EliteOne Stories : How did writing this book change you personally? Did you discover anything new about yourself in the process?
Vipul Mankad, M.D.: Yes, absolutely, and that’s a pun! I have been on a lifelong quest for the absolute truth.
For more than 35 years, I was a Professor; I taught future doctors. To teach someone else, you have to learn the subject well yourself. Writing a book is similar to teaching the reader about something you know or have experienced. As you can tell from the references and notes section, I read a large number of books and scientific papers on many subjects to write this book. In the process, I learned the subject myself.
Let us be clear. All that learning occurs in the brain, which itself is made of non-living elements and molecules. This is also true for other body structures. Thus, what I call body-mind machine, made up of non-living materials, is not alive until consciousness and its energy is infused. That pure consciousness within us does not change as the body and mind change.
Thus, writing this book changed my external persona, my body, mind and behavior. I became a calmer, more balanced person. But, writing this book did not the consciousness within me. That true self is as it always was throughout my life.
EliteOne Stories : Your book discusses the idea that identity is not fixed but continuously evolving. At what point in your life did you first experience this shift?
Vipul Mankad, M.D. : That is true for the external identity. Six months after an infant are born, it doubles in size. Around one year of age, we start walking. When a child becomes an adult, the childhood dies and is replaced by adult body, mind and behavior. As we reach old age, the youth has died. We inherit genes from our parents but the environment turns some genes on and other genes off. So, in a way, the body, mind and behavior change all the time. I learned this as a medical student and later as a doctor.
What is this thing called “I”? I have a car but I am not the car. Similarly, I have a body but I am not the body. I have a mind but I am not a mind. My family gave me a name, Vipul but it could have been Supercalifragilisticespialidocious. Thank God, they did not choose such a name.
The point is that all external labels, our age, sex, name, race, caste, nationality, ethnicity, and tribe or our bank account, car or a house do not define us. Hanging on to those labels creates mental stress because we compare our descriptors to others. We even fight wars on those features.
Even at the DNA level, we are not all that different from each other. But at the core of our being, at the level of pure consciousness within us, we are exactly the same.
EliteOne Stories : Which part of the book was the hardest to write, and why?
Vipul Mankad, M.D. : Writing about discrimination was probably the hardest. As I just said, as conscious beings, we are the same. At the DNA level, less than 1% of our genes give us the external features, but we discriminate against each other because of race, gender, and a whole host of things that do not matter. Even in the United States, which is one of the best in rewarding people on their merits, discrimination is a major social factor. India has many discriminatory practices.
With this knowledge, at first, I did not know why discrimination existed and how we could eliminate it. I learned quite a bit about the root cause of discrimination and have discussed the subject in the book.
Philosophical, spiritual, and religious topics might seem challenging to some, but not to me, until I started describing the ultimate samadhi—the experience of complete absorption. I may have reached very early stages of samadhi, for which seven levels are described by Patanjali. But I believe that in this subject, human language falls short. Words can serve as milestones or symbols on a treasure map, but they cannot lead you to the treasure. This was another difficult subject to write about.
EliteOne Stories : Was there any specific memory or event from your childhood that you initially hesitated to include but later felt was essential?
Vipul Mankad, M.D. : Memories about my return (and my wife’s return) to India and discussing reasons for our failure to settle permanently in India was difficult to write about. As Sanjeev Sanyal says India was closed to external ideas for about a thousand years. We returned to India in early 1970s when the country was still very resistant to outside influence. Even simple improvements such as washing hands before examination of a patient were difficult to make. Social structure was very rigid especially s eunfair to women and particularly for daughter-in-law and thus affected my wife.
Although it was difficult to write about these obstacles, I thought it was important to describe the contrast between the India of 1970s and India of 21st century. India is a very different country now; ranked 4th in GDP in the world, a nuclear and space power, leader in information technology and pharmaceuticals and so on. Now we can be confident and self reliant (Atma Nirbhar) but I hope we do not close ourselves to the outside world. Like the maritime power we were in the first millennium, we need to interact with the world. World is our family-Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.
EliteOne Stories : How much of your scientific training influenced the philosophical conclusions you draw in the book?
Vipul Mankad, M.D. : Science is not a collection of facts but a systematic way of searching for truth. Philosophical and spiritual pursuits are also processes in search of the truth. Science analyzes evidence, but I must say, so does Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. Bharatiya (Indian) philosophical schools debated epistemology, the discipline that defines evidence (pramana) and methods of acquisition of knowledge. Therefore, there is no fundamental difference.
One difference is that modern science requires measurements and data analysis, but all properties of human existence (or that of any living being) are amenable to measurements. One cannot measure feelings of love or consciousness, nor can one be confused with behaviors or phenomena associated with those properties. Thus, being a scientist, I could understand the limits of science. I also understand the limits of human language. Thus, spiritual pursuits such as meditation allow us to seek a better understanding of properties of our existence not amenable to so-called scientific methods and also feel something that human words cannot describe.
EliteOne Stories : In your opinion, where do science and spirituality intersect most naturally?
Vipul Mankad, M.D. : There are many areas but one such area is a study of consciousness. Science can measure associated phenomena while spirituality can help us learn about pure consciousness itself. In fact, some scientists and philosophers postulate that the Universe is made up of various attributes such as mass, force and pure consciousness. In other words, consciousness is a fundamental building block of the Universe. This concept is not that different from Patanjali’s purusha (pure consciousness) and everything else in the material universe. For more indepth discussion of this topic, read my chapter on the mystery of consciousness.
EliteOne Stories : Many readers praise your explanations of complex scientific concepts. How did you ensure the book remained accessible to a general audience?
Vipul Mankad, M.D. : How did I learn to present complex subjects simply? It relates to my profession, pediatric hematology oncology. When I worked with children who had cancer, I had to explain to them what they had and why I was recommending a painful treatment. I learned to explain to a six-year-old what leukemia is or why a difficult treatment could help him or her get better.
We often invent words to make things more complex. For example, instead of saying that a person has abnormally yellow skin, a doctor may say that he has hyperbilirubinemia. What does that mean? When red cells break down, the red pigment within it (hemoglobin; another technical word) is broken down by the body to a yellow pigment called bilirubin. So, if the body is breaking down too much red pigment into yellow pigment and cannot handle it, the skin becomes too yellow. Now there is a reason for inventing the word, hyperbilirubinemia but why not explain this in simple language to a patient?
I believe everything that seems complicated can be explained in simple terms to a six-year-old. This is true for medicine, engineering, accounting, or philosophy. That’s what I try to do in this book.
EliteOne Stories : The stories about your patients are deeply moving. Is there a particular encounter that affected you so strongly that it stayed with you for years?
Vipul Mankad, M.D. : In my book, I describe three such patients. The first one was a girl dying of Hodgkin’s Disease. As a doctor in training, I could learn to treat medical problems but noone was there to teach me about death and dying. In fact that child taught me more about the purpose of life than the faculty member. I also learned that my job was to do my best, use my knowledge and skills with utmost compassion but the results were not up to me. I learned to apply Lord Krishna’s principles of Karma Yoga while treating this patient.
Years later, a woman called me to tell me that she was the wife of an infant treated by me for cancer. I learned to not take credit for such successes because then, I must take the blame for failure. Keep a mental balance (Samatvam Yoga Uchyate) and perform your duty skillfully (yogah karmashu kaushalam) as Krishna said in Bhagavad Gita.
One does not learn Karma Yoga by reading Gita but by practicing it.
