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THE ART OF POSITIVE THINKING
A man had artificial teeth. On retiring at night he put his denture in a bowl full of water. A child happened to come to his room and taking the denture to be a kind of toy, escaped with it. On rising in the morning, the man looked for his denture but it was nowhere to be found. He thought hard and it occurred to him that most probably he had forgotten to take his denture out as usual, and had instead swallowed it in sleep. Immediately he felt an unbearable pain in his stomach. He was beside himself with pain. A doctor was called in. On hearing the story, the doctor said the man will have to be operated upon to extract the denture out of his stomach. The situation became very critical. The extreme pain he experienced was very real but its basis was purely imaginary. Just at that inoment, the child appeared with the denture in his hand. The moment the man saw his denture, his pain disappeared. He grew perfectly normal.
Such occurrences in our lifc show that man is not killed by disease, but by fear.
The seventh state of fear is that of disgrace. What would Mrs. Grundy say? Man is afraid of infamy. He wants a stainless reputation, his prestige high, his name untarnished. To keep up his prestige, he would even take recourse to false principles, and willingly suffer all kinds of inconveniences. Behind all this lies the fear of disgrace. To maintain his reputation, a man would go to any lengths, even to the extent of committing a grievous wrong.
Sadhaks (meditators) practising preksha must be able to distinguish between fear and the situation of scar; thcsc are not ono but two different things. That is the crux of this discourse.
Th
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