Mysteries of Mind

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

Page 63

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THE MYTERIES OF MIND
higher level he comes to know that his path is no more winding and thorny. But for those who have not attained this stature, the struggle is a life, and death struggle. They cannot proceed even a single step forward until they have conquered all the enemies whose combined attack seems to be baffling. This struggle takes place only at an advanced stage of sādhana and not in the beginning when the influx of alien matter in the soul and man's natural tendencies are not so hard-pressed as to offer fierce resistance. Their resistance increases in intensity with the advancement of sādhana and in the face of the practitioner's determined assault on their lines of defence. They counter-attack like an enraged cobra terribly hissing and striking when cornered. They will behave in their normal way and peacefully if they are not challenged. But once the practitioner has challenged them with the intention to uproot them from their base which they have been rooted in for centuries in the past, they become fierce. It is at this juncture that the practitioner is in dire need of a guide or guru. If he does not get a guru, he is likely to lose heart and withdraw from the battle. The practitioner has to exercise great restraint and patience at this middle stage of sādhanā.
The practitioner has to adopt several means to bring the battle to a successful end. He has to be fully prepared from the very beginning of sādhanā. The following are the means he has to adopt :
1. To watch breathing. 2. To watch the body. 3. To watch the psychic centres. 4. To give up eating. 5. Fasting. 6. Eating very little. 7. Exercises in physical postures.
A fully-equipped practitioner will never lose the battle. He will continue to advance even in the face of fierce opposition.
A scientist engaged himself in an experiment for thirty years. His thesis was that by chewing food instead of swallowing one becomes less sadist. It appears to be a strange thesis.