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THE MYSTERIES OF MIND
tensions. Two questions crop up in this connection: Are these remedies not harmful to the general health of the patients? Is not electricity going to replace drugs and medicines? Medicines and drugs produce dangerous reactions in the patients and even damage some parts of their bodies. They even create complications in the minds of the patients. The biggest problem is how to stop dangerous reactions both physical and mental in the patients.
Let us consider the value of prekṣā meditation in the above context. Can prekṣā meditation take the place of medicines and drugs? The question can be answered in the affirmative. The small experiments that we do in the course of the exercises in this meditation can achieve that which medicenes and drugs can not. The question we have to consider is how to give rest to the minds of the patients or in other words how to stop the thinking process. Käyotsarga, more than any other method of treatment, gives complete rest to the brain and comfort to the nervous system. Neither medicines nor electricity can do so. Meditation can bring the mental processes to a halt. Prekṣa meditation is śvāsa prēkṣā meditation (meditation on breath). When the mind is engaged in perceiving the body and its constituents, the external framework of reference of mind comes to disappear. If we could engage ourselves in prekṣā even for half an hour, we shall be certainly benefitted. It is capable of achieving much.
Emperor Bharata achieved great powers through prekṣā meditations. One day, having washed himself and having put on his clothes, he went into the adarśagṛha made of glass. The looking glasses in this house reflected every object. Bharata saw a number of reflections and one of them attracted his attention. He cast a long glance on it without twinkling his eyes. Prekṣā meditation began. He became lost in meditation while watching his own reflection in the glass. After perceiving his gross body for some time, he began to perceive his subtle body. He perceived in his subtle body the fruition of his past deeds (karma). It was a new and strange world he perceived. He kept his gaze fixed on the reflection and whatever modifications it assumed. He perceived the auspicious turns in his mind and lesyas and
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