Family and Nation

Author(s): Mahapragna Acharya, A P J Abdulkalam
Publisher: Harper Publications India

Page 61

THE EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS AND PAIN
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This brings us to a most important factor in the situation, namely, the creative power of thought. This power is the most fundamental and potent factor in human life. The saying, Thoughts are things, is startlingly true. Every time we think a thought, we are making a thought form which may become a living force. It floats in our sensations and becomes a part of our mental atmosphere, a part of our very life.
The next step in the activity of creative thought is that it clothes itself in the substance of desire and emotion. This step has two effects: first, it may lead to corresponding action; second, thought forms not calling for immediate action may be stored in the memory as patterns for future use. We have access to them at any time; thus they may eventually appear as physical realities in our environment, making it good or bad according to our thoughts. Therefore, if we wish to change our environment and our fortune, we must change our thoughts. By so doing, we will be making a new and good destiny.
The destructive desires and emotions such as anger, hate, revenge and resentment—but particularly anger-disrupt and disarrange the thought forms and the thought creations of good which we have previously made, and thereby delay their materialization. When we have yielded to anger or revenge, for instance, and dissipated some mental creation of good, the corresponding thought form configuration has to reassemble itself before materialization can proceed. This takes time and delays the period of a favourable change in our environment or general fortune.
How can one avoid harmful thoughts and desires and keep them out of one's mind? It seems almost impossible at times to keep them from slipping in. The answer is, thought substitution. It is based on the principle that two thoughts cannot occupy the mind at the same time, and is similar