Flashback
In the year 2009, when I was finishing my PhD in Autoimmunity at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, I was not convinced, in fact, I was rather disillusioned. I realised what I was doing could not help those patients afflicted with Myasthenia Gravis, or multiple sclerosis (the disorders that we were studying). I knew that just by studying clinical (blood or tissue) samples, I could not possibly find a cure or the actual trigger for these illnesses, as they must be different in different cases, and would take into account the mental, emotional and spiritual milieu of the patient as well. I had written my thesis and my thesis meant nothing to me. Those were mere words, mere experiments which did not carry any real weight, except complete a PhD thesis. I knew that in research science, I could not possibly find out the real reasons for these illnesses. I had to go into the psyche of the patients to find out the causes of such illnesses, the triggers of those auto-immune disorders, where the body decides to attack itself with all its armed forces. I did not know how I knew these things, I hadn’t read any papers back then, nor did I have any practical experiences myself. But there was a strong knowing, which led me eventually to leave what I was doing and find my answers somewhere in the unknown.
I lost many friends (in the scientific field) over the subsequent years (not that I was a very sociable person), as I grew more convinced of the psychological aspect of illnesses in general. They all thought I was going mad! I didn’t mind that, since the certainty of the path just kept me going, irrespective. I did exactly what Tagore says in his famous composition: Jodi tor daak shune keu na aashe tobe ekla cholo re. (“If they pay no heed to your call, walk on your own.”)
Fast forward, only four years later, I had a live demonstration for myself to get even more convinced. I was the petri dish myself this time; all the microbes had grown in my body owing to the inner air, the inner atmosphere with which I had provided myself.
A Live Experiment
In the year 2014, right after the birth of my second child, I was diagnosed with bladder cancer. I was just 32. This was my time to see the experiment unfold of how there is something more than genetics that impacts our body and health. For the past two years or so, I had not been following any mental discipline for the taming and training of my monkey mind. My emotions were all over, though not apparently (as my skin hid what went on inside me). In my oblivion, I was not at all centred, owing to the things I had taken over myself, believing my thoughts, stories in my head about myself and people around and I just was a puppet of my thoughts and emotions. All in my oblivion, of course. I was not at home within, the mind was not home within the body, but lost in the deadly forest of mind. The result — cancer.
It was a shock, but not that much. Why? Because I had the good fortune of connecting this manifestation with those unanswered questions left at the end of my PhD, as to how our emotions, mind and spiritual milieu contribute to illnesses, apart from genes. I knew this was my chance to see this for myself, and to un-create it, and to re-create something new through reclaiming my power back over those thoughts and emotions, which had been ruling me lately for some years.
Epigenetics and why it is so crucial for our daily life
So that was just setting the stage for this discussion today. We know that there is something called genetics, which is the study of the genes and inherited characteristics and traits from our parents. There’s another upcoming field for a few years which has been called ‘epi-genetics.’ ‘Epi’ in Greek means something beyond, something over and above, something on the top of. Something which is on the top of your genes. What is it?
Well, this is how I make sense of it:
It’s our free-will, it’s the choices we make. What thoughts we choose to believe in, which words we speak, which emotions we choose to follow the dictates of, which foods we choose to eat, which air we choose to breathe and above all of these — what is the inner atmosphere in which we keep ourselves immersed, irrespective of the outer triggers — have the power over our genes, which will impact our health and well-being.
The processes of epigenetics, or the way these things happen at the molecular level, are relatively known. These changes happen at the level of gene-expression, that is, without altering the underlying DNA sequence. There are DNA methylations or acetylations, Histone modifications and some others, which are not presently the topic of our exploration and can be studied in detail with the help of many other good authentic resources and research papers 1. Our main interest here is that these epigenetic changes are reversible and inheritable as well. The science calls it the ‘epigenetic landscape’ that is passed on from our parents/caregivers which is a result of the choices they made as a caregiver during our upbringing.
Let us take an analogy to explain this. There have been studies done in rats where it was found that if a rat mother is a high-licking mother to her pups (and that’s her way of showering her love and care on the pups), the pups have a secure childhood and when they grow up as adults, they too are caring parents to their pups, and are high-lickers. Rat pups with low-licking mothers, hence having not much love and care during their childhood, do not get a secure upbringing, and grow up as well to be indifferent parents, low-lickers, to their own pups. To try a cross- experiment out, in order to rule out that this was all happening owing to particular genes inherited, scientists crossed the pups. They interchanged the pups from high-licking mothers to low-licking mothers, and the low-licking mothers’ pups were given to the high-licking mothers. Astonishingly enough, the result was still the same, meaning the pups from low-licking mothers when reared with high-licking mothers again had a secure and loving childhood and when they became parents, they also inherited the same epigenetic landscape and were high-lickers again, and more resilient. While the pups from high-licker mothers which now had been reared with low-licking mothers, had an insecure childhood, and hence grew up to be low-licking, less resilient irrespective of coming biologically from the high-licking mothers, which clearly showed that there was something else going on apart from the DNA sequence inherited. What was it? The scientists figured out later that in the case of high-licking mothers, their relationship and atmosphere of love and care activated some good genes, and deactivated/silenced some other genes that disturb the wellbeing and overall health. In the case of the low-licking atmosphere, it happened the other way round 2!
