Page 47 - NAMAH-Jul-2017

Notes on counselling

Infusing consciousness

Dr. Soumitra Basu

Abstract
A life replete with spirituality would need an infusion of consciousness in all our little acts to make
them progressively perfect. This would develop harmony in the mind as well as in the body.

The other day a Muslim farmer from Bangladesh husband and children would be fit and healthy
came to a busy hospital clinic in India and told with the food she prepared — something that
his doctor that he had brought some molasses no servant could do. Since then, whenever I
prepared by him. He narrated that while he conduct personality development programmes
was preparing the molasses for the doctor, for women, I take time to explain why cooking
he was constantly invoking Allah so that the has to be done consciously. In India, where it is
preparation would be perfect. He was in fact a custom for many working women to employ
infusing consciousness in the material he was servants for cooking, I tell the women to do at
preparing. Everyone in that consulting room least something consciously even if they do not
acknowledged his sincerity and for a moment have time for the whole process of cooking —
all divisions based on religion, caste or country they could at best select the dishes and recipes
disappeared. and preferably cut the vegetables. In parts of
eastern India, cutting vegetables is an art as
I remember that as a young doctor, I used to different vegetables are cut in different ways
feel anguished when at times young married and often the same vegetable is cut differently
Indian ladies used to tell me that the men in the in the morning and evening. That finesse in the
household preferred having food cooked by the simple act of cutting vegetables shows how
women in the family rather than servants. I used doing simple things consciously was a valued
to think that the males were too chauvinistic cultural asset.
and dealt with women in a way that was not
in consonance with modern times. After many Perhaps, if we want to have a life that is not
years of medical practice, I realised that the ascetic yet replete with spirituality, the basic
food cooked by a lady of the household had her requisite would be to infuse consciousness in all
consciousness in it, wherein she aspired that her our little acts so as to make them progressively

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