Thought Power And Practical Idealism - I
Altar of Truth demands the oblations of mental rigidity, harshness, self-assertion, eccentricity and egoism. Train yourself for that Truth which knows no partiality, no sex, no wandering gleam, O man. There is stain of error in daily experience of man. That is why his life is defaced and disfigured. Men have become vinegar for each other's eyes by their wrong Thoughts.
The ice of ill-will is chilling their heart. Men are bound to each other by every sort of tie, by blood, by pride, by fear, by hope, by lucre, by lust, by hate, by admiration, by every circumstance, but not by Spiritual love. This is all due to wrong Thoughts.
The wise man makes an island which no flood can overwhelm. The scent of flowers does not travel against the wind, but the odour of a wise man travels against the wind; he pervades every place by his Thoughts. He is like a snowy mountain which can be seen from afar.
O man! If you fill your lamp with water you will not be able to dispel the darkness. Feed your lamp with the oil of right Thoughts. Let the right views become the torch to light your way. Do not seek to gratify your vanity and self-seeking pride.
On the brink of Truth man is miserably dying. All evil Thoughts are embodied in bad physiognomies. But there is nothing to despair, because there is never darkness without light. There is always a sublime answer to every human need. All things are possible to those who believe in the possibility.
O man! Raise your sight to right direction and use right Laws. Set in motion positive Thoughts. Remember your objective. It is easy to be diverted into an excursion into side-tracks.
A holy Thought is a voice. It speaks when the tongue is silent. It struggles and comes out of all obstructions serenely and no power on the earth can suppress it for a long period. O man! Do not trade in unrealities.
Do not try to embrace happiness in a thousand ways. The faster you will follow it the swifter it will fly from you. Do not become a thorn for yourself as well as for others.
Change the direction of your Thoughts. Scrutinize your Thoughts. Where necessity ends, curiosity begins. No sooner you are supplied with everything, than you sit down and entertain the Thoughts of artificial appetites. That is why you have crossed the boundary of Law.
By your own Thoughts you make or mar your world. Inevitable Law of Reaction is such, O man! that whatever you will harbour in the inmost chamber of your heart, will shape itself in your outward life. Chance seems to form the surface of reality, but deep down, Thought-forces are at work. Nothing in this Universe and in daily behaviour is merely accidental. So improve your Thoughts.
Real action is in silent moments. Purified Thought revives the entire manner of life; it tells the man quietly "you have done thus but it were better done some other way".
The Thoughts you entertain during the time of reflection, let them not become inaudible when you are engrossed in daily duties. Arm yourself with the sublime Thoughts.
By no other way does one come directly to the knowledge of Truth, than through one's own thinking and experience. Divine Thought reduces centuries and makes itself present through all ages. Entertain Divine Thoughts.
Thought Power And Practical Idealism - II
Wash off the baser Thoughts with the help of higher Thoughts and when the washing is effected, cling to neither of them. The present state of your experience is due to the thinking, feeling and acting of incalculable past lives. It cannot be easily got rid of without prolonged process of thinking of and practice.
Thought is ancestor of action. If you want to improve your actions purify your Thoughts.
Become a staunch believer in Self-reliance and Self-effort. You can determine your fate by force of Thoughts. As clouds are the main source of rain, so the control of one's own Thoughts is the source of durable prosperity. You are yourself your own friend or enemy. If you will not save yourself by cherishing good Thoughts, there is no other remedy.
Mind is the only creator. Everything is created through the Mind. It is absolutely free in creating a world for itself. Whenever the Mind is referred to as the Creator of external objects, it must be considered as the Cosmic Mind and a part of Ishvara Srishti.
Whenever the Mind is referred to in relation to psychological functions such as love and hatred, etc., it must be considered as the individual Mind and as a part of Jiva Srishti. O man! The real God lives in your heart and the only way to worship the real God residing within the temple of your body is by your own sublime Thoughts. Stop the psychological functions of your Mind and see value only in sublime Thoughts.
The nature of things around you is as you think it to be. Your life is what you make it by your Thoughts. Thoughts are the bricks by which you have built the building of your personality. Thought determines destiny. The world around you is the reflex of your Thoughts.
You experience as you think. Your own imagination plays havoc with you. You have made yourself timid by entertaining the Thoughts of fear. Do not become liberal in imagination.
You are affected by things only in accordance with your idea about them. The Mind sees value only in that in which it has intense faith. Though all of you see the same object, everyone of you attach to it different values. According to your mental propensities you think.
