Thursday, November 22, 2007
An 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 imagine that the hand is growing lighter and it certainly becomes lighter. 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.
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. Even the most complex habit can be changed through the exercise of bhavana.
A moment comes when old ideas are shed off and new ideas get established in the mind. As long as we believe that it is another person who is responsible for our pleasure and pain, no transformation is possible.
When through the exercise of bhavana, this belief is washed away, then in the event of pleasure or pain, a man would hold no other save himself responsible for it. The question arises if it is possible to dissolve one's past conditioning by repeating something again and again. A celebrated dictum of the Nazis was - "Repeat a lie a thousand times, and it shall be accepted as truth." If a lie, repeated a thousand times, can become a truth, why cannot a truth be accepted as a truth after a million repetitions?
It is necessary that while practising bhavana the sadhak should not keep his face averted from the truth. He should continue to practise bhavana along with meditation.