“Only we-two-of-us know,
that there is not (isn't) any bullet in this gun!” Said the hero to
the girl who deceived him by tricking him into a hotel room,
surrounded by a posse of policemen to nab him! And very smartly, she
found a chance to empty the cylinder of his gun, just in case... (I
saw just one version of the movie 'Don'.. it was the Amitabh Bachhan
of first few minutes, who was averse to Banarasi paan.. (Hmm... yet
another conditioning!).
But, that hero's brains
could not be emptied by that girl! And being trained to 'survive'
against odds, most of his waking+sleeping hours, the resources of
response to life-threat was far more deepened than that, in
we-the-common-people. Now this 'deepening of resources' also
involved taking a look at the 'conditioning' of his
'usual-adversaries'... the police, and his own competitors, and the
spies of these two who upset all conditions of implied-trust that he
invests in 'seemingly-loyal' close ones!
During the early days of
my struggle to deepen the response to spiritual potential latent in
me, I did find a lot of 'conditioning/s' right within me, to be the
foremost thing to be tackled, and that too, all-by-myself-only... if
I were to counter this 'conditions-apply' clauses,.... that deterred
my spiritual progress!
The food! The body was
'conditioned' by the food I take, and a little later on, the food
that I can take in, becomes the 'only-food' that I can take.. a
typical case of 'reverse-conditions-apply'... reciprocity of
conditions! (The mom 'trains' a child, for example... not to
'trust' anybody around... do not take eatables from
'total-strangers', don't tell 'all' the facts to strangers etc..
The kid initially wonders 'where does this list of items under
'total' and 'all' really end, so as to decide who is to be excluded
from 'strangers'?... The kid grows, and then 'decides', ... “may
be 'this-mom' deserves to be included in a list of 'partial-stranger'
when she does not even 'know' my likes/dislikes,
why-I-like/like-not..certain things!”.. And as with
total-strangers, proportionate distrust with partial-strangers!
Mom-included! Hey, I strayed a bit... back to my food!)..
So, I decided to try with
food, the way 'nature' has designed me to eat it... All other life
forms are so comfortable with 'natural form of food'.. Those with
shearing teeth, tear the flesh, pop it in, and the smaller digestive
canal throws out the waste soon-enough before that raw meat stinks
inside the warmer-than-room temperature of its body.. Those with
masticating teeth, go for slightly higher quality food, vegetables,
fruits etc, where the life-energy is not 'second-hand', but
single-owner vehicle..
Perhaps, I was tempted to
try with 'food' more because, the other places of 'conditions-apply'
seemed too elaborate (Patanjali's formulas were expounded too
elaborately, while ancient scriptures, traditions, rituals looked too
difficult to 'fit-into' present day life-style)... 'Let us see', I
said to myself, 'if this one 'removal' of 'conditions-apply-clause'
goes well with my body, and it becomes a little more receptive to all
these 'elaborate' routes through some short-cut (like , some
air-routes are far shorter, even-distance-wise, than the related
road-routes, which circles around god-made-mountains, or man-made
round-about-routes)'.
The second or third of
this food-experiment, envisaged newer 'conditions-to-be-applied' with
the boss of the kitchen.. I thought out of the briefest possible
'text' that might include most vital details (not necessarily the
'important' ones, though! Vital is often not going to look
important, that is the problem with nature! Ecology, is an outside
example, and liver is an ''inside' example... Howizzz-life?, and we
say 'depends on the liver'.. Life liver, and kidney's
neighbour-hood-liver behave alike here!).. The very exercise of
'trying out' for a brief-text, taught me to admire the 'Yoga-sutras'
a little better... Of course, Gita had always been beyond my reach,
for its encryption-features!... And the text was... 'Nothing
placed on a stove' will land on my meals-plate... When something is
said very briefly, most people tend to 'agree' (falling for its
superficial simplicity).. The boss of my kitchen was no exception!
'Good,' was the first-response, and added, 'that makes my life-span
better used, .. a little more of it outside the kitchen'.. I
remained as stoic-as-possible, while my joy within knew no-bounds!...
It was much later that the con-sequence was I 'looked' skin-&-bones
within a month or so! The physical-exercise part of intensifying the
aasanas (postures), and a few pranayams drained the flab at an
incredible speed.. The movement around seemed like the smooth flow
of a river, or the light feel which the driver of a 'volvo' bus gets
when he drives the empty bus to the garage for those few kilometeres
from the last-stop... The needs of the body to carry itself around
felt lesser and lesser with each day of these practices! Within me,
I did regret, that simple logic did not occur to me all along!
After a few months, I
discovered so many of the 'conditions-apply' clauses collapsing
within me, which had all along put hurdles to my perception-levels,
in the name of 'putting conditions' and 'getting-conditioned' to the
'life-style' approved by sheer majority-numbers, and
sheer-length-of-time for which it was perpetuated by generations who
refused stubbornly to 'look' deep-enough! And for the same reason, I
saw wisdom in 'trying' not-to-share my deeper experiences
(conditions-apply, works too well, for others, against me!)..
The exuberance of this exhilarating experience, of playing with body, now made me turn my attention towards another subtle body of mine... THE mind! (but
that is quite another fascinating story... the diet for mind, cooked
and uncooked, has lots of complexities... even the pressure of the
pressure-cooker is amazingly unique... )..
Yours,
(unconditionally-conditioned),
psn(21st May, 2014)
