From IIM Ahmedabad To Happiness

Author(s): Vijay K Jain
Publisher: Vikalp Printers

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HEALTH IS MORE THAN WEALTH
when some serious illness supervenes, the person grows suspicious of life and believes that the time for death has come. Add to this the effect to be produced on the mind by the visit of specialists, the whispering of anxious relatives and friends, the solemn and sacred looks of the attendants, the consultations with the family lawyer regarding property matters, and it can be easily seen how the combined influence of these depressing and dispiriting events will act as a most powerful suggestion for death which the subjective mind will have no alternative but to adopt. The effect of such a forcible suggestion is that it renders the mind unconscious of its own operations, paralyzes the brain and breaks up the nervous connections.
The cure of the ills and ailments lies, to a large extent, in a reversal of this wrong process. To counteract the evil effects of harmful suggestions, one has to remove the existing evil and then prevent its recurrence. Thus, while the suggestion which is the cause of the trouble has to be removed, we have to be on guard against all possible evil and harmful suggestions in the future. Since ages, the influence of the mind over our body has been recognized. Mark Twain, in his characteristic style, had made this observation:
The mind exercises a powerful influence over the body. From the beginning of time, the sorcerer, the interpreter of dreams, the fortune-teller, the charlatan, the quack, the wild medicine-man, the educated physician, the mesmerist, and the hypnotist have made use of the client's imagination to help them in their work. They have all recognized the potency and availability of that force.
- In Christian Science
The suggestion of 'wholeness' may be made by one person to another; it may also be made by the patient himself in which case it is known as auto-suggestion. Other things being equal, an autosuggestion is more potent than a suggestion from an extraneous
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