Pranam
WHAT YOU THINK YOU BECOME.
Yat Bhaavam Tat Bhavathi- WHAT YOU THINK YOU BECOME.
*Bg. 8.6 *यं यं वापि स्मरन्भावं त्यजत्यन्ते कलेवरम् ।
तं तमेवैति कौन्तेय सदा तद्भावभावित: ॥ ६ ॥
*yaṁ yaṁ vāpi smaran bhāvaṁ tyajaty ante kalevaram taṁ tam evaiti kaunteya
sadā tad-bhāva-bhāvitaḥ*
Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, O son of
Kuntī, that state he will attain without fail. {story of AJAMEELAN IN
bhAGAVATHAM).
While light travels at the rate of 1,86,000 miles per second,
thoughts virtually travel in no time.
Thought is finer than ether, the medium of electricity. In broadcasting, a
singer sings beautiful songs at Calcutta. You can hear them nicely through
the radio set in your own house at Delhi. All messages are received through
the wireless. Manas or mind-substance fills all space like ether and it
serves as the vehicle for thoughts, as Prana is the vehicle for feeling, as
ether is the vehicle for heat, light and electricity and as air is the
vehicle for sound. . It can be transmitted from one man to another man. The
powerful thoughts of great sages and Rishis of yore are still recorded in
the Akasa (Akasic records). Thoughts are living things. If the food is
pure, thought also becomes pure. He who has pure thoughts speaks very
powerfully and produces deep impression on the minds of the hearers by his
speech. He influences thousands of persons through his pure thoughts.
(chandogya Upanishad). Entire universe is in reality the projection of the
human mind—*Manomatram Jagat*. Purification and control of the mind is the
central aim of all Yogas.
Man is the master of his own destiny. You yourself make, by
the power of your thought, your destiny. You can undo it if you like. All
faculties, energies and powers are latent in you. Unfold them, and become
free and great. The face is a faithful recorder and a sensitive registering
apparatus to register and record all the thoughts that are in your mind.
The face is a polished mirror to indicate the nature of the mind and its
contents at a particular time. You have entirely in your own hands to
determine the order of thought you entertain and consequently the order of
influence you attract and are not mere willowy creatures of circumstances,
unless indeed you choose to be. A man of discrimination is always careful,
vigilant and circumspect. He always watches carefully his thoughts. He
introspects. He knows what is going on in his mental factory what Vritti or
Guna is prevailing at a particular time. He never allows any evil thought
to enter the gates of his mental factory. He at once nips them in the bud.
By his good thinking, by watching the nature of his thoughts, by
introspection, by active noble thinking, the man of discrimination builds
his noble character, forms his high destiny. He is careful in his speeches.
He speaks little. He speaks sweet loving words. He never utters any kind of
harsh words that can affect the feelings of others. He develops patience,
mercy and universal love. He tries to speak truth. Thus he puts a check on
the Vak-Indriya and the impulses of speech. He uses measured words. He
writes measured lines. This produces deeply profound and favourable
impression on the minds of the people.
Mind carries aura—mental aura or psychic aura. The Sanskrit term
for aura is Tejas. It is brilliance or halo that emanates from the
phenomenon of mind. In those who have sought the full development of their
minds, we find it extremely effulgent. It is capacitated to travel long
distances and affect in the most beneficial manner a large number of
persons who are privileged to come under its influence. It must be noted
that the spiritual aura is far more powerful than either psychic or Pranic
or mental aura. Man sows a thought and reaps an action. He sows an action
and reaps a habit. He sows a habit and reaps a character. He sows a
character and reaps a destiny. Man has made his own destiny by his own
thinking and acting. He can change his destiny. He is the master of his own
destiny. There is no doubt of this. By right thinking and strong exertion,
he can become the master of his destiny. Dacoit Ratnakar was changed into
Sage Valmiki. Jagai and Madai were transformed. They were rogues of the
first waters. You can become a Yogi or a Jnani. You can make your destiny.
Thinking causes time, space, etc. Stop this thinking through Vairagya and
Abhyasa, and merge yourself in the Pure Consciousness. Where there is no
thinking or Sankalpa, there is Absolution or Jivanmukti. KR IRS 18321
On Thu, 18 Mar 2021 at 07:03, cnu pne <[email protected]> wrote:
> Thinking is a faculty that is most developed in the human beings. There
> can be various kinds of thinking. Thinking for accomplishing something is
> the most common type of thinking. This thinking is rather utilitarian and
> sometimes takes the greatness away from thinking and is better-called
> planning. Then, there is thinking about almost anything, out of anxiety.
> This is what is called worrying. Most people spend their entire lives
> switching between planning and worrying and some overdo it to such an
> extent that they are unable to tell the difference. However, both modes of
> thought are in truth disgrace to the faculty of thinking.
>
> There is another, rather popular, mode of thinking—imagination. It is also
> a different way of thinking, only more interesting and fanciful, because it
> has the therapeutic effect of remedying whatever has gone wrong in the
> individual and social life, albeit only in someone’s mind. Also,
> imagination gives much hope to people caught up in the humongous pressure
> of making a living. Even the wealthy have the stress of maintaining their
> standard of living and much more stressful is the artificially created need
> to maintain a good image among the others. It is in this context of a
> maddeningly strained world that imagination comes as a rescue—imagination
> through stories, written or performed. Recent worldwide increase in the
> public interest in fantasy proves that imagination is seen more as an
> essential escape route to get away from the binding realities of life, than
> as a source of entertainment.
>
> Apart from the above mentioned three ways of thinking, there is a mode of
> thought that can only be truly called thinking, that of critical thinking.
>
> Critical thinking has led to all the development of human civilisation as
> we see it. When the legendary apple fell, it was critical thinking that led
> to the discