In the beginning, there was light

Yesterday I went to the Glückaufhaus cinema in Essen to see the film: In the beginning, there was light.

The film’s subject was living on light. The film shows in an uncomplicated way P.A. Straubinger's (a journalist of the Austrian radio-station Ö3 and the film's director) approach and handling of the subject, meeting several people who don’t follow a normal diet like you and I, but rather who don’t eat at all (!). The film is quite interesting and worth seeing. I just want to tell you about a question which came into my mind when I saw the film.

First, some background information:

• Prof. Dr. Anton Luger, an Austrian doctor, internationally acknowledged metabolism expert and head of the Klinischen Abteilung für Endokrinologie und Stoffwechsel at Vienna's medical university, is absolutely convinced that abandonment of food for a longer period will lead to death. To fast on liquid too would even accelerate this process.

• Prahlad Jani, an Indian yogi has been living without food for more than 7 decades (!). He does not even drink water! He admitted himself into a modern hospital, under strictest observation (the declared aim was to expose him as a charlatan). The doctors did all kind of tests on him - from blood analyses to x-ray and computer tomography - eventually they had to accept that he is a mystery for today’s medicine.

Apart from these miracles I was wondering about who is in the right here :-), the Austrian doctor or the Indian yogi?

Both of them are right! They both live what they believe. Paracelsus said in the 15th century: Like man sees himself in his imagination, so he will become. And he is like he has seen himself in his imagination. and also Henry Ford stated similarly: Whether You Believe You Can, Or You Can't, You Are Right

It is not a question of which alternative is the best - in the sense that better gives more degrees of freedom - but in the way in which we create our own reality, this was my point here.

Even the Austrian doctor would without a doubt like to have more degrees of freedom - but he would have had to do something he does not know, cannot do or does not want to do. The knowledge and disposition to carry out or do what we know to be true works like a filter for our own reality and is in this way a limit to our degrees of freedom. Even more than that: It is not only a filter for what we experience but also a determiner for the course of our further life in this reality (see also the films The Butterfly Effect & What the bleep do we know).

The Indian yogi shows explicitly that there is also another reality which is as tangible as our normal world.

How exactly do we determine our reality & life through our believe systems? And how does this work for a yogi?

I learn about something that sounds interesting to me (Yoga is good for you or more precisely Uddiyana Bandha cures numerous deceases or more esoteric ;-) Vipassana Meditation brings inner peace and salvation)… at first it is only an incomplete information, a snippet, rather meaningless and at the same time meaning everything. But there is something which is attracting me, calling me to learn more about it. It’s only an assumption which I have not checked to be true or not, but I still decide that it is worth studying further in this direction.

And then?

I start to read, google and ask about it. I collect information where ever I can. I try to bring life to the elliptic sentences, to build a coherent construct, the whole thing gets more and more substance. Yet, it is still a model without any practical relevance for my life. If I stop here everything remains - once again - only intellectual knowledge. And the only thing I can do is to talk about it in a very superficial way with poor chances to change my reality.

So I have to take one decisive step: I have to do it!

After extensive studies and investigation, after I know how and when it has to be done, after getting competent help (coming back to the above mentioned example: by means of a yoga course or a yoga book or a meditation retreat) I have to start applying it.

Only by taking this essential step I create the setting for the manifestation of the things learned. Otherwise I talk all my life about things other people have reached.

And if I practise (yoga, Uddiyana Bandha Vipassana) something honestly, regularly for a longer period of time my reality will change: I will feel different, act differently and think differently. At first this is of course only subjective, internal, hardly perceptible. And it is not necessarily a rupture but a continuous extension of the former reality (so that the reality of the Austrian doctor is a subset of the Indian yogi’s - no other reality but a part of something bigger). And at latest when this can be seen by others - like in the case of the Indian yogi - it is cleary a sign that my subjective reality has won objectivity :-).

P.S. I have not stopped eating. Nor drinking ;-).Yet.

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