Did you ever wonder who you are as a human being and why you are here?
You will notice that there is a part of you that you can see through your eyes – your form – the body. This keeps changing. It looked different when you were a child, when you became a teenager, an adult and when you are middle aged and older.
There is another part of you that is not visible through your eyes. In fact, you cannot appreciate this part of yourself through any of the five senses of the body. You can neither see it through your eyes, nor hear it through your ears, nor touch it through your skin, nor smell it through your nose and neither of course can you taste it through your tongue!
So what is that part of you? Who is it that appreciates the changes that have taken place in the appearance of your body? Who is the one who is thinking about it now? That’s who you are. That part of you is constant and unchanging even though your body keeps changing over the years. Think about it – were you not the one who experienced life as a child, a teenager, an adult? You can refer to this part as the Self.
Now, in the Self also, there is a part that has thoughts, ideas, opinions – these define your personality and these thoughts, ideas, opinions etc. may keep changing over time. There are also emotions – these have to do with feelings and these may also keep changing from time to time- there are times when you are sad and feel low while there are also other times when you are happy or at times, angry or upset.
And yet, there is a deeper part of you that does not change. You will find that part of you to be calm, serene and knowledgeable. That part of you seems to know right from wrong. It seems to have all the answers (provided we are willing to seek the answer from it). You may think of this as your ‘higher’ Self or the pure part within you. This part of the Self is being referred to here as our ‘natural acceptance’ or our true nature (uninfluenced and unsullied by thoughts, ideas, opinions or emotions).
As an example, there is a part of you that gets upset, annoyed and even angry when someone speaks to you in a rude manner. If you identify with this part, you tend to get more and more angry and unhappy. But there is another part of you that can see that you are getting angry. If you pay attention to it, you will observe that this deeper part of you is never angry, upset or annoyed. Rather it has the qualities of calm and peace. The moment you identify with this, you find that you are peaceful – just that you need to remember to be aware of this.
What does all of this have to do with health, you may be wondering. It has everything to do with health because each and every thought and emotion you have has an impact on your body and thus influences its health. So if we want to understand health, we must understand not just the body but also this part of us as the human being that impacts the health of the body so deeply – the Self. So now, if we look at the health of the human being we can see how we need to understand both – health in the body and health in the Self/consciousness. To begin with, let us try and understand the fundamentals of the Self and the Body.
Understanding the Self and the Body
Ask yourself the question –‘What do I want?’ What is the answer you get? Can you reply in one word? You may be thinking that there is a long list of things you want –how can you restrict it to one word? Alright then, make a list of ten things you want and ask yourself why you want them. Let’s see if we can understand this with an example: Say you want to have a big house; ask yourself why you want the big house-perhaps you want to live comfortably, perhaps you have a large family and want the family members to be comfortable…ask yourself why again. Why do you want yourself or your family members to be comfortable? In this way, if you keep asking the question why, you may be able to see that whatever you want is ultimately because you want to be happy. Even if you want to see others happy, ultimately you want to see them happy because that gives you happiness, isn’t it?
Understanding the Needs of the Self and the Body
If you look closely, you will see that you always want to be happy; you never want to be unhappy. Go ahead and ask yourself if there is any moment in the day that you want to be unhappy? It may seem like a silly question but go ahead and ask it and the answer you get will be that you never want to be unhappy (there may of course be many times during the day that you are unhappy and we’ll see what we can do to fix that later). Who is it that wants to be happy? It is of course I/the Self that wants to be happy. This is a basic need of every Self (the Self of every human being) – to be happy! The needs of the Self have to do with feelings – so you can see that the feelings of trust, respect etc. are your needs – the needs of the Self.
What does my body need? The needs of the body have to do with physical things e.g. food (food nourishes the body helping it to grow and become strong), e.g. clothes, shelter etc. (these protect the body). We can see that both of these – the needs of the Self and those of the body – are important and required for human beings. Are these needs of the same type or of different types? Can one type of need be replaced by the other? Let’s find out.
