Anyone can close his eyes and visualise beautiful scenes when his affairs continue to prosper. But things alter considerably when pain makes an unexpected and violent onslaught. In most cases the surface movements of the mind undergo tremendous modifications. These indicate the upheavals in the deeper levels of the personality. The intensity and nature of these modifications vary according to the measure of self-control achieved by the person concerned. He who is least prepared breaks down and is overpowered. But he who has intergrated his inside by suitable discipline remains impenetrable. He may also transfer the 'fight' into subtler front, where his visibility is perfect, and attain eventual mastery. But all manoeuvering, whether, it be for time or for assembling of available resources at more unassailable levels, is possible only if the mind is unruffled and the vision steady. That is why poets have chanted that 'they alone are wise and heroic, whose mind remain poised even when there is sufficient cause for perturbation.'
Leaving aside military terms and chisselled expressions of poets, what do we find when we go through the ordeal of pain ourselves? We find that pain, although past, is yet capable of rousing up a host of unhappy memories and of making us helpless spectators of their weird dances. Fortunately, like other movements, they too fade away after a time, and there is usually a fair interval before they commence again. The first step in any mental discipline is to use such intervals and teach oneself the utter futility, nay the serious danger, of such brooding. When once the practice starts, it carries its own momentum and, like a river, carves its own channel for further progress. (To be continued)
