Breaking Habits

Habit-Breaking Methods

N. AWAB ZADA
(1968)

THE DOCTRINE.

The breaking of habits when they are automatically applied,

or rather misapplied, by being attached to higher aims, has

found a promising field in India. The doctrine underlying this

approach, familiar to all Eastern mystics, is that while man is

mechanical and trained in routines in ordinary ('secular') life,

—and should allow himself to operate in this manner for social

survival—he should develop another part of his being to work

beyond this. It is stated by the Sufis and advanced yogins alike

that habits must be broken. Some go so far as to inculcate

habits only in order to break them, to illustrate in the disciple's

own life experience how undesirable for higher consciousness

such habits can be.

METHOD.

The method is well-established and documented, though its

use would seem so astonishing to routine thinkers of the Western

tradition that they have generally misinterpreted it, thinking

that habit-breaking guides are heretics or irrational. In the West,

unification is generally thought to be the finding of common

denominators in faith or action. In the habit-breaking methods,

the first step is to state that unity underlies diversity, and

diversity must be exposed as secondary and unessential before

the unity can be found. In other words, it has to be claimed and

if possible demonstrated that, say, vedanti, fakiri and other

systematised practises are merely cloaks or frames by means of

which something is achieved. Prince Dara Shikoh was a noted

exponent of this iconoclastic method, as was Sarmad. 'Unless

and until man can see that all ritual, all observance, all idols

are useful for some things and useless in another sense,' said

the latter, 'he will remain in chains—even if they are golden

chains, made out of gold coins spent by his ancestors.' The

method could be summarised as 'shock'. Students are expected

to abandon completely their religious or psychological framework,

dogma or system, changing it entirely for another one, so

that they can develop cognitions of a far higher order than those

which they get from repeating actions laid down in the past.

N. AWAB ZADA lived for thirty years before Indian

independence in many of the semi-independent Indian

States, and studied under teachers attached to

maharajahs' courts. His major study of the problems

and development of these states is Indian India,

published in England.