Suppose you are given food to eat but the person giving you the food talks to you disrespectfully when giving you the food. Will you feel like eating it? Conversely, a person treats you with a lot of respect but doesn’t offer you food when you’re hungry, will it work for you?
We can try to understand this with the help of an example. Let’s say you go to a friend’s house and it’s lunch time; he does offer you food but while serving you food on your plate he says – ‘You always manage to show up at lunch time for a free meal but I guess its ok – you probably never get to see such good food over at your house; go ahead, eat.’ Will you feel like eating? Even though you may have been hungry for food a moment ago, hearing these words may take your appetite away! What happened? The ‘friend’ gave you food but insulted or disrespected you at the same time.
What if you went to another friend’s house and he said a lot of kind words, had a lot of respect for you but didn’t offer you any food even though you were at his place for several hours and it was past lunch time. Will respect be sufficient to make up for the absence of food? More than likely, not!
So you will notice that these two needs are of different types and one type of need cannot be replaced/substituted by the other.
Understanding the Needs in Relation to Time
Ok. Now let’s look at the needs of the Self and the body in relation to time. If you look at the needs of the Self (for happiness, trust, respect, affection, love and other such feelings) in relation to time, you find that these needs are continuous. Just as you don’t want to be unhappy even for one moment, you also don’t want to be mistrusted or disrespected even for one moment, isn’t it? If a friend greets you with a ‘Namaste’ or a ‘good morning’ or even a ‘hello’ with a smile everyday but fails to do so one day, do you not pay any heed or do you notice this and start getting disturbed about why the person did not wish you today? You get disturbed because whenever there is a break in the feeling of respect for you, you feel uncomfortable. This is because you (as the Self) have a need for respect all the time; a small gap in this, even for one moment, is unacceptable to you.
How about the needs of the body in relation to time? The needs of the body are not continuous –rather, they come up from time to time. For instance, you feel hungry in the morning and eat breakfast; once the stomach is full, you don’t feel the need for food anymore and you stop eating. If someone now offers you food, you may not even look at it; if forced to eat, you may even find it intolerable, isn’t it? In fact, you cannot keep eating – a time comes when you just can’t eat anymore and have to stop! Then you’re good for a few hours but then again you feel hungry after a few hours and so you eat lunch and so on. So you eat from time to time, not all the time. See if this isn’t true for you.
So in the case of respect (a need of the Self), we want it all the time but in the case of food (a need of the body), we want it only from time to time, not all the time. You will find this to be true for all the needs of the Self and the body. So the needs of the Self (e.g. for feelings like happiness, trust, respect etc.) are continuous – we want them all the time and a break in any one of them even for one moment is not acceptable to us; makes us uncomfortable. On the contrary, the needs of the body (e.g. for food, clothes, shelter etc.) are temporary – we need them only for a limited time and if we’re told to have them in continuity, we become uncomfortable – in fact it becomes a problem for us.
Quantifying Our Needs
When it comes to measuring the needs of the Self, we find that these needs cannot be measured – they are qualitative, not quantitative. So all the feelings needed by the Self (e.g. the feelings of trust, respect etc.) are qualitative in nature – they are either there or not there at any moment. Are you able to see that at any one moment you can either be happy or unhappy, not both; you can have a feeling of love or one of hatred, not both. You may of course have a feeling of trust for someone at one moment and that of mistrust the very next moment (say if he/she betrays your trust) but you certainly can’t have both feelings at any given moment. A feeling is either there or not there; you can’t be a little happy and a little sad all at the same time. That’s because feelings (the needs of the Self) are qualitative; we can’t measure them in quantities.
On the other hand, the needs of the Body (for food, for clothes, for shelter etc.) are quantitative in nature – we can identify the quantity that is required e.g. we can identify how much food we need to nourish the body and we can see that food is required by the body in a limited quantity – this amount can be measured. So one person may need to eat 2 rotis (or pieces of bread or cups of rice), another may need 4, someone may even need to eat 8 or 10 in one meal but there is certainly no one who can eat unlimited number of rotis (or pieces of bread or cups of rice)! Similarly we can see for clothes (a measurable amount of cloth is required for making a dress), for shelter (a measurable amount of material is required for building a house) and so on. You may be able to observe that this is true for anything that is required by the body.
