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90
THE ART OF POSITIVE THINKING
home, he brooded over the unseemly conduct of his brother and worked himself into a paroxysm of anger. When he entered the house, his eyes were blood-shot and his face was tense. The younger brother wondered what had happened. He said to himself, "Whenever my brother comes, he is full of love and laughter, but today he is inflamed with rage. Why?" He greeted him but the elder brother averted his face and did not acknowledge his greeting. At this, the younger brother said, "Respected brother, what's the matter with you? You have not even returned my greeting!" The elder one said, "And what do you care for me? I specially wrote to you, asking you to send the bullock-cart to the railway station, but you never sent it! I had to plod along all that distance on foot." The younger brother exclaimed in surprise "My God! But you never said anything about it in your letter!" The elder one said, "Get me the letter and I'll show you." The letter was brought and the elder brother who was literate, read out the relevant portion. The younger brother protested, “But the letter-reader never told me so. You know there is only one person in the cntire village who can read. I took your letter to him. He never said anything about your coming. What could I do?" Both brothers went to the letter-reader and asked him why he had omitted to tell that the bullock-cart should be sent to the railway station for fetching the elder brother. The letter-reader kept mum. What could he say? The wretch did not know how to read despite his cursory knowledge of the alphabet.
Such things happen. Even a semi-literate man among the totally illiterate, comes to look upon himself as a V.I.P. But the whole scene stands transformed today. There has been grcat development in various fields. Man has progressed so much in different directions that he is quite distinguishable from his ancestors in the distant past. It must be readily admitted that man has learnt a great deal from his circumstances. From philosophy to manifold branches of various disciplines, man's study has been extensive and he has been very ardent in the accumulation of new knowledgc.
Both points-of-view are valid. One relates to the conditioning background, the other to inner consciousness. There is the conscious mind as well as the unconscious; both influence our conduct. Our effort is to bring about a thorough change of heart through proper utilization of both these powers.
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