Thought is a creative instrument, and man becomes what he thinks upon. Character is Thought-formed. You are born with what you have Thought upon, and your present character is an index of your previous Thoughts. You create your future by your Thoughts now; if you think nobly, you will be noble in conduct. If you think basely no environment will make you different. Thus, Thoughts and actions are interdependent. Be vigilant and allow only good Thoughts in your mental field.
Everyone of you have a different conception of duty, value, enjoyment and liberation in accordance with your different convictions. You strive after your own ideal.
You work in accordance with your long-standing and intensified Thought and belief. You accomplish and achieve the object of your own desire. Do not let your Mind become denser and denser by allowing it to be engrossed in gross forms. Follow the abstractive process by cherishing the Thoughts of virtue.
Your present life has three aspects, physical, mental and Spiritual. You are tenaciously attached to the physical aspect. Be above physical sensations and other appetites by cherishing the Thoughts that you are not body alone, that you are residing in the temple of a body for a short period only. Be above mental titillations. Subjective action functions in the world of Thought.
Send out a steady stream of Thought and good-will to all creation. The energizing motive behind every Thought should be service and friendliness.
You are sensible of knack, skill and tricks, but there is an overpowering Law which confutes your tricky Thoughts and talents. So do not try to become partial half-light. This Law constrains everyone to pass for what he is. His Thoughts speak from his character and not from his tongue. Do not try to put on an artificial personality. Be genuine and clean in your Thoughts.
The stream of Thought flows in both directions. When it is flowing towards good, it makes for freedom and knowledge. When it is flowing towards the whirlpool of existence, downward towards non-discrimination, it is then flowing towards evil. The thinking faculty, reaches its summit in light, when it acts according to ethical rules.
You are the centre of individual willing, individual thinking, and individual feeling. The enchantment of time and place presents before you heavenly scenes which vanish like optical illusions. You have repeatedly allowed yourself to be mocked by them; that is why your chest is sawed by the friction of sighs, your discriminative power is dried up by the fire of knowledge. The Spiritual goal is held before you. How quickly or how slowly you move towards it, will depend on your Thoughts.
Stand united with your higher Thoughts. You will achieve that goal which is bought by many failures. Become a non-seeker of personal ends and glory. Death will not easily come near you, if you will not wear on your bosom the necklace of vicious Thoughts.
The bliss that accrues from the culture of Mind surpasses even the prosperity of the three worlds, or possession of all kinds of jewels, or acquisition of high office.
Your Mind is Omnipotent. It is capable of accomplishing everything. As you imagine within your Mind, so things happen forthwith. Whatever is intensely Thought by your Mind, that comes to be materialized and effected.
Your Thought is endowed with creative power. It can evolve objects from within itself. It is the only creator. Nothing ever will be created or re-created except through Mind. Thought is the material out of which things are made. All matter is but materialization of Consciousness.
No other Being is responsible for what you acquire, as everything is the consequence of your Thought. The cause of whatever comes to you in life, is within you. No other agency can bestow favours on you, unless you deserve them.
Whatever you get through others, is the outcome of your own Thoughts and efforts. There is nothing in the world which you cannot achieve, when your Thoughts are flowing in the right direction. You should neither become a pessimist nor a misanthrope.
Creative power is the privilege of every Mind. Your own efforts guided by your aspiration are the warp and woof of your destiny. Do not possess a dissipated Mind by cherishing weak Thoughts. Superficial Mind cannot acquire depth of insight.
Control the roving Mind by entertaining one flow of Thought. All that is intensely Thought by you, will come to you early or late, in accordance with the effort you have put in to acquire it.
The extent of space as well as the duration of time are relative to your Thoughts and emotions. You experience as you think. If a moment is imagined to be a long period, it is experienced as such and vice versa. The same period of time is experienced as a long age when you are in trouble, and as a moment when you are happy.
Such is the power of Thought that sweet is experienced as bitter and vice versa by intense Thought. You can turn poison into nectar. Think of Mera. She turned poison into nectar by her intensified Thoughts.
You are surrounded by the forces of antagonism. But if there are no Thoughts of antagonism in you, you can easily return a blessing for a curse. Thus you can control all the forces of antagonism. Struggle hard and check the unwanted mental rush.
The world around you is only what you believe it to be. Your perceptions are coloured by your Thoughts. Your Mind perceives and continues to perceive the things in that very form in which it imagines it to be with full faith. Pierce through and steel-armour of biased Thoughts, and try to see the Divinity in every object.