So we’ve looked at the needs of the body (for physical things) and the need of the Self (for happiness) and found these two to be very different: the needs of the body for physical things can be measured (they are quantitative) and are required only from time to time (not all the time). The needs of the Self for feelings, on the other hand, are qualitative (they can’t be measured) and they’re required all the time – in continuity. We also saw how both needs are important for us as human beings and that one type of need cannot be substituted by the other. This is very important to be aware of when it comes to satisfying these needs. So let’s take a look at that.
Fulfilling Our Needs as a Human Being
The need of the Self for feelings like trust, love, affection, respect etc. is fulfilled by these very feelings. For instance, when we say something to our children or siblings or perhaps our spouses, we expect them to listen to us, isn’t it? If they don’t pay attention to what we say or if they answer back rudely, we may say something like –“Talk with respect when you talk to me!” Why? Because we get angry or irritated or feel hurt when we are disrespected.
We also saw how our hunger is satiated by food (like rice, roti, bread, vegetable etc.– all of these can be termed physical or physio-chemical things). In fact, all our bodily needs can be satisfied with physio-chemical things.
So the needs of the Self and the needs of the body are different and are fulfilled differently. We cannot fulfil only one type of need and expect the need of the other to be fulfilled automatically. That doesn’t happen. On exploring, you will be able to see that all the needs related to the body have to do with physical things and are fulfilled by one or the other physio-chemical thing while the needs related to the Self are to do with feelings and are fulfilled by feelings. We may have all kinds of physical stuff but does it satisfy our need (the need of the Self) for happiness, for feelings like trust, respect etc.? You can check this for yourself.
Needs of Self – Definite; Needs of Body – Variable
The needs related to the body vary according to the age of the body, the health of the body, the shape and size of the body etc. For instance, a growing child may need a lot of food since the body is growing rapidly; an adult may not need that much since his/her body is no longer actively growing (it’s a different matter, however, that many adults today are eating more food than their body needs – going by the statistics for obesity!) while an elderly person may need even less food! So the needs of a changing body also change or one can say that the needs of the body are variable.
But when it comes to the Self, the needs of the Self are definite. They don’t change with age or with a change in the condition of the body. So just as a child wants to be happy, so does an adult and so does an elderly person. In other words, each and every Self needs and feels fulfilled by the ‘right’ feelings.
In the journey of understanding ourselves as human beings, now let us take a quick glance at the activities that go on in the Self and Body.
Activities of Self and Body
If you pay a little attention to yourself, you may be able to see that you are thinking something or the other all the time, you are desiring something or the other all the time. If you try to stop your thoughts, you will find that you are not able to do so. Even when you sleep, your thoughts continue in the form of dreams. If you get bored of thinking of one thing you start thinking of another thing but you’re thinking all the time. This is one activity that is going on within us all the time.
Similarly, we keep wanting or desiring something or the other. When one desire is fulfilled, another one pops up – desires never seem to end. One desire that we all tend to have in continuity is our desire to live. So desiring something, thinking something, expecting something –this tends to go on within us all the time. We can club together all these activities going on within us and identify them as our ‘imagination’. Some or the other imagination is going on within you all the time. See if you are able to observe this within yourself.
Activities in the body, on the other hand, occur from time to time. They are not continuous. For instance, observe what is happening the next time you go on a long walk – you walk for some time, then the body gets tired, you rest for a while and then you are ready to walk again. Those who have had some physical training of the body may be able to walk for a longer time but ultimately at some point, even they need to give it a break and stop when the body gets tired.
Similarly you can observe this when it comes to the activity of eating. As we saw earlier, you feel hungry for breakfast, you eat, your stomach becomes full and then you don’t need food again for 3-4 hours – then you feel hungry again and you eat lunch and so on. Even if you try, you cannot keep walking or keep eating without a break!
