Acharya Mahaprajna
Another exercise for the development of will-power is autosuggestion. It is an important technique. The western people have developed a line of treatment - autogenious therapy. This system is based on suggestions arising from oneself. You imagine something and you experience it as you imagine it. In the language of yoga, this autogenious system may be called psychical exercise. There was prevalent in our country an exercise in which one experienced things as per suggestions made. You conceive that the hand is growing heavy and you will feel that it has certainly grown heavier. You imagine that the hand is growing lighter and it certainly becomes lighter. You conceive as if the hand is getting cold, and it will grow cold. You imagine that it is growing hot and it would grow hot. Bhavana changes our consciousness and environment. Autogenious therapy is properly an exercise in the use of bhavana. Through this method, a patient effects his own recovery. He does not much need a guide. The guide only makes a suggestion now and then. The patient is left alone to cure himself.
In the course of time we forgot bhavana and its exercises. The use of suggestion is very important. A man may be suffering from pain in any part of the body. He may be having an aching knee, an aching back or an aching neck. These three spots are particularly vulnerable to pain. Most Indians suffer from these. The pain is there and side-by-side the practice of body-perception is in progress. The pain is being observed. Along with in, you may start the exercise of bhavana. Put your hand on the aching part. Keep observing it. Focus all your attention on it. Your finger rests there and all your attention is centered thereon. Practice deep breathing. Let attention focus there. From time to time, suggest it to yourself that the limb is getting better. Do this exercise and observe the effects thereof. What remarkable results you get. Through our bhavana, through the suggestion made, our consciousness starts changing. A transformation begins. We can thus change our habits. Even the most complex habit can be changed through the exercise of bhavana. The habit, which a thousand sermons and ten thousand exhortations have failed to cure, can be got rid by a person through bhavana. He can recast his consciousness in an altogether different mould.
