 18 Feb 2002 @ 23:11, by Mahendra Bardiya
The sweltering summer! The scorching sun! In the hot season, one' brain to get heated up. For right thinking, however, one must have cool brain; a fervid brain hinders thinking.It also creates a unnecessary problems which invariably result in immoderate action. One chief sign of good health is that one's feet remain warm and brain cool. But with most people the reverse is the case: the brain gets heated up and the feet grow cold. If the brain keeps tranquil, a man can live for a long time. Established in peace, he lives with zest. One objective of deep breathing in to keep the brain cool.
Today's scientists are busy in developing the new technique which could enable man to live for 500 or even 1000 years. This is a technique of refrigeration,of deep freezing. A man is frozen cold. For 10 years he remains inert. Then he is exposed to heat and he gets up alive. The scientist experimented on ants and froze them alive.All the ants became dead and cold.After 10 minuets they were warmed up and they returned to life.They restarted their activity.We often see that flies and ants are fallen into cold water and appearing as dead. But a little application of heat resurrect them life.
If a man could be so frozen, he cold be live for a long time. Not to speak of the whole body, if only the brain can be keep cool, man's longevity would greatly increase. Untimely death occur most often in youth, the chief reason being the frequent heating up of the brain. A young man flares up too soon and too often: the frequent heating up destroys the brain cells.
Our brain cells is constitute the basis of our life. As long as these cells are alive and active, a man does not die even if his heart stops breathing.It has been observed that a man declared dead by the doctors, was found to be alive after some time. Occasionally, a 'dead' carried on the bier to the funeral ground and laid down on the earth for cremation, with firewood ranged all round ready to be ignited, comes to life and rises yawning on the pyre making the piled blocks go scattering. People mistake him for a ghost. But infect he never died. He was alive all the time. Only the doctor had declared him dead. Actually his brain was active-it had not died, and as long as the brain dose not die, a man cannot be said to be dead, despite heart-or pulse-failure.
The brain is the seat, the fundamental basis of life. The cooler the brain, the more wholesome one's life, and the more constructive one's thinking. Indeed, a cool brain is the essential pre-requisite for wholesome, constructive and balanced thinking. From this point of view, the second criterion for right thinking is weather thinking is being done in a state of frenzy or in a state of tranquility. Agitation renders thinking defective. Thinking done in a state of turmoil can never be wholesome, right balanced or constructive. It can be constructive only when the mind is not agitated. Thinking must be based upon the facts for only factual thinking has any utility. Where the fact become secondary and emotion reigns supreme, thinking can never be practical or sane. The thinking of an individual who doe not practice meditation and who has no control over his mind, whose mind is not tranquil and balanced, is ever abrupt and emotional-such a person is incapable of right thinking.
A politician's friend said to him, "I met such and such person today and he was abusing you." On hearing this, the politician flared up. He said, "Let me win this election and become the minister, and then I will teach them a lesson for abusing me."
This is what emotional thinking leads to. That politician should first confirmed weather the person alleged to have abused him, actually did so. Otherwise one hears a canard and gets heated up for nothing. Who has not witnessed terrible fits of anger or pride? And we are also acquainted with the ill effects of these. The servant does not immediately carry out our order, our pride is hurt. In a highly wrought state we some times say and do abominable things. We indulge in abuse and give the servant a beating, and sometimes even dismiss him for service. All this is done in the frenzy of hurt pride. We never stop to consider for a moment as to way one man must obey another. It is not always obligatory after all. To obey is good, but sometime not to obey is better. The master is endowed with the faculty of thinking; so is the servant.
A master said to the servant, "Go and irrigate the garden." The servant said, "Master it is raining like cats and dogs. Why irrigate now?" Master said, "You are a fool! if it is raining why don't you take umbrella with you?" Now, what is the servant to do? The master who commands does not even stop to consider that irrigating the plant in the rain is utterly pointless. Why should the servant obey such a foolish command?
