On Divine Consciousness, and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (not really)

“Are our bodies machines of a divine creation? 

Are we just tourists on rented vehicles for this journey of life? 

Am i going crazy? ”

Some years ago I had a minor surgery. After the surgery, the doctor prescribed me Tramadol hydrochloride for 3 days. Tramadol is a synthetic opoid that is very good at killing pain. But there was something else to it too…

I clearly remember those 3 days as the happiest days of my life. I felt content, woke up early for Fajr namaz everyday. Never hit snooze once in those 3 days, slept peacefully and felt peace in every small activity of my day.

Life was beautiful. People were kind, friends and family were dear. All that crap. And my every action came forth with gratefulness to Allah for every blessing He had endowed upon me.

Anyways, away went those 6 tablets and after 3 days I went back to work. And that was when all hell broke loose. I would be in the middle of work when all of a sudden tears would start to roll down my eyes. I would be reminded of my childhood and the years gone by, and a deep sorrow for the things gone past would fill my heart and my eyes would well up with tears. Right in the middle of office!

I also suffered from sleeplessness at nights, and would turn in my bed crying. In the morning, I would wake up and cry for a few minutes before I got on with the usual morning rituals.

One time I was reminded of a canal that went by behind the hostel I stayed in when I was in class 11. And the sight of the morning sun as it shone in the water, and I in my teenage years walking beside it brought tears to my eyes. I thought of it as the most beautiful sight I had ever seen! I mentioned to a friend of mine, who by chance had been experienced of a surgery, how lovely the dirty little canal at Kathgodam was, and he replied that analgesics can have strange effects.

I did not understand immediately what he meant by that, but when I did, it opened my eyes. The days I was on the pain-killer were the most beautiful days I had ever lived. And the pain I was suffering now was nothing but withdrawal symptoms of the drug as my body struggled to keep up with the symptoms.

Without my intentions and without my knowing, my hormones were wreaking havoc on me. Everything was the same, but the drugs had made it feel better, and their lack made it much worse.

When a baby is born, long before he can understand what is going on around him, his body continues to perform complex chemical and physical processes that are beyond the child’s awareness or control. Even an adult can hardly control any of the processes that his body performs and they go on without our interference.

Without our knowledge, the diaphragm in our stomach bends, creating a vacuum in our lungs and pulling in air through our nose or mouth. Our blood is such that oxygen molecules in the air stick to the red blood cells in it as it passes through the alveoli of the lungs, driving out those of carbon dioxide. This same blood, pumped by the heart, travels to every nook and corner of our body and delivers the oxygen through osmosis to tiny mitochondria where it reacts with glucose to release energy and make our muscles and organs function.

The brain gives electrical signals to the heart, as it does to every other organ, to keep pumping blood, and even this brain’s function is beyond our control. The ability to react to stimuli, to see, to hear, to feel, are all things which go on in our bodies without involvement or much control of them.

And the mechanisms involved are so simple yet so complex that even the greatest of inventors might be at a loss to simulate any of our bodily functions. Everything happens with so much ease and conformity that one can only be amazed.

Take chewing food for example. During the act of chewing, the tongue acts a conveyer that accepts and directs food in multiple directions simultaneously. As we take in the food, the inner side of the tongue presses the food towards the molar teeth at the base of the jaw. The cheek at the same time also directs the food towards the jaw. The lower jaw moves up and down, and if you’ll notice, the lower jaw does not touch the upper jaw flatly. Rather, the back of the jaw towards the molars touch first and the incisors at the front touch last. This way, as the teeth close, food gets pushed towards the front on the jaw, where it gets passed onto the front part of the tongue. The tongue then gauges whether the food is pulpy enough as per requirement, and if it is, then it enters the food cavity through the centre of the tongue; otherwise it goes right back to the side of the middle tongue which again pushes the food towards the molar teeth, and this goes on a few times till a pulpy bolus is made that can be swallowed as per the diameter of the food canal.

During the act of chewing, food gets mixed with saliva and the enzyme ptyalin to facilitate digestion. This saliva also acts as a lubricant for the food through the food canal. The tongue also tastes the food for agreeableness. It is like a conveyer belt mechanism of immensely complex a design.

Who fed the mechanism into our body that recognizes when the food is chewed well enough to get swallowed easily? Did we learn by trial and error that food not chewed well enough might get stick in the food canal? And making the food into a pulp is required to increase its surface area to aid absorption of nutrients from the food. How did our body learn that?

During pregnancy, women have a desire for sour tasting food. And isn’t it amazing that the vitamins that a female requires during her pregnancy are present in foods which taste sour!

So not only does your body know how to process foods to nourish itself, its need for certain nutrients is supplemented with a desire for a particular taste. And nature bears those vitamins or minerals in things that have the same taste that your tongue desires!

Children who are deficient in certain nutrients often eat mud. What tells them that their requirement is present in the earth, whereas those whose bodies are not deficient do not consume the earth?

