“SCIENTISTS have demonstrated that both the brain and the body change constantly, according to how we use them,” writes British journalist and author Neville Hodgkinson in the introduction to his latest book, “I Know How To Live, I Know How To Die.” “They tell us, for instance, that when we fall in love or become parents, massive brain reorganization takes place. Millions of old neural networks fall away, as millions of new ones form.”

 

The book discusses on many levels how quality of life is determined by the way the mind is nurtured.

 

Hodgkinson, former correspondent for several national newspapers in the United Kingdom—among them The Sunday Times, Sunday Express and Daily Mail—will speak on the subject in a free public program entitled “My Consciousness, My Reality” on Tuesday, May 3, 7-9 p.m., at OnStage theater in Greenbelt 1, Makati City.

 

“As a newspaper reporter,” he narrates in the book, “I specialized in writing about science and medicine partly because of my own appreciation for the scientific method and distaste for religious fanaticism and dogma.”

 

However, in the 1980s, he had “a visionary experience” that led him to what he describes as “an ascetic path whose central thrust is to quieten ‘noise’ from mental conditioning and the senses, in order to foster the experience of love and wisdom from a realm of awareness that lies beyond the brain.”

 

The path he embraced was Raja Yoga. The book is about his spiritual teacher, Dadi Janki of the Brahma Kumaris.

 

When we change the way we look at things, Hodgkinson learned, it’s as if those things change as well. He notes, “Some physicists have argued that even the elements are, at some level… capable of both holding and responding to subtle information.”

 

Hodgkinson’s first book, “Will to be Well: The Real Alternative Medicine” (Hutchinson, UK, 1984; Samuel Weiser, USA, 1986) is one of the first published materials to tackle intimate links between happiness and health.

 

“Spirituality is the engine of regeneration,” declares Hodgkinson. “It makes healing and creative energy available to us. When we lose connection with that energy, life becomes purposeless.”

 

The Brahma Kumaris is an international non-sectarian, nonstock, nonprofit organization. In the Philippines, it is a recipient of the UN Peace Messenger Award.

 

For inquiries about the program and/or reservations, call 0927-2808363  8907960.