In an earlier article I talked about deprogramming and reprogramming the world. Deprogramming and reprogramming presuppose an initial programming. To illustrate the whole process I would like the example of the National Space and Aeronautic Administration (NASA) of the USA. NASA meticulously plans various space missions. Goals and purpose are very carefully set; tools to achieve them are selected with extreme care. If the space ships are managed by humans, they are given the best available rigorous training to carry out the pre-determined tasks. Corrections, adjustments, or alterations of the programming are made to reach the target, and attain the various goals depending on the prevailing circumstances that are different from the predicted realities. Every successful mission involves detailed programming, support systems, and needed correction of the programming as the mission proceeds till its conclusion. If such is the case with a space mission, how much more care needs to be given to the goal of an individual or entire humanity, for that matter?!

             Humans are heavily programmed right from the beginning. To the extent they are programmed, their freedom to make various choices could be, and often are, affected. They inherit a very certain and unique nature and nurture. Their genetic pool and the environment in which they are conceived and brought up are determined. Persons are influenced by positive and negative suggestions and role models. That companies, corporations, and politicians in a democracy are spending huge sums of money for covert and overt commercials and advertisements to sell their products or services or to get elected indicate that our choices or decisions can be manipulated through subliminal or subtle messages. To study specifically the process of programming or conditioning and deprogramming or deconditioning and reprogramming or reconditioning I am going to use my own life as an example. I was born in a small village in an average middle class Catholic Christian family in an exclusive Catholic-Hindu milieu in central Kerala. Seven days after my birth I was baptized in my parish church. I was the youngest in a family of six brothers and two sisters. My second oldest brother was about 20 years older than myself; he was in the British India army, and was a role model for me in my younger years. In a village economically dominated by Catholics, I grew up in a large family surrounded by large extended families of relatives, and received 11 years of formal education in Catholic schools and received my Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC). I learned my catechism (religious doctrine) followed regular religious observances. At the age of 17, as innocent, guileless, and naive as I could be, I left my native village that was untouched by the West at the time of my growing-up to join the Jesuits in Gujarat. After 16 years of learning and training by western and eastern mentors and guides in many educational institutions and training places such as Mumbai (Bombay), Pune, Anand, Ahmedabad, Jamnagar, and Delhi I was ordained to the Catholic priesthood. After further training in Bangalore and studies in the USA for a doctorate in clinical psychology, I became a professor of Jnana Deep Vidyapeeth (Institute of Philosophy and Religion), Pune, the premier institution in south Asia that trained catholic priests from dioceses and religious orders. After 25 years as a Jesuit I left the Jesuits, got married, and practiced as a clinical psychologist, and taught courses in psychology in a university in the USA till I decided to actualize my long-cherished dreams and plans, and relinquished in 2006 my lucrative and emotionally satisfying career to launch my mission of serving God and humanity full time. Even though initially I had planned to live 6 months in India and 6 months in the USA, I have made India the main sphere of activity spending about 10 months a year in India. By now I have spent roughly half of my life (35 years) in India and the other half in the USA. This is my life in a nut-shell. And I would like to highlight the heavy programming and the deprogramming (unlearning) I underwent.

             Looking back at my mind-set, world-view, and purpose in my life when I left at 17 my native village in Kerala, perhaps the least westernized state in India at the time, and my outlook on life and purpose now at 71 living most of my life in my 3 Siddhashrams in Kerala, perhaps the most westernized state in India, I could never have envisaged the way my life unfolded all these years, and what I finally became, and am still becoming. My lifestyle has changed completely. For instance, now I am a vegetarian living a life of spirituality beyond religions accepting no one but God (Supreme Energy) within and without as I know and believe in that entity and my conscience (that "little dictator" as Gandhi calls conscience) as my sole authorities and guides. I could never have envisaged and predicted my own evolution. I respect every human being in the world, and continue to learn from everyone while I do not consider anyone superior or inferior as a human being. Personally I consider myself to be a prime example of programming, deprogramming, and reprogramming. And this on-going dynamic process continues, I am sure, till my conscious last breath. Rigorously analyzing my life I discover and realize how the rest of humanity is in the same process of thesis, anti-thesis, and a higher-ordered new synthesis. I was programmed (influenced, guided, trained, modeled, shaped, and formed) by my parents, older siblings, relatives, religion teachers, priests and nuns, teachings and doctrine of the Catholic Church, teachings of other Christian denominations and other religions, elders in the community, friends, politicians, saints and sages, philosophers, thinkers, writers, various customs and mores in different parts of the world, rites and rituals, countless great men and women, and role models of the world.