Our bodies are like machines. Pre-programmed to survive. Aware of what it needs. No one needs to tell it these things. The I that we are aware of as we read this is so different from the I that we think our bodies to be. Just as I am typing this, my body is carrying out millions of reactions under the orders of my brain, and how many of those reactions am I aware of?

For the things that I want my body to do, I am just saying to my brain, ‘Do!’, and it makes my body carry it out. I think and the brain makes the body do it. Somehow. I do not even realize what goes on to make that happen. My conscious self does not control my bodily functions. It merely gives instructions to a brain that then carries out the work, without my even knowing how it does that. It is like driving a car that we can control using the gear-shift, steering and throttle, but what goes on in the engine and the drive-train to make that possible is beyond most of us.

So the 'I' that I am is different from the physical body that is carrying it. The I is a consciousness, it is an awareness, it is a personality, a psychopathological murderer maybe, but the brain and the body that it controls are jut mechanisms that acts under its obedience. And even without my conscious interference, my body continues to carry out the physical processes and produce hormones that make me want do things and feel emotions. When I consciously try to control myself, even then I am only partially controlling some particular functions. Even then I do not fully control what goes on. 

Birds fly from their nest in the morning and return home in the evening with their stomachs full. Who tells them where their food is? Where do they learn this art? It’s what we call their instinct. It is pre-programmed. And it knows what the signs of food are, as well as the signs of danger. Just as the Punjabi Terminator recognized what size clothes would fit him, before he said to the man in the bar, “Mainu tera suit, boot te motorcycle chaidiye”.

Our actions as well as emotions are mechanical and programmed. The only difference between machines and our bodies would be that we have a consciousness over this machine. A consciousness that can control to a small extent, and observe to a large. And from birth to death, it is this consciousness that grows. It is what separates us from the machines of human invention. And I think it is what separates us from the other living beings like plants and animals.

Some like David Blaine can control some of these to a larger extent than others, like make his heart beat slower to stay underwater for over 7 minutes overcoming the involuntary reaction of the lungs to suck in air, and in this case, pull in water instead.

The most remarkable case of having enough consciousness to control one’s involuntary processes would be of Thich Quang Duc, who burned himself to death protesting persecution of Buddhists in Vietnam after seating himself in a meditative position. Once he sat down to meditate, he did not move an inch till his whole body was burnt to ashes. They say his heart remained unburnt.^[1]

Compare these small feats with the overall functioning of the body, and you will realize what small a fraction of the total processes these controlling activities are. Our bodies keep working without the intervention of our consciousness, and we keep feeling hungry or angry or irritated or twitch or itch or scratch, sigh and yawn.

And if even the simplest of machines has an inventor, does it not seem reasonable that this most complex of machines would have one too?

And if there was one, wouldn’t we be at a loss to even try to conceive what form He has? And wouldn't we be naive to attribute a form to Him that only He is capable of giving to things? Or to believe He could be contained in a form that we have made ourselves?

“O people, an example is presented, so listen to it. Indeed, those you invoke besides Allah will never create [as much as] a fly, even if they gathered together for that purpose. And if the fly should steal away from them a [tiny] thing, they could not recover it from him. Weak are the pursuer and pursued.” The Quran, Surah 22:73

Our instinct and our hormones can wreak havoc upon our bodies. Make us feel emotions that we might get addicted to, have desires that call for immediate fulfillment, do motions that our bodies feel inclined to do. But it is the consciousness that is to be meant to be built stronger, so that it may control these, and to identify its divine creator. Otherwise we fall prey to the mechanical impulses produced by chemicals in our brains and our bodies. We start to run on auto-pilot doing things without understanding their ends, desiring things without understanding their use, feeling emotions without understanding why we are feeling them in the first place.

Freud said that there are three stages of human development and one leads to the other. These were the Id, the Ego and the Superego. But from children to aged men, the stages all intermingle and intertwine; many adults may spend their lives being slaves to their desires; children may demonstrate selfless acts; a person may be good towards certain people and cheat upon others at some other time. There could be so many permutations of the three.

But it is the consciousness of us carrying out these acts that we can build upon and what constitutes the first step towards a stronger Emaan [2]. It is this consciousness that grows as we age, and it is this consciousness that I feel animals lack. This is what we humans have been gifted with. This is what leaves us when our mechanical bodies die. It is that which is claimed would never die.

I have called it consciousness here, but it could be the psyche or the soul or the spirit or the rooh or anything else beyond words and my understanding. And of all the creations of the creator, this in my opinion is the greatest.

There are many who claim knowledge of this consciousness. But what needs to be asked is whether they are making you aware of a creator capable of building the complex mechanisms of this world or whether they are merely training you to control your body and mind with knowledge of biological responses. With the exception of the withdrawal symptoms, drugs might get the same results too.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thich_Quang_Duc 

[2] Meaning to have trust in and to testify http://sabr.net/strive-for-the-four/34-faith/48-real-meaning-of-iman-or-faith.html