It is by Thought alone that you get into delusion, undergo the experience of birth and death, are bound in the world and become released from it.
All your states of happiness or misery in heaven or hell, are effects of your own Thoughts. Early or late, in this life or lives to come, all your passing Thoughts will be realized. So, discriminate nicely.
Your present state has been willed by your Thoughts. You can change the present state into another by your own Thoughts. If you believe that you are separate from the Absolute, you are so. If you think yourself to be Brahman, you are so. You limit yourself by your Thoughts.
With each Divine Thought, the Mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and finite and comes out into Eternity, but you are so negligent about your mental factory.
Thought Power And Practical Idealism - III
Your destiny is mapped out by your Thoughts. You have only that much power as you imagine you have. The world around you is as you have willed it to be.
You are living in an Infinite ocean of power and cheerfulness, but you appropriate only so much from it as you think, believe and imagine. Due to certain propensities you cherish certain Thoughts, and you allow your Mind to forment. But by discrimination, you can easily give up the phantasy of Mind.
The limit of your Thought is the limit of your possibilities. Your circumstances and environments are the materialization of your Thoughts. The world experience rises or falls in accordance with your Thoughts. Whatever Thought is cherished by you in the world will be ultimately realized.
Whatever a pure Mind strongly believes something to be, that it soon becomes. Your Thoughts are powerful in proportion to your intensity, depth and warmth. They become so when they are being constantly cherished over and over again. Constant thinking, desiring or imagining of the same idea contributes much to the materialization of that idea.
Develop a pure Mind and whatever objects and worlds you wish to get, you will gain those objects and worlds.
It is true that every Thought you think has its corresponding effect on the whole or some part of human anatomy. The physical body is realized to be subtle by means of constant meditation on its being so. The mental or subtle body becomes physical when it is repeatedly imagined. The secret of success is constant and repeated effort.
Develop strong determination. It is an important factor which will contribute to the realization of your Thoughts. There is nobody who will be able to withstand the power of your determined Mind. You can realize everything.
Your Mind is your objectified Thought. When your Thoughts changed, the body will also change. The Mind creates the body from the material of your own Thoughts. Thought is a force that can change, transform, or at least modify, almost anything in the human system.
The disorder and disharmony of the physical body is called a physical disease and the conflict of the Mind is called a mental disease. Both of them have their ultimate root in ignorance and can be cured only by the knowledge of reality. When you worry about the experiences of the world, a depressing mental disturbance originates in your Mind. By the effect of mental disturbance, the smooth and regular flow of vital currents is disturbed. When the vital currents flow improperly, the Nadis become disorganized. Some of them get more vital energy and some get less. Thus, the whole system becomes out of order. In this way, mental disharmony is the cause of physical diseases, which can be cured only by removing the cause.
Every depressing and disturbing Thought that enters your Brain, has a depressing effect on every cell of your body, and tends to produce disease. All negative Thoughts are forerunners of disease, and they are messengers of Death.
If you want to live long and lead a sensible and healthy life cherish good Thoughts. Subtle and powerful are influences of the Thoughts in building and rebuilding of your body. Be vigilant.
Practically all diseases with their sufferings have their origin in perverted mental and emotional states and conditions. Restoration of mental harmony is absolutely necessary for you. Purify your Thoughts by performing noble actions and by association with wise ones. When your Thoughts are purified the vital currents will begin to flow properly and will clean the whole system.
Every good Thought stimulates the heart, improves the digestive system and promotes the normal action of every gland.
Contentment is another name for the harmony of the Mind. When your Thoughts do not wander to this or that object and when you feel self-satisfied, you are in a state of joy which is unique. If you are happy within, everything appears good and pleasing to you.
Thoughts are the main source of your cheerfulness. Purify your Thoughts; all troubles will be cured.
If you are cherishing peaceful Thoughts the whole world will appear cold, but if negative Thoughts have spread their kingdom then the world will seem to be a hot furnace. No circumstance compels you to cherish evil Thoughts. Do not ruin yourself by your imagination of fate. It has no reality of its own.
Thought is able to reveal reality. Propelled by right Thoughts the wise man is able to come out of most dangerous situations. The whole reality is present in its full potency everywhere, so whatever is intensely Thought of anywhere can be experienced there.
The essential nature of all objects is Thoughts. Materiality is a wrong idea.
As snow melts in water through heat, so Mind becomes subtle through the practice of right vision and positive Thoughts.
