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It may seem unusual to be writing about chemistry in respect to Advaita Vedanta where the emphasis is on the doctrine that you are not the physical body. Yet chemistry plays an important role in the development of one’s spiritual practice.
It was during the traumatic experiences in ICU that I observed how the various painkillers and other medicines affected the way I thought and reacted to circumstances. Not that I was adventurous quite the contrary, I was immobilised on my back for months but that gave me the advantage of observing without distraction the chemicals which coursed through the veins and how the brain and the thoughts it produced made me see the ward and the nurses and doctors in a certain light. I was paralysed with few stoic, standard responses to questions and situations. It wasn’t me the social animal with unique characteristics but a mind and body reduced to the bare requirements for survival. All I could do was observe without opinions. If someone told me the world would end tomorrow, I would duly take it in but not be perturbed. It was just another thought. How could this be so?
Vedanta teaches that we are composed of five koshas or envelopes. The outermost layer or body is identified as the envelope of food (annamaya kosha).
The Sanskrit word ana means ‘to eat’. We eat earth, water, fire, air and what is called akasha or ether, the indispensable space element that permeates the material world. When we say ‘eating’ the earth by that we mean those earthly elements derived from say, the vegetables we eat.
In addition to these recognisable elements, we also ‘eat’ subtle sensations received by our ears, nose, skin, tongue and eyes which affect our health and general well-being. It is through these subtle foods we derive ideas about reality as we know it while inhabiting a physical body. It is our brain which interprets the external sensations, using the chemistry created by eating these subtle impressions and visible food. This chemistry stimulates our consciousness to act. According to our nurturing, the environment, and our unique genes or propensities, we create ideas in our brains of what the external world supposedly appears to be. If we eat greasy, heavy food that is hard to digest for the liver and kidneys, this will certainly determine to some extent the way we view the world and ourselves. Consuming nourishing, fresh food is important to sharpen the discriminatory capability of our minds.
When we enter the spiritual path, we carry with us a load of disagreeable stuff. Undigested experiences, resentments, self-pity, rigid values that have little relevance to our predicament, second-hand opinions, and inherited dynamics, all play their part in blinding us to what is in front of us. Life is forever showing us the next step if we would be but still. Not what ‘happens’ tomorrow but right now. It is a question of one step at a time.
Our physical bodies are composed of chemical elements. Aside from the normal modifications due to age-related factors, when we diligently engage in spiritual practices, our physical body undergoes a chemical alteration and becomes much more subtle in its reception of sensations and concepts. We become more intuitive and in accord with events happening right now. There is a better sense of balance. A harmonious feeling becomes more frequent and lasts longer and longer. We all have noticed people who seem unusually young and fresh whatever their physical age and this is due to their wholesome approach to life’s challenges.
In Hindu philosophy there are three fundamental qualities (gunas), which indicate the state of our mental, emotional, and physical condition. Purity and serenity (sattva); activity and passion (rajas); and lethargy and dullness (tamas).
We endeavour to transform all our laziness qualities first into active qualities and then, into clean or unpolluted qualities. Depending on the strength of our commitment we can quickly overcome the many dark, unresolved, explosive segments of our being, which are like sea mines that lurk just below the surface.
These enigmatic mental and emotional tumours that influence our normal consciousness cause inexplicable pain and suffering, until we acknowledge, investigate and neutralise them.
But often it is a gradual conversion as much for our sanity as anything else for each major transformation is in its way, cataclysmic. Nothing is for free. For each step forward there is a price to pay and a giving up of the previously held habits, which weigh us down. Before we can fill our glass so to speak with fresh water, the old stale water must be ejected.
The more refined our thought process, the more sensitive the fabric of the body. Consider Sri Ramana and the distance he kept from people partly as a Tamil cultural predisposition but also as a buffer to protect his physical body from discordant or dirty, tactile auras invading the delicate space he inhabited. The only people who were allowed to touch him were the designated attendants who rubbed lineament on his arthritic knees, and they got special dispensation to touch him as normally the touch of a sadhguru will burn like fire.
We all know of circumstances when we encounter someone whose presence either physical, emotional or mental is contaminated. We wish to keep our distance and rightly so because we do not wish to be infected. If it cannot be helped, afterwards, we may wish to take a bath or purge ourselves of the lingering negative force field by prayer or some other act of self-purification.
Women more than men know this adverse involvement all too well. On the other hand, we are attracted to those with strong positive energy hoping that some of it will rub off on us. The body can be compared to a radar antenna, which alerts us constantly to the energy fields which surround us. Our job, if you will, is to keep our bodies, emotions and minds clean. Like a shower or bath each day, we regularly wash clean our emotions and thoughts of anything contaminated with negativity with prayer, good thoughts and emotions. We always have a choice which way to turn. Do we feed the negative aspect or do we feed the positive aspect?
This reminds us of the American Indian fable which is relatively well known. A wise elder who tells a young impressionable person seeking wisdom about the perennial inner struggle everyone experiences. He speaks of two wolves in all of us. One wolf exemplifies the negative qualities such as resentment, antagonism, jealousy, greed while the other wolf epitomizes positive qualities of joy, light, peace and kindness.
The saying highlights that while both wolves are always present, the one who is fed the most, that is, the one that receives the most attention and nurturing, will become stronger and be the decisive factor in one's life. Which do we normally choose? It is with these small, every day but sometimes crucial decisions that our life unfolds and in turn affects our wish to be happy.
Letter # 25 - Chemistry
