If you live life with open eyes and ears, you observe so many interesting phenomena happening around you. Being a curious and a keen observer, I am learning all the time from people around and my patients. My medical training has helped sharpen my in-born observational nature, but training in holistic sciences since 2004, further widened my scope of learning about the holistic aspects of human beings. Believe me positive thinking and good intentions are two important tools which reveal so many aspects of life without spending huge funds and forming committees. Being a student of Sufism, I also try to bridge the gap between a holistic being, spirituality and metaphysical sciences, for solving complicated life issues.
Holistic sciences have taught me about the perfect harmony in the human body and Nature. This harmony is responsible for holistic or positive health, in terms of immunity, mental stamina, internal peace, strong belief and for a fearless, and selfless being. Dis-harmony results in holistic diseases like cancer, heart disease, selfishness, insecurity and various fears especially of death. Therefore you must understand that your body needs discipline, self respect, proper feeding, rest, and strong faith and in return it gives you immense holistic stamina and power.
In this worldly life, we are supposed to play an individual, collective and universal role. Individual role is being manifested in your personal life, collective is your role for society or country and universal is your role for humanity. For last two roles you need to be mature enough to detach emotionally from family and a routine life any time with no pain at all i.e with submission. While focussing on collective and universal aspects, you start sharing the path of Sufism and the only intention is to please God. I found multiple commonalities in army and holistic training, with ultimate objective of a disciplined life and enlightenment.
Besides learning and applying the rules of holistic sciences to my patients, I started my search for an ideal holistic being too. My opinion was that scientists, religious scholars, social workers or politicians must be close to a holistic being, I got a chance to observe their lifestyle, but all of them disappointed me. The reason was that all were disrespectful to this divinely blessed body and were having soul-disconnect. This dis-connect made them abuse themselves, their family, society and country. People on antidepressants, intoxicants and with chronic ailments cannot be holistic.
In the last 27 years, I got to see couple of thousand army men, and their families for their medical problems. I started looking for signs of a holistic being in them, and it took me many years to understand them and give this strong scientific statement, that our army men are holistically evolved. This conclusion was part of my PhD holistic nutrition dissertation as well in 2008.
Now let us see what happens in initial army training, a physical and emotional detachment is induced by keeping young cadets in boarding colleges. The most important component of training is time management with strict discipline in food intake, exercise and behaviour. This harmonises their internal and external environment, required for good stamina and mental immunity. Their training to follow their seniors with full submission, helps them resolving ego issues, which is explained by Lord Tennyson in his poem in these words
“theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die”
For spiritual growth process, taming of ego or self-negation is a difficult chapter, which is inculcated smoothly in a soldier’s life. The collective aspect automatically comes in when army plays its role in defending country in peace, war, political turmoil, disaster, calamity or terrorism. I am impressed, how universal aspect comes in with the desire to get martyrdom, while fighting for the motherland. Another example of universal role comes in when troops are posted as part of an international force, working for peace missions. I am always surprised with the amount of satisfaction they have while planning for such missions. What an evolutionary growth a Jawan goes through, where he is ready to surrender his life to protect the motherland in time of need and in another role he has to show empathy to rescue a child from the debris of a collapsed building in earthquake or to save a drowning person during floods. Another interesting observation is seniors have motherly love for their Jawans, so they are a combination of soft, harsh, ruthless and subtle emotions. I have observed strange tolerance and patience in the families of martyrs as well, I think it is definitely due to patience and divine help.
In holistic growth there is no dichotomy in individual, collective and universal beings, there is oneness for a greater cause. When a person reaches that stage, Universal system is activated to help him. Who can deny the Divine help to our army men during 1965 war, and in few incidences of Zarb e azab as well. I was watching a documentary about an international competition held few years before, about army skills between troops of various nations. Pakistan army was declared the best, which further supports my observation. I am happy about my observational research and we are proud to have an army of such a calibre. In the current scenario I think they need a holistic support from us of the level of 1965 war, where the whole nation was unitedly supporting them. As we know Pakistan is bleeding and we have to turn into 190 million healers, to heal our motherland and to secure the future of our children. I would like to quote Sir Winston Churchill “never in the history of human endeavour, so much was owed by so many to so few ” , which can be the best tribute to our army.
Thank you very much for sharing, I learned a lot from your article. Very cool. Thanks. nimabi