This research proves to be very pertinent and a game-changer for us as humans and shows how quality of parental care has a strong impact on mental health and hence physiological and even psychological health of the progeny.
The good thing is, these changes are reversible! Which means it’s never too late to wake up and change and mend our ways for the better! One may have suffered very badly owing to the outer atmosphere and inner atmosphere so far, and because of which one now has criminal or depressive tendencies or some diseases, but even now, if one begins to tame and train one’s mind for better, one can reverse the negative and harmful effects so far to a great extent.
Impact of Meditation on Well-being through Epigenetics
A bunch of studies share that long-term meditators have changes in their brain even when they are not meditating 3.
So, stable physiological changes happen when a meditative state becomes the way of your life. You lose the old, unskilful and perverse taste of remaining scattered and immersed in negative thoughts.
Another research shares the positive epigenetic changes owing to regular meditation practices as a way of life 4.
Water Quality Changes with the Vibration of Words, Prayers, Atmosphere
The above findings can also be related to the experiments and evidence of change in water crystals by the well-known Japanese scientist, Masuru Emoto. He developed a technique to study water crystals under the microscope and take pictures. His study demonstrates that prayer and words with good vibrations like ’Grace’, ’Love’, ’God’, ’Peace’, etc., change the crystals to a beautiful, symmetrical shape, while water crystals from drain water, or water stored in bottles with negative words like, ’Hate’, ’War’, ’Jealousy’, etc., written on them make crystals have an ugly appearance. One can easily make out the difference made by one’s good-will and right effort, showing that our choices matter in more ways than we are conscious of 5.
Put in Effort: Make a Right Choice Each Moment
All of this goes very well with the Mother’s story of creation where she tells that in the process of creation had all the four Powers, turned to their opposite, darker versions and then the Divine Mother plunged Herself into this dark creation so as to move it towards Light and its divine Source 6.
The Mother tells us that we are here as human beings to put in effort and change all that is negative to their positive illuminated counterparts.
“Change...
1. Hatred into harmony
2. Jealousy into generosity
3. Ignorance into knowledge
4. Darkness into light
5. Falsehood into truth
6. Wickedness into goodness
7. War into peace
8. Fear into fearlessness
9. Uncertainty into certainty
10. Doubt into faith
11. Confusion into order
12. Defeat into victory 7.”
Why am I sharing the story of creation and that we have to change all the dark, negative things to their positive counterparts in an article dedicated to epigenetics?
I hope some of us reading this may have figured it out on their own. But those who haven’t may get some help through this explanation — all that is dark in us, all that is imperfect, weak in us, has to change. The sooner it changes, the better it is. Imperfections and weaknesses make us suffer. Ill-health makes us suffer. Darkness, depression, negative thoughts make us suffer. We are the ones who have to open our inner vision, become conscious and change all the negatives in the body, mind, emotions to their positive counterparts. And since epigenetics is there as scientific evidence (if that helps to convince us), it tells us there is always hope. No matter how far we may have gone down the drain, the rewiring can happen again, and the gene expression can be altered again and again, for good or for worse, depending on the direction we want to take.
We know all these things by an inner instinct, but since the outer being needs proofs which it can tangibly gauge, we can say that epigenetic findings, declaring the tangible effects of positive habits, words, actions, or of negative ones, tell us for sure that what we feel is actually happening. When one feels angry, one already feels so negative and dark inside, one doesn’t feel good about it. That feeling is simultaneously being translated into the body by the mechanism of epigenetics. One is altering one’s gene expression following the dictates of anger, jealousy and all the others in this bouquet. Equally, when one meditates, when one’s mind is in the present moment fully and grounded or connected with the highest or deepest consciousness in one’s reach, then one feels better, and one knows this is the right way to go, and that good feeling is translated into the body again through epigenetic changes.
So now, the ball is in our court. In fact, it has always been. It’s just that now, we are taking time to take full responsibility and onus of how our life is. Once we reclaim the onus, the throne, then we see that no matter how many wrong actions may have been done in ignorance, there’s always a hope to change them now. Now that we know that we have been taking wrong turns, can we not take the right step, and become a true svaraatt, master and king of ourselves?
Let us be a true Aryan and do what is expected of us.
“Whoever makes that choice, whoever seeks to climb from level to level up the hill of the divine, fearing nothing, deterred by no retardation or defeat, shrinking from no vastness because it is too vast for his intelligence, no height because it is too high for his spirit, no greatness because it is too great for his force and courage, he is the Aryan, the divine fighter and victor, the noble man, aristos, best, the ssressttha of the Gita 8.”