All those who gives commands are not necessarily wise and many foolish orders are given. Sometimes these orders may result in a great injustice. And yet the master becomes indignant if any of his commands is not immediately carried out. Later, of course, he has to face the music too. In a state of frenzy, all thinking becomes perverted. There is than little understanding between man and man. An over charged brain is mainly responsible for deterioration in relationship between husband and wife, between brother and brother and between master and servant. With this all of frenzy between them, one man can never fully understand another, nor can be see another person as he is; his frenzy colours all that he sees. The man in front will appear to be the image of his wrath. Frenzied thinking can never be right. Hence one of the criteria for balanced thinking is the practice for non-attachment. How is it possible? Is it possible to obviate wrath and pride? Most people never think in terms of obviating or mitigating pride. The think anger is natural; pride is man's second nature; these can not be obviated. So man dose not change and pride and anger continue. Many people think that man can not change, so the question of ending anger and pride which are part of human nature dose not arise. The man who is engaged in the practice of meditation frees himself first of all from these false assumption, he who is not so freed can not be a good practitioner. The first lesson that the spiritual practitioner has to learn is that man is capable of changing, that his nature can be changed. If man can not br transformed, if his nature can not be changed, it is batter to abandon meditation altogether, for meditation then has no utility whatsoever. The significance of meditation lies that through it consciousness become so concentrated and pure as to wash away the long accumulated dirt. When consciousness is unveiled, all habitual action disappears of itself. Habits have their breeding ground in impurity. Consciousness is so encrusted with layer after layer of impurities, that all kinds if habits take root there. One is often asked since the soul or consciousness is always pure, why should it be never polluted?
Consciousness in ever pure. If we perseveres in the practice of meditation, it will certainly become revealed, but the fact is that it is not so at present. Whatever is the non-existent at the moment, must be seen as the non-existent. What is only a future probability must not be imposed on the future. Most of the time people projects things which are not their at all. Imposition creates innumerable difficulties. The gold burnt in the fire become purified; It is yellow and lustrous. But looking at the earth-incrusted ore dug out the mine, one could never imagine gold have to such luster. At that time it appears to be no more than a clod of earth. There is a great deal of difference between ore and the finished ingot. There is absolutely no comparison between lustrous gold that come out from the fire and the metal mixed with clay in the ore. The sparkle of the finished ingot purified of all dirt and refuse is stupendous indeed. Similarly, the clarity and purify of a consciousness well tempered in the oven of meditation is simply unimaginable in a consciousness vitiated by passion-dominated lust and desire. Wrath, pride, cunning, deception, hypocrisy, greed, hatred, fear, envy, approbation and condemnation, like and dislike-consciousness riddled with these emotions can never be accessible. What it is that is so riddled, so attracted by strong emotions? Not the inanimate, the unconscious. Wrath never descends upon the inanimate. Does the wall ever take offence? It the walls of our rooms were to be moved by anger, man's plight would be pitiable beyond thought. The coarse cloth upon which we sit is never hurt. We place our feet on it, and it says nothing. Just try to place your feet on another man's head! The bare touch would make the victim flare up. But the poor piece of cloth is never angry, never exhibits pride.
The inanimate displays no anger and pride, neither deceit nor hypocrisy. But man cheats man; the animate being deceives its fellows. That the inanimate should cheat the animate has never been seen or heard of. All the circumventions and deceits are conscious man's creation and man alone perpetuates them. It is the sentient, the animate which harbors all the vices; the inanimate, the insentient contains no evil. In the inanimate world, there is only what is- neither good or nor bad. The 'good' and the 'bad' are the creations of a mind conscious mind. As long as the mind dose not realize its true nature, evil is bound to continue.
Meditation is a process of realizing one's conscious self. It is process of awakening awareness. As long as the true nature of consciousness is not seen, all the evil harbour in the mind, in it they find they find their base and support. In such a congenial atmosphere, they grow uninhibited. All the wickedness and the sins have their breeding ground in the mind; it is here that they find their nature. Provide with a solid foundation, these grow even through the conscious being providing this support continues in pain. A queer situation! The landlord suffers hardship while the tenant prospers. It is not easy to evict the tenant. To free consciousness of all impurities is an arduous task. The general conception that one's nature is unchangeable is not altogether wrong. The conditioning of centuries cannot be easily done away with. However the meditation is a process which gradually washes away all accumulated grease and as the grease get cleansed away, the element sticking to it are also got rid of. The tenant enjoys certain rights by law. He can not be evicted. But a house which is decayed get demolished by heavy rain and storm and in that case all the tenants-the evils and impurities-are obliged to fly. Everything stands changed. This is the transformation sought for.
