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86
THE ART OF POSITIVE THINKING
a shadow. I had no intention of plucking the mango and mangoeating is forbidden to me, and yet this mango has landed into my lap. Now, I'm not going to eat it. But may I not look at it even? Am I to be denied the luxury of smelling it? O how delectable, how delicious!" The king handled the fruit most tenderly. So many eyes on him! Blast them!
When the urge within grows dominant, all restraint falls away. The king kissed the mango-piece in his hand almost transfixed. Then his hand gradually moved towards his mouth. The minister withheld it instantly, saying, "Your Majesty! You don't know what you are doing! The physician has forbidden it. No mango-eating for you. A little bite would spell your doom; you'll die." And thus we find the king standing nonplussed, caught between two minds, one urging him to eat, the other to heed his minister's injunction not to eat. But let us not get involved too much with the story; we are only concerned with its moral.
The mind is full of contradictory ideas and desires, giving rise to confusion and disorder. A man finds himself in a dilemma. "What idea to follow, which desire to pursue?" he asks himself and there does not seem to be any clear answer.
There are several minds at work, not one; the mind at dawn, the mind at noon, and at evenfall. The mind at the midnight hour, the mind during sleep, the mind on waking are all different. Early in the morning, a man may say to himself. "I'm going to fast today." But as the lunch hour approaches and pungent smells from the kitchen greet one's nose, one finds oneself quietly sitting down to eat! "Fasting is good, but I'll fast tomorrow." How swiftly does the mind change!
The lack of an integrated mind, its continual restlessness and changeability could serve for us as a turning point, from which we could directly proceed to the exploration of the unconscious. The problemi posed by the conscious mind can be resolved by the unconscious. If the mind were wholly conscious, it would not be so changeable. The known has limits, but thic unknown is unlimited. Our conduct can be fully explained and understood only in the perspective of the vast unknown. Modern psychology has explored the unconscious and revealed how it functions. Thus modern psychology may be said to have moved from the gross everyday world into a subtler one. Without the concept of depth psychology, wc would be limited by the known, palpable world of everyday living-- only whatcvcr is known, whatever is perceptiblc, whatever is audible, would have been the centre of our activity. However, the analysis of the unconscious mind takes a man to a much dccper level. The visiblc part of the iceberg alonc docs not constitute the whole. The island is not all; it is only a little picce of ground
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