Facing Pain Continued

Question: Here you touch the fringe of a very important question. Who can say that our thoughts are quite 'right'?

Answer : True. The term 'right' yields newer and newer shades of meaning as our mental clarity increases. We may even at some stage realise that what appears as the indvidual thinker is in fact one of the infinite modes in which the cosmic can manifest.

Question : When such a glimpse comes, values must undergo a total overhauling!

Answer: Yes. Let us have one more look at the play of forces in and around us. We know that a good deal of time elapses between the first appearance of a thought in us and its final effective manifestation in physical terms in daily life. From this standpoint we can regard all pain-causing visible combinations of today as the mere expression, in the sense-world, of old thought forces. They are like ships that loaded our cargo long ago, and slowly started moving towards us down the channels of creative energy. Likewise, no doubt, our right thoughts that are loaded into the vessels of today will catch us up somethere in the future and deliver the goods duly. In other words, pain of some sort is likely to persist till evolutionary forces pick up our present right thoughts and alter the picture by depositing them in appropriate forms in and around us.

Question : The wisest course then, is to stress right thoughts whenever and wherever we can, and stoutly refuse to be thrown off our balance by the attacks of the wonderfully re-incarnating entity, Pain.

Answer : Heroes learn to ignore them, while they press forward with the best thoughts they can command. Manure in one form may be foul-smelling; but the plant transforms it into a sweet-smelling flower. Heroes similarly, take up what we call 'pain' and transform it into the divine energy that heals and saves.

-Swami Nisreyasanandaji -

[Flights To Nobler Heights]

Facing Pain - Question & Answer

Question: Why did you put a stress on pain which is past?

Answer : The principle applies equally to the present pain. What we call 'present' is in reality the point at which we experience the lump called 'future' passing into the vast stretch we call 'past'. That is the very point at which we can function creatively. But it quickly slips out of our grasp, giving place to another instalment of 'now'. By the 'time' we notice the pain of the first 'point' and snatch a weapon to hit, that 'point', and perhaps a few more are gone into the past! And as we saw, it is futile to cry over the past.

Question : So your mental discipline is a long-range programme. And your aim is to avoid the pain that is likely to arise in the future, if things are left to themselves.

Answer : Certainly; that is what any wise man should attempt to do. Many pains come because our disordered mental forces give a 'twist' to the energies that condense into 'events' and 'relationships'. The remedy is to harmonise all possible mental forces and allow them to condense into appropriate factors in the environment. We replace wrong thinking by right thinking, faulty vision by correct vision.

Question : It is not so simple as it looks.

Answer : All good work is slow. What, do we think, is life for, if we consider the practice of right thinking to be tedious affair?

Question : To what extent can this right thinking eliminate pain?

Answer : Let us regard thought as a subtle 'pulling' force. A little reflection will show that all important thoughts are charged with special emotioins and meanings. When such thoughts are repeated, knowingly, or unknowingly, we make stronger and stronger creative stresses, thus altering the total aspect of the world of suble forces. It is easy to guess what will happen if A pulls an object with a certain force, and B pulls it at the same time, in another direction, with twice that force. The object will move in the direction of the diagonal of the parallelogram, the two forces constituting two of its sides. Now apply this principle to the world of thoughts. Our right thinking will correspond to one side of the figure, while thinking of all other - good or bad - will form the second side. We cannot expect things to move exactly as we intend. For due allowance must be made to the thought of the rest; and the latter, certainly, is a major force. Our satisfaction lies in the fact that our thoughts will not go altogether in vain; for they too exert a pull. Because of this 'combined' pull, there can never be a time when pain is fully eliminated from our environment, however much we may believe that the thoughts from our side are all of the 'right ' type.

Question: Here you touch the fringe of a very important question. Who can say that our thoughts are quite 'right'?

Answer:... next instalment! :-)