"Thoughts on 'Conditioning'"

Dear Friends,

I am no judge of who is leading astray whom, and how much learning or pseudo-learning one may have but what I sure can see is that there are people who are so ‘conditioned’ in their ways that it is impossible to have an open dialogue with them – a dia-logue which is an exchange of thoughts and not mere exchange of insults.

Back to the problem of ‘conditioning’ – the perspective I tried to give was about the nature of ‘conditioning’ as a process of learning and its ‘multi-faceted-ness’ (in Dr. Qazi’s words) – which surely is applied to all areas of life – as a caution not to neglect other areas of human endeavor where ‘conditioning’ is transcended so often. Many events in collective and individual human histories present examples of such transcendence. This sort of antithesis[1] I presented was to the thesis that “genetic coding coupled with social, cultural, traditional, historical and geographical conditioning” (In Rafi Aamir’s words) …(which) is in total agreement with most of the cognitive scientific findings(?), is the reason (and by obvious implication to me – the sole reason) for what we are. I accept Mr. Rafi’s explanation if it was not meant to be ‘the sole reason’, however, the next thesis in most of Mr. Mughal’s ‘writings’ is that therefore we should get rid of all our past. And that is why I quoted Wordsworth in the beginning of my note. I would rather critically assimilate the nourishments made available by our forefathers - from all across the humanity - and see what is relevant to today and continue with the streams which runs from heart to heart than being just a ‘rejectionist’ of all good and bad.

All those concepts of ‘conditioning’ ‘evolution’ ‘cognition’ ‘genetics’ and all other terminologies, which we are using, are not our own product. Even many of the arguments being used are not original anyway. We all are borrowing from here and there. So where is the ‘originality’. The ‘rejectionist’ attitude, which many of us are propagating, is no more than a repetition of what was being discussed in nineteenth century Europe.

The originality in the Twenty First century will largely be determined how we can critically assimilate our traditions (not just throw it out of the window – like angry teenagers) and then come up with a new vision of our communities, our societies and ourselves.

I totally agree with the assertions that prevalent literal interpretation of religion as well as pseudo- mysticism or pseudo-spirituality has no role in building our futures. At the same time, I cannot reject the genuine achievements of true religionists, genuine mystics and authentic spiritualists. Just like the science, technology and medicine are our treasures from the past on which we are building our future, similarly there are treasures of wisdom, understanding and discernment in those traditions of religion and spirituality which we must reclaim and bring into light the true nature of their message and its relevance to today’s humanity. That is the fundamental point of difference we have at this forum and everyone is entitled to their opinion and is at liberty to propagate their ideas – though sometime I laugh when thinking how some of my atheist friends appear to be not very unlike the religious zealots with strong convictions and closed ears, trying very hard to propagate their ideas. I could not help noticing the religious intonations in expressions such as “… leading … astray” – the logical extrapolation of which is “ … from the straight path”