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, an innocent, guileless, naïve,and inexperienced about life, 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 trainers and mentors, teachers and guides in many educational institutions and training places such as Anand, Ahmedabad, Jamnagar, Mumbai (Bombay),Delhi and Pune (Poona), 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 2006my 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.
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