Who am I? The sum total of my thought process and my body. Tall or short, fat or thin, intelligent or dumb, extrovert or introvert, helpful or not- all these attributes define us. We are the sum total of our physical and mental attributes. We keep getting exposed to so many different people and circumstances in life. We react to the situations based on our past conditioning. But how does this conditioning commence?

A baby has no preference for food and is happy eating a banana or some Daliya. He hasn’t made stories about the food yet. As the child grows, he attends birthday parties where everybody is mad about the cake. His brain puts a premium on cake, and as he attends more and more birthday parties, those mental stories keep getting strengthened. Our generation, people who did not make such stories and where birthdays used to be celebrated with “Gajar Ka Halwa” or some “Milkcake”, have never been able to give so much premium to cake. 

As the child grows, he goes to school and learns from teachers and counsellors about studying abroad. He knows little about life in foreign universities. Nor does he know much about life after those studies. But the child watches movies about studying abroad, meets a few people who come back from abroad for vacations, listens to peers and elders talk about life in Europe and the USA, and makes many mental stories about studying abroad, then decides to go abroad. Those without sufficient resources feel constrained and often carry that heartbreak throughout their lives, and then somehow work like donkeys to send their children abroad.

Life is all about the choices we make. But how do we make choices/ based on past conditioning? When that child is making the choice of cake on his birthday or when he is hell-bent on going abroad, what is the origin of these choices? Does the origin of choices lie in awareness or social narrative? Is the child aware of how the cake is made and what impact it has on the body? Is the child aware of what life will be like while studying abroad? We feel empowered by the freedom to make choices, but are those choices really free? If the choices are really free, why does almost none of us choose freedom and love? Ask a slave who has been a slave all through his life. What will he choose? A better owner who exploits less. Will he choose freedom? A bird which has been inside a cage since birth will be afraid to move out of the cage. Suppose God gives darshan to a child and gives him a boon; what will the child ask? Some chocolates and toys. What did Kaikeyi ask from Dashratha? To send Ram to Vanvaas for 14 years. All these people exercised their choices.

The ability to exercise choice, without understanding its real meaning, is very dangerous. If a rogue country gets the choice to build nuclear bombs and use them, it will destroy the whole world. Choice without awareness can push us into the abyss of evolution. That’s what happened to Hitler. But the problem is that as long as a person has the capability or favourable conditions to exercise his choices, it is very difficult to realise that he is falling down rather than growing up. Choice is not about having the resources or capacity to make choices, but about knowing how to make them. To do that, one has to learn to examine one’s existing choices. 

Are these choices based on some mental story? But how will the conditioned mind be able to see that it has been conditioned? Probably by creating a little bit of distance from that conditioning. Ok, I feel that going abroad is good, eating cake is good, but let me see where this thought is coming from. The moment we examine it, we move away from that conditioning. The subject turns into an object, and we can enquire into the reality behind that story. However, this constant enquiry isn’t for everyone, because it’s easy to slide and hard to climb the mountain. But once someone reaches that peak, it’s difficult to slide back. Even while sliding, one will be conscious of the fact that he is falling. He will not like that experience of falling, even if the valley is full of temptations. Somewhere in his heart, he will always miss that experience at the peak. An aeroplane may be safe on the ground, but that’s not what it is made for. It is made to fly in the sky.