Mysteries of Mind

Author(s): Mahapragna Acharya
Publisher: Today and Tomorrows Book Agency

Page 34

DEVELOPMENT OF THE FORCE OF RESISTANCE
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temporary relief from the adverse effects they produce in us. But such a measure will not succeed in making us permanently immune from these adverse effects. Our efforts should be directed towards freedom from the adverse effects of the nimitta or instrumental causes of these effects. It will be wholly wrong to make ourselves permanently invalid or paralysed so that all further activity on our part is stopped once for all. Our attempt should be directed towards keeping the sense-organs, the nervous system and the brain as healthy and wholesome as to enable them to collaborate with us in our spiritual progress.
Some people out of sheer ignorance take up such spiritual exercises which do them immense harm. Instead of being given to real austerities, they adopt austerities which are so only in name. They reduce their bodies and render the nervous system so weak that their exertion becomes a retrogressive affair rather than a real spiritual progress.
Austerities in the real sense of the term have the purpose of developing the vital force. There can be no real development of consciousness apart from the development of vital energy. Both must run parallel to each other. The purpose of austerities is not to weaken but to strengthen vital energy. To think of reducing vital energy is a mistake and it must be avoided. Reduced vital energy defeats the very purpose of religion.
We have to keep the centres of vital energy active. The main problem for the practitioner is how to avoid the adverse consequences produced by the instrumental agencies. The way out is the control of the operation of the substantial causes.
Human beings are living a mechanical life today. The invention of computers has proved that man is a mechanical being. Each and every thing which he can do is being done by computers. Computers compose poems, frame questions and answer them. They solve the most complicated mathemetical problems, memorize, predict future events, think, offer criticism, perform analyses and distinguish one thing from another.
What is then the difference between man and the machine? The difference is that the human being has a soul