What If We Were Natural People?

While I was in the kitchen today I had this thought – have we humans not gone a little too far from our original natural self. Look at our food for instance. How much of what we eat is pure and natural, and how much is ‘spoiled’ by boiling, frying, grilling, fermenting, baking, roasting and spicing. Yes, I said ‘spoiled’, because I was never so excited about eating cooked food as I was to eat fresh fruits and crisp, raw, juicy veggies. In my opinion cooking is absolutely unessential and destroys the vital healing qualities that nature provides. Yet having family and friends, I have come to understand that people prefer cooked food to raw food in general – thanks to centuries of genetic and cultural conditioning that I cannot just shake out of their rigid neural cells.

From the time we were animals to now, there is so much change that we have even forgotten that we are biologically animals too. We tend to regard nature as something separate or distinct from us and ourselves as a specie quite unlike any other in nature – even superior as such to the ‘lower’ forms of life.

Our clothes, our vehicles, our makeup is in stark contrast to the rest of nature, all naked, and all beautiful in its own amazing way. Amidst plants and animals, the vast blue sky, the endless stars and green-brown earth, I feel that I would rather admire nature than my own human self in the mirror. How can our limited and grossly artificial humanness compare to the infinite glory of the universe after-all?

Think about it – are we indeed superior or have we made ourselves more inferior to the rest of nature through our ‘progress’ and civilisation?

• Plants can manufacture food by just being still and channeling the energy from the five basic elements directly, sun for fire, rain for water, minerals for earth, oxygen for air and their own inner silence as the spirit that helps them exist and survive with such elegance and peace. Are they struggling and fighting for land, minerals and food? Are they crying and blaming others for their woes of hunger and disease like the majority of humans? They probably know and sense a lot more than us, by the way they move and shape their growth around rocks and other hindrances, the way they respond to light or darkness and the way they react to environmental changes. Watch how their ‘limbs’ grow back so soon and even healthier if they are cut, trimmed or injured and see how they easily offer their ripe fruits to be eaten by animals like us, in the hope that we scatter the seeds and let them propagate in new places. I am in awe of plants and I don’t think any animal can ever be superior to their amazing power, their healing skills and their calm, giving and gentle nature.

• Animals are provided so much by nature – they are effortlessly clothed and dressed as per the climate of their native lands. They have fur and wool to keep them warm in winter and cold regions, that gets shed automatically if the climate turns warm. There is tough skin on animals that rough it out in the jungles and deserts, almost like a natural armor. They have stripes for camouflage or stick like limbs on insects to prevent their extinction, and much more. Many have night-vision and extra sensory powers that go far beyond human senses to help them in every way. They do not require expensive hospitals to help them give birth to their little ones, they do it themselves and go searching for food soon after. The animal kingdom has many amazing qualities that nature has so lovingly bestowed upon them, to protect and care for them in every way. There is no creature that is not loved by nature unconditionally. And they love and trust nature so perfectly and wisely.

What if we humans were all natural too, using our natural teeth to munch natural fresh and wholesome fruits and allowing our bodies to adapt to the climate without the need for artificially crafted garments. What if we tried walking instead of using our cars to transport our lazy bodies in every little journey? Would we let nature give us real wings instead of large metal planes to help us travel long distances and how do we know this would not have happened if we had in-fact let it happen and let nature take its own course? What if we tried living amidst nature instead of high-rise flats, using our relaxed intuition instead of exhausting our limited brains to sort life out, and allowing our natural instincts to guide us everyday instead of gadgets and internet all the time. How would we look and what would life be like?

Will we have nuclear wars or real estate inflation? Will we have the need to struggle and work hard to earn a living only to be a slave to money? Will we pay endless bills and live day after day in our computerized routines so that we can some day buy a expensive designer bag and a matchbox apartment in a heavily polluted city to feel so proud? Or will we breathe fresh air and drink spring water to be happy as we are, allowing change as per nature desires, growing and spreading where our natural resources permit and limiting ourselves as per nature’s laws. Will we be content and satisfied with what we have or be trapped in our endless struggles to satisfy our corporate desires that consumerism has programmed so deeply into our brains. Will we have religions that teach us that God is far away, nature is inferior and we exist to rule over others in the name of this demonic God who tells us to kill? Or will we be a bit more sensible and share our love as children of our mother nature who gives us everything indeed if we are at peace, if we trust and if we let go?

What do you think?

Swati Prakash