If we observe the activities in the body we find that this is true for all activities within the body- you may argue that your breathing is continuous but if you observe closely, inspiration (breathing in) is followed by a brief pause which is followed by expiration (breathing out). So breathing is not in continuity; there is a gap between breathing in and breathing out. Similarly, the heart beat may also appear to be continuous but if you observe closely you will find that it too is not continuous – the heart muscle contracts, pumping out blood from the heart; this is followed by a brief pause when the contraction stops and then the heart muscle relaxes, allowing the blood to fill up in the heart. You can take examples of other activities in the body as well.
Interestingly, all the activities of the Self are continuous while all the activities of the body are temporary. No matter how hard you try, you will find that you are not able to stop the activities of the Self while when it comes to the body, you are not able to continue any activity of the body without a pause. You can explore and verify this for yourself.
Now that we have seen these two major differences between the Self and the Body (on the basis of their needs and their activities) let us look at the third major difference between the Self and the Body – the response.
Response of Self and Body
If you eat a banana, a vegetable, some grain or any other food, the body responds in a very definite manner – the food is digested and the body gets nourished. It helps the body to grow. On the other hand, if you eat ‘junk food’ the body gets harmed and suffers ill-health. And if you eat something poisonous, the body may get harmed so badly that it may not be able to recover at all. So depending on what you choose to eat, the response of the body is definite each time – it is nourished by ‘healthy’ foods and harmed by poisonous substances. And it is always so; the body doesn’t have a choice in the matter. It can’t choose to remain healthy despite having a ‘bad’ diet.
In the case of me, the Self, however, things are more complicated and not so definite. Why? Because I (the Self) have the ability to make a choice – whatever choice I choose to make. If I understand the way the body works and what’s right for it, I make the right choice; if I don’t have this understanding and I go by some assumption that doesn’t match up with the reality, I may end up making the wrong choice.
For instance, if I assume that junk food is good for me, I may keep eating junk food at each meal. You may be thinking – “That’s very unlikely” but pause and you will see that whatever we read in the newspaper or see/hear in the media is also something we assume to be true – an assumption – not necessarily the truth or something we know to be true (unless we validate things for ourselves).
As an example, if I hear on the news that oats are good for health, I may assume that more of this healthy stuff will be better for the body and may start eating oats at every meal- perhaps even 5-6 times a day. But then, after a few days, I see a video on the media saying that it is better to have a variety of grains rather than just one type of grain. Now, my assumption changes and I cut down on the oats and add rice, wheat and millets to my diet. Then a friend of mine tells me that most of the wheat available in the market is genetically modified and extremely harmful for the body. Now my assumption changes again and I cut out all wheat in my diet.
Another example – We may have heard from ‘authoritative sources’ way back that meat and eggs must be a part of one’s diet in order to meet the protein needs of the body and assumed this to be true for a long time till we came to know that several lentils have as much protein or even more protein than eggs or meat and in fact are also a rich source of fibre making them a healthier source of protein for the body!
Can you see how practically every decision we make may just be on the basis of an assumption that may not be true? This is what is meant by the statement that the response of the Self is not definite – each time the assumption of the Self changes, its response also changes. When a newspaper quoting a scientific study says that drinking coffee is good for health, I start drinking coffee every day but when another study comes out saying that coffee is harmful for the body, I stop drinking coffee because now my assumption has changed so my response changes (on the basis of the changed assumption).
So if I assume that a poisonous mushroom is nutritious, I will willingly choose to eat it – at the level of the body, however, the mushroom will cause harm to the body since the response of the body is definite. The body does not have a choice in this. The choice lies with the Self and the Self makes this choice based on its assumption. If the assumption is based on understanding (knowing the truth) the response is definite because now I have seen the reality for myself and no matter what anyone else may tell me, I know the truth and I make choices based on this knowing rather than any assumption from outside.
On the other hand, if the assumption is not based on knowing (is without understanding the truth of the matter) my response (i.e. the response of the Self) is indefinite – it may change whenever my assumption changes! So how do I get to knowing or understanding, you may ask. We will come to that – but all in good time. For now, hopefully this gives a glimpse into who we are as human beings.