The real action is Thought only. It is really mental and not physical. The physical action is only an external expression of the real action which is vibration in the Mind. Your physical activities are only the various sides of mental activities.
As the beauty of a tree increases immensely in the spring season, so also your strength, your intellect and the lustre will increase in proportion to your positive Thoughts. Thoughts of the wise men are entirely different from the Thoughts of ordinary people. You are liberated in proportion to your Thoughts of indifference to the world.
When Thoughts of purity emanate around you, Eternal Law begins to support you. You are aware of your Thoughts. You only know what has come to pass in your own experience. In everyone of you separately has arisen the world of the experience of the world. You have got a limited Mind which is subject to various types of modes and circumstances.
Some Thought-Seeds
True knowledge is Spiritual Consciousness. It is awareness of one's real nature. Knowledge means right discernment or correct evaluation, wisdom and a perfect understanding of oneself and of others. Right Thought results in right action and right life.
Beauty is essentially Spiritual. Real beauty lies in one's heart. It is in one's character. Beauty dwells in purity. Beauty shines in virtues. Love is a refined, innate sense of oneness with the entire creation. Love is self-denial, selflessness.
Love is sacredness of heart. Love is unrestrained goodwill, mercy, compassion and tolerance. Love is absence of sensuality.
The body is not everything. There is something which is vitally important, which dwells in the body. It is the Spirit of man. Though identical with the Cosmic Spirit, it is individualized by the Karmas of the individual soul. The body passes away; the Spirit lives. The individuality of the Spirit is there as long as the body lasts; then it ought to return back to and dissolve itself in its original source, unless of course, it is drawn back by its associated Karmas into another embodiment in order to reap them.
Everything passeth away. Nothing ever is to accompany man except his Karmas, when the body is cast off. Hence as long as man lives, he should live amicably, with love and goodwill towards all, hurting no one in any manner, coveting no worldly riches, with more of kindness and mental charity, forgiveness and tolerance, with detachment to mundane objects, and dissociation of the ego from one's actions, while taking care to acquire no new Karmas as one works out the already accomplished ones.
With a little of contentment, discrimination, devotion to God and self-surrender to His will, with a little of detachment and non-expectation of anything from anyone, with an attitude of prayerfulness and abiding by the dictates of one's conscience with unshakable faith in one's Spiritual principles and code of conduct, and evaluation, life becomes easier, worthier and happier.
If you have difficulties, you should look to the cause first. The real trouble lies in ignoring the cause. If the cause is remedied, difficulties becomes less, or rather accidental. The world is a great school where people are given ample opportunities to mend and mould themselves into better individuals.
No one is born perfect. There are possibilities for everyone to improve oneself. Trials and difficulties ought to make one a better individual rather than create complexes and constrict the Mind and heart. Take shelter in great and noble Thoughts, and obtain perfection.
Guru' grace is always with the disciple, unreserved and unconditioned. It depends, however, on the self-discipline, faith and purity of the disciple whether to make use of this grace or not. Guru resides in the hearts of his disciples. Some are aware of this and some are not. The living presence of the Guru within is the best asset of the disciple.
Other Chapters Of THOUGHT-POWER By Sri Swami Sivananda:-
Chapter 1: http://mhafyz.blogspot.com/2013/12/chapter-1-thought-power-its-physics-and.html
Chapter 2: http://mhafyz.blogspot.com/2013/12/chapter-2-thought-power-its-laws-and.html
Chapter 3: http://mhafyz.blogspot.com/2013/12/chapter-3-value-and-uses-of-thought.html
Chapter 4: http://mhafyz.blogspot.com/2013/12/chapter-4-functions-of-thought-power.html
Chapter 5: http://mhafyz.blogspot.com/2013/12/chapter-5-development-of-thought-power.html
Chapter 6: http://mhafyz.blogspot.com/2013/12/chapter-6-thought-their-varities-and.html
Chapter 7: http://mhafyz.blogspot.com/2013/12/chapter-7-positive-methods-for-thought.html
Chapter 8: http://mhafyz.blogspot.com/2013/12/chapter-8-patterns-of-thought-culture.html
Chapter 9: http://mhafyz.blogspot.com/2013/12/chapter-9-from-thoughts-to-thought.html
Chapter 11: http://mhafyz.blogspot.com/2014/01/chapter-11-thought-power-for-god.html
Chapter 12: http://mhafyz.blogspot.com/2014/01/chapter-12-thought-power-for-new.html
