reaction.

If you happen to read Mahabharata (I hope you will get to), you cannot help getting irritated with Dhritarashtra and Duryodhana. Pages after pages of Mahabharata are filled by Vidura and Bhishma's preaching to both of these about Dharma. But in the end Dhritarashtra always whines "Sigh.. Whatever you say is so wonderful Vidura. But what to do. I cannot follow any of that". After a few days he calls Vidura again and asks him to preach. And after the preaching is over, he sings the same whining song again. He seems to be our ancestor and his genes seem to have flowed very efficiently over thousands of years! Although we celebrate Krishna Ashtami, Rama Navami, Hanuman Jayanti for some days every year, the rest of the year seems to be Duryodhana Jayanti for us! LOL. The essence of celebrating festivals is to imbibe positivity of those great characters like Krishna, Rama and Hanuman. Wearing new dress and eating good food is all secondary. Primary thing is to get rid of the negative whining tendency and weakness which are the qualities of the blind Dhritarashtra. Among these positive-negative characters we have to decide which ones we want to become; and act accordingly. Instead of turning a blind eye towards in-scope things and stagnating ourselves, let us turn a blind eye towards out-of-scope things and progress.