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izs
THE MYSTERIES OF MIND
tensions. The relief you get by a two hours' sleep can be got by half an hour's cxercise in kāyotsarga.
Mental patients are administered electrical shocks to make them go to sleep. A twentyfive minutes' sleep brought about by electrical shock is equal to a six hours' natural 'leep. Half an hour's exercise in käyotsarga is capable of giving that much of rest which a two three hours' sleep can give. It makes the practitioner feel a lightness which natural sleep cannot give.
Meditation is a very good remedy for mental tensions. Let us meditate on a single subject. During the meditation we will live in the present moment. The tension will automatically subside. The meditator will begin to feel that he is growing lighter.
Too much thinking produces mental tension. Thinking is also a disease. There are people who remain absorbed in thoughts for nothing. They feel that thinking is the sumum bonum of life. If you do something for a specific purpose, it is commendable. But purposeless thinking is not good. It makes the mind heavy. We can get control over such a situation by meditation. We should think only as much as is necessary. We should stop it as soon as it becomes unnecessary.
Once we were camping in Ujjain during the four months of the rainy season. We had drawn up the plan of compiling and editing the Jaina agamas (original scriptures). I realized that it was a tremendous task. It required a lot of time and labour, and, therefore, we had to draw up a time-table. We were busy in other matters also. I thought of a way out. I divided the working day into three parts. One part was to be devoted to self-study, another to research work and the third to personal sādhanā. I decided to devote three hours every day to the compiling and editing of the scriptures. I also decided that as soon as the time fixed for a particular work was over, it should be immediately stopped and forgotten so that the next engagement could be taken up without any hang-over. When the whole day's work was done, it should be taken to have been finished and I was not to worry about what was to be done the next day. This time-table enabled me to work on
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