             The greatest programming of all, I must say, came from the Jesuits in my formative years. I take this occasion to acknowledge my deep gratitude to the Jesuits as they, perhaps unwittingly, played a great role in my critical thinking as well as in my being and becoming in "the glorious liberty of God's children". In my late 30's I started subjecting my entire life to critical thinking and examination. Here I was heavily influenced by Socrates who is reported to have stated that an unexamined life is not worth living. In one particular retreat of solitude, I came to the deep realization that I have only one life to live, and I live it the way I know best with all the knowledge and skills I have painstakingly acquired. I had to be responsible for my life the Supreme Energy/Source had given me, and I had to chart my own course. While the early formative years are very essential and important, once formed one needs to take charge of one's own entire life. Nobody really has more of a handle on life than others. Nobody has a master plan on life. Nobody has a monopoly on truth or a patent on best living. My life is going to be my own unique pilgrimage – my own history of salvation.

             John B. Watson, founder of behaviorism in psychology wrote in connection with child-rearing: “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I will guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become my type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors (Behaviorism, 1930, p. 82)”. Watson’s radical behaviorism, Ivan Pavlov’s demonstration of human behavior as respondent (classical) conditioning, and B. F. Skinner’s explanation of human behavior as occasioned and shaped by operant conditioning and different schedules of re-inforcement laid a strong foundation for behavior therapy in modern psychology wherein problem behaviors are considered to be due to faulty programming/ conditioning/learning. Emphasis is on empiricism and determinism as well as on nurture on the nature-nurture spectrum. Psychic determinism owing to pre-programmed or pre- determined genetic or hereditary disposition obtaining in psycho-analytic theories as proposed by Sigmund Freud also diminishes the role of human freedom. It is only the humanistic school of psychology that really gives freedom a chance. The age-old unresolved (and unresolvable in that a closure is not possible without recourse to faith) discourse in theology related to nature, grace, freedom, and predestination concerns programming by God and/or humans. Any relationship, any counseling, or psychotherapy has the obvious potential for altering behavior for good or for bad or for brain-washing. I spoke glibly about freedom until I came to the belated realization how heavily programmed I was. Doctrines and dogmas were passed on to me, and I began or tried to believe them without questioning or really examining them. The persons who passed them on were in the same predicament as I was. We all believed because of the assumption, unquestioned of course, that the persons who formulated them somehow knew better, and that essential things in life related to faith and morals were settled once and for all, and that there was no room for plausible dissent. The weight of tradition was so overwhelming that one did not dare question without risking one’s good standing in society or bonafide credentials or exposing oneself to great inconveniences and material disadvantages. When Galileo, considered to be the father of modern science, went against all odds to declare on the basis of his findings that the earth moves around the sun, he almost lost his life. He was forced to recant his statement to save his life. He recanted his finding of the earth moving around the sun also at the same time allegedly muttering “and yet it (earth) moves”. To say earth moved at that time was a heresy punishable by death. He saved his life but lived under house arrest for the rest of his life. He was exonerated from his so-called crime/heresy only a few years ago. Except in Islamic countries, most of us can dissent without our life being in peril. We may still be socially ostracized, or may still suffer economic disadvantage for the stance we take.

             Socrates greatly influenced me through his statement that an unexamined life is not worth living. I thoroughly examined the story of my life as the history of my salvation/liberation, and subjected my life, primarily my religious life in the Society of Jesus characterized by the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and also a special fourth vow of obedience to the Pope, to critical thinking and rigorous analysis. I gradually came to the conclusion that I have gone beyond the framework of the Society of Jesus, and that I could not function faithfully within its scope, specifically, its written constitution and decrees enacted through general congregations, and decided to leave the Jesuits after a long struggle and discernment. While leaving the Jesuits at the age of 42, fortunately I had a degree that enabled me to have financial independence even as I continued with greater vigor my life-long dreams of spiritual pursuits and search for truth. In other words, I had to free myself from all strings attached to various organizations and entities that did not help me to be who I am. While I am eternally indebted and grateful to all including organizations who contributed to my growth, I also became strongly convinced that they, if they subjected to the same analysis as I have, would expect no less from me as they are in the same business as I am of serving God and humanity.