In this world, there are some things which can be changed and others which can not. All that is unchangeable and eternal must be left alone. However, every state of mind is changeable. there is no state which is permanent. The condition of wrath, for example, is transitory; likewise that of pride. of greed, of like and dislike and a thousand of passion which are forever fleeting. All these are changeable. All attachments and all actions are subject to change, and it is therefore possible to change them.Of course the fundamental elements remain constant. There are two such types of elements-the sentient and the insentient, these abide. The sentient can not become a insentient and vice versa. The state of mind change continually. When this truth is clearly understood, all irrelevant impressions by themselves fall off. These dissolution and irrelevant impression is the beginning of transformation. The consciousness of spiritual practitioner transcend all conditioning. His conduct then may appear to be somewhat strange through as a matter of fact all his interest undergo a sea-change, all his attachment die with the experiencing of Supreme Bliss; small pleasures become insignificant and lose their charm for him. Interest in material things last only as long as one has not experienced that state which transcends the previous one. Meditation marks the beginning of that suprasensuous state of complete non-identification. Metter is than seen as simply matter is prized only for its utility. Breathing is vital to life, food and water are necessary for its sustenance, likewise clothing and shelter. Their procurement becomes purely a matter of utility, without any undue attachment. Thus comes into being an entirely new state of mind.
It is to meditation that thoughts owes the development of its creative power. Tranquility is the means thereto- that is the absence of emotional excitement.
Deceit gives rise to suspicion. Without deceit there can be no suspicion, the social atmosphere today has been no polluted that man has lost faith altogether. He does not trust anybody. The son does not trust his own father, nor the father on his son.
Napoleon once said, "There is no such word as 'impossible' in my dictionary." Similarly the word 'faith' has no place in the modern man's dictionary. Doubt and suspicion stalk the land. Nothing can be taken on trust. Distrust constitutes one of the flaws in the thinking. A man is inclined to doubt. He feels threatened and therefore doubts. There is a saying that a burnt child dreads the fire. Once caught twice shy. If society were free from deceit, a man would have no cause for suspicion.
A merchant was traveling with his consignment. On the way lay an octroi post. The merchant contrived to slip away without paying his dues. The in charge of the post came to know of it later and resolved to be more alert in future. Such an evasion had not occurred before. The merchants used to come to him and pay their dues by themselves. But one of the merchants played foul and got away, the officer-in-charge began to suspect all the merchants that passed by his octroi post. He subjected them all to a rigorous deceived before. One man deceived and now all were suspect. All thinking without faith is faulty and destructive. It can never be balanced or constructive.
Faith has a great significance in life. A life without faith has no foundation whatever. There can be no fulfillment in it. Faith rests on three pillars-capacity, accomplishment and a knowledge of the universal laws.
The first element is capacity. Each man must have faith, he must experience the truth that he is endowed with limitless capacity. The second element is accomplishment. Each man must have faith in his power to accomplish whatever he undertake to do. The third element is a knowledge of the universal laws. Each man must know and abide by these.
To have faith dose not imply dependence upon others. It only means that a man must depend upon himself. One cannot depend upon another; one can only depend on oneself. A man may be said to have complete faith only when he believes in his own boundless capacity, in his power of accomplishing whatever he undertakes to do, and when he knows and abides by the universal laws. Each man must know and abide by these.
We know that we have infinite capacity in ourselves. We also know that through right endeavor man can archive what appears to be impossible.Self-exertion and efforts are ever fruitful. However, there is a limit to what is possible. So one must understand the universal laws.If a man should say to himself, "I am going to exercise my will-power, and my power of concentration and the power of mediation and I'll never die." He is living in the fool's paradise. All his determination and will-power will be of little avail. In time, the man is bound to die. Only abysmal ignorance of the universal laws makes him assert otherwise. Death is inevitable; nothing endures. That is a universal law.
Change is the law of nature. One mode gives a way to another. There may be an interval between birth and death-10 years, a thousand, or a hundred thousand, but ultimately there is dissolution and change; nothing endures. Let us take an atom. It may be black to-day but after some time it would change it colour. The transformation takes place of itself. There is no outside agency to bring it about. That is the universal law. It is so decreed. One colour gives places to another, one birth leads to another, everything changes, nothing endures. Nothing is everlasting. It cannot be otherwise. Birth and death are interchangeable. Whatever is born is born to die.
Books on hath yoga repeatedly refer to substance whose use would make one immortal. Such references are found in books on ayurved. A particular substance is recommended whose use, they say, would keep one eternally young and immortal. It is possible that the man using it might keep young all his life, but that he should never die is altogether impossible. It is no necessary that every man should die of old age; one can die young or keep young for a long time. The talk of young is intelligible but that of keeping alive for ever makes little sense. There is nothing which is eternal, which does not perish in course of time. The occurrence of such a reference is ancient texts along with details of experiments performed has created a misunderstanding that a man can alive for ever. On the basis some people gone to the extent of declaring publicly that they have conquered death through meditation. However, it remains an illusion. What a ancient writers wrote must be read in a specific context. "Eternally young and deathless" probably meant that a man would be healthy and not die prematurely. But the spirit was overlooked and the mere letter cherished, leading to a monstrous misunderstanding.
