Brijmohan takes a closer look at the difference between body and soul
A
burdened mind may snatch some fleeting, short-lived moments of
pleasure, but it cannot experience true happiness. Remaining always
light is the key to happiness. In today’s conditions, the ability to
take yourself and everything around you lightly is perhaps the number
one capability to cultivate. There is a vital need to develop the
inner powers to ‘take it easy’, come what may.
It is widely
understood that the state of a person’s mind depends upon his attitude
to people and objects present and to the events occurring around him.
There is also a well-known saying: “you cannot change events, but you
can change your attitude towards them.” Yet when actual situations
arise, attitudinal change is difficult because of the mind-set already
formed.
Attitude is determined by prides and prejudices, desires
and ambitions, priorities and preferences, needs and compulsions.
These, in turn, are influenced by habits and addictions, learnings and
dependencies, beliefs and outlook, whims and fancies and a host of
other factors. Pre-dispositions thus formed produce certain mental
pulls and pushes which determine responses and reactions to external
situations. That’s why attitudes towards the same event vary from
person to person. New paradigms are called for to break the old
mind-sets and create inner capabilities that can automatically take
care of anything that comes your way.
The first fundamental
attitudinal change for remaining ‘light’ always is to make a firm
resolve to do so. As you think, so you become. The word ‘light’, in
the spiritual sense, also means enlightenment that dispels the inner
darkness of ignorance, illusion, doubt and confusion. This enables you
to visualise things in their true form. As a result, deception is
eliminated. Confidence and clarity change conditions of fear and
anxiety into those of joy and happiness. From this follows the second
attitudinal change: Consider life as a celebration and not as a
struggle or war zone. Greetings and good wishes exchanged at
celebrations are always a source of great joy and happiness. Likewise,
to become a well-wisher of all is the easiest way to make your life a
celebration.
At the root of your attitude lies your belief
system. The greatest common basic flaw in today’s belief-system is
body-consciousness, i.e. identifying yourself with the mortal body
instead of the immortal entity called ‘soul’ that you truly are. This
identity-crisis is the mother of all other crises. The eternal you—the
soul—is a sentient entity, an imperishable point of light. Your
original innate qualities are love, peace, happiness and bliss. As
long as you remain established in the state of soul-consciousness and
use your body as an instrument, you will remain light because, firstly,
your very existence is that of being sentient light and secondly, your
thoughts, words and actions will be in conformity with your innate
qualities.
As it is made of matter, the body and its sense
organs can only give sensual pleasures which are short-lived and
dependent upon external factors. Body-consciousness leads to adoption
of material values which affect the mind, destroying the pristine
purity of your innate qualities and, in fact, of the entire
thought-process. As a result, jealousy, hatred, anger and other types
of negativity lead to unrighteous thoughts and wrongful actions.
Negativity produces waste thoughts and increases the number and speed
of your thoughts. This dilutes the quality of thoughts, and
consequently, the quality of life. Waste thoughts produce attitudinal
maladies like doubts, apprehensions, fear, etc. and take away from all
the zest and zeal of life. This results in lethargy and laziness. In
this way, negativity weakens the mind and it becomes prone to external
influences.
Self-realisation or soul-consciousness on the
other hand brings home the truth that the soul’s original qualities of
love, peace, happiness and bliss are all non-material, like the soul
itself. Even the negative traits or perversions like ego, anger,
hatred, jealousy or the stresses and strains produced by these vices
are non-material in nature. Hence, the required corrective action in
this respect has essentially to be taken at the level of your basic
beliefs. An inner journey is therefore an essential pre-requisite for
enjoying a happy external journey through this life and beyond.
Self-realisation
enables you to easily let go of the past. Instead of regretting, it
enables you to gain valuable experience from past mistakes and increase
your powers of tolerance and patience. When one begins to learn from
mistakes, the meaning of the saying ‘everything happens for the best’
becomes clear. Mistakes are not repeated. Attention helps avoid
tension. Reduction in waste thoughts improves the quality of
thoughts.
Will-power is the aggregate of all your inner
powers like tolerance, discrimination, judgement, concentration, and
co-operation. The will of a person with a good reservoir of inner
powers shall always prevail. Hence, the saying ‘where there is a will,
there is way.’ Strong will-power enables you to transform a situation
of possible failure into that of success—just as in a game of cricket,
a good batsman converts a dangerous looking ball into a four-er or
six-er by a mere flick of his bat. Strong will-power not only protects
you from adverse outside influences, it empowers you to exert influence
on the external environment; much in the same way as rose seed produces
fragrant roses even from a heap of foul-smelling rubbish. Zeal and
enthusiasm is a natural outcome of success and becomes, in turn, the
motive power for further success. Moving from success to success will
always keep you in good spirits. This is the formula to remain light
and happy under all conditions and circumstances.
How to
increase will-power? It is not a physical power to be acquired by any
material means. Wasteful and negative thinking have to be eliminated
to increase will-power. The dilemma, however, is that they arise when
will-power is weakened, whereas it takes strong will-power to destroy
them. So, how to go about it? Just as negativity reduces will-power,
it is positive thinking that generates it. Inculcation of virtues like
humility, contentment, detachment and compassion, a simple life-style,
good company, purity of food and becoming a well-wisher of all will
help you do that.
Brijmohan is the Editor of Purity newspaper and Secretary of the Rajayoga Educational Research Foundation.
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