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More the merrier

Bharat Savur

Is instantaneity replacing spontaneity? James Gleick does not think so. ``We humans have chosen speed and thrive on it,'' he propounds in Reader's Digest. Thrive? Could the finger-snapping I-want-it-now impatience have a positive side to it, af ter all? Why not, if, as Gleick reasons, ``We catch the fever and the fever feels good.''

It certainly does. And always did, for, as historian Stephen Kern states, ``Humans never ever opted for slower.'' For the record, spontaneity is defined as `a self-induced urge'. A call. Its response -- instantaneity -- keeps `live' mechanisms such as endorphins, immunoglobulins and white blood cells charged. And the spirit evoked is exuberantly, tinglingly alive.

For, it's not about racing against time, it's about living lifesize in it. And `multi-tasking' (doing at least two things together) -- such as watching a cricket match on TV with the sound turned off to listen to Deepak Chopra's casset te, `The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success'; toothbrushing and flossing while browsing online -- does just that. And though time does not expand, the mind does.

The upside, Gleick points out, is ``the sense of well-being from the saturation of parallel pathways in the brain''. Absorbed, imperturbable, we play within a bubble of organised buzz instead of restless boredom. And as Uday Acharya, a Vedanta teacher, explains, it's ``positive things coming together''. There's no specialisation. Today, most subjects are multi-disciplinary -- biochemistry or geopolitics. It's a move towards ``taking back our power''. A paradigm shift. As physicist Ga ry Zukov, author of The Seat of the Soul, describes, ``from pursuing external power to pursuing authentic power''.

And authenticity is well served by ``self-actualising'' -- a term popularised by Abraham Maslow, father of humanistic psychology -- where the earlier single-focussed depth gets an added breathtaking dimension: breadth. A democratisation of th e spirit. That's why seeing saffron-robed monks keyboarding their sleek laptops, and learning that they are electronic engineers or MBA graduates, comes as no surprise anymore. Neither does reading about a `herbal gynecologist' such as Dr. Urpi ta Jain seem like a contradiction.

For sure, simultaneous-stimuli opens new frontiers to multi-careers, even a new way of thinking that has seeped into corporate culture, as well. Executives should use their `sick leave' for healthy pursuits -- such as attending Sri S ri Ravi Shankar's Art of Living course, for example. A shift that would gladden Dr. Bernard S. Segel who has been pondering on the ``need of illness. Is it a cry for love and nurturing? Or is it a signal from the body that we need some time off fro m a job or from responsibilities? We give people `sick days', and in doing so, we train them to get sick. The unconscious quickly learns that it can meet its needs by creating illness''. It need not any more.

The columnist is co-author of the book `Fitness for Life'.Pic.: A game of chess engages the mind during the long commute to work.