To doubt means to repudiate a probability. A sceptic rejects a probability outright; we must cultivate faith so as not to deny it blindly. Let us understand once for all the one great flaw in thinking; an original, an altogether new idea is presented, and the man immediately reacts by saying 'it's impossible!'
Today we see an aero plane flying high in the sky. None can deny it. Nobody doubts. But in the day before the invention of the aero plane, the principle of an American college is reported to have said to a parish priest, "It is not far when man would fly high in the sky." And the priest immediately reported, "It is impossible! What rot you talk!" What an irony that after 35 years it was the two sons of the same priest who first flew in the air.
To deny a probability is the greatest air.
Some scientists today are reported to be busy developing genes. They have made some progress and it is quit possible that i the course of time they are able to create synthetic genes. Yet many people today ridicule it as an impossibility. "How can be genes can created?" they ask.
It is sheer prejudice that stands in the way of our accepting something entirely new. Why should a probability be discounted after all? All development have been based upon recognizing a new possibility.
A Jain classic entitled Yoniprabhrit records in detail all possible combinations and permutations of the animate and the inanimate in various forms of existence. It is surprising that despite extraordinary advances in modern scientific research, the technique of developing an embryo in the test-tube has been entirely successful. However, in the Yoniprabhrit we came across the possibility of creating all kinds of living beings. There occur a mention of this or that individual having created a thousand he-buffaloes, horses etc. A particular instance is that of a king disciple who knelt before his Guru. "Master!" said the king, "The enemy is assaulted in our town. I am not in a position to halt the adversary. You alone may do something to save us." The guru's heart was filled with pity at the plight of his devoted disciple. He made use of his knowledge gained from his study of Yoniprabhrit, and threw a bit of powder in to the pond from where thousands of horseman instantly emerged. It was an unending stream. The aggressor were quit baffled by the spectacle of a huge cavalry advancing to annihilate them and they took to their heels.
On another occasion the Acharya was reading to his pupils from Yoniprabhrit. The subject was, "The technique of Fish Production." A fisherman to be passing that way. His attention was arrested and he stopped to listen carefully to the whole account of the technique. The very next day he experimented with it. Soon his pond swarmed fish.
The modern word for this technique would be genetic engineering; it is an ancient technique.
The point to be emphasized is that we should never shut the door on any probability. The cultivation of faith means openness of various possibilities. Wherever there is this openness, there is right thinking. There is then no prejudice. Prejudice exists only where there is no open mindedness.
Wrong thinking has its breeding ground is impulsiveness. A king was walking bare-footed. A thorn prick caused him much pain. He called his minister and told him. "See, what pain a thorn pick gives! Many of my subjects walk bare-footed. They are subject to this suffering. Why don't you covered the whole area of my kingdom wither leather so that no one ever suffers a thorn prick?" This order was a outcome of an impulse. In his irrational enthusiasm it did not occur to the king that if the whole earth was covered with the leather where would the wheat grow and what would people and animals eat?
There is the tale of King Midas of Greece who played to God that whatever he touched might be turn into gold. All food and drink, the moment he laid his hand on these, turned into gold, leaving him hungry and thirsty. His daughter came running to him and the king embraced her; instantly she too turned into gold. There upon the king realized how foolish he had been. He prayed to God again, desiring him to take back his gift.
All passions lead to perverted thinking. No right decision is possible in a state of frenzy. If people came to see the truth thereof, many lawyers and judges would become superfluous. Men go to court when they are highly wrought. If their agitation could be somehow resolved, 75% of these cases in the law-courts would stand resolved too.
I am told that in West Germany an experiment is on. The man who goes to the file a criminal case there, is made to site quietly in a vacant room for 5-6 hours. Only then do consultations begin. It has been founded that 70% of the would-be litigants return without filing a case, because what brought them to court was a highly wrought condition, and as soon as their agitation subside they were at peace and disinclined to pursue the matter any further.
We have gone into some aspects of constructive and destructive thinking. There are other aspects too. To ensure constructive thinking, it is necessary to change one's circumstances and the only way to change one's condition of life is through an integrated and pure mind.
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