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THE ART OF POSITIVE THINKING
himself lost in a process of self-contradiction. The mind presents one argument and instantly supplants it with another. All our knowledge is based on authority. Unless based on direct experience, all action flowing from some belief or tradition will be unreliable --- like a house built on sand, without much substance.
Reason furnishes no reliable basis. Preksha, direct perception, is the only strong foundation. Preksha is the way of direct experience which is not vitiated by any argument. Preksha means, "know and see for yourself." Here there is no belief involved, no verbalisation, no choice-only perceiving and knowing. Whatever is known and seen is valid, the rest is unknown and dark. One knows and sees what is, the real. Acharya Bhikshu said, "If doubt arises in the mind, resolve it at once." Consult others and try to understand what they say. If what is said is logical, accept it; if not, forgo it, saying, "It is beyond me right now. I can't perceive the truth of it." After all no one man holds the monopoly of truth. You can't say, "Whatever I think is right." Such an assumption can never be valid, so abandon it. No stubbornness! Don't be too cocksure. At the most one can say, "I am not able to see what you mean. May be you are right, my understanding is at fault. But I cannot accept it until I see the truth of it." This is the straight and sole path to arrive at truth.
Let us tread the right path. The right path is to know the body, to learn the laws governing it, to perceive how ignorance prevails. Ignorance has two factors—a subtle body (in the terminology of the Karma doctrine) and a gross body with glands and glandular systems (in the terminology of science). In the subtle body are accumulated a multitude of impressions, elements of physical ignorance in such abundance that when these get activated, they give rise to a diversity of emotional situations. Now it is anger, now pride, or lust, or hatred, or envy or attachment, or it may be like, dislike, or fear - all these impulses and emotions are different forms of ignorance. And these emotional behaviours are continually coming into being. That is what the doctrine of Karma lays down.
The other view—that of physiology--traces the origin of emotions and impulses, of fear, anger, bellicosity, etc. to reactions caused in the body by outer stimuli.
We have to understand the gross body, also the subtle body. Without knowing both these bodies, the talk of knowing the soul appears to be meaningless. I am not saying that you should not believe in God or the soul. I only suggest that you need not confine yourself to merely believing you need not get stuck up there but may forge ahead into the sphere of perceiving. In childhood one accepts what is given. But to be stuck up in childish mentality, never to outgrow it, cannot be right. If one remains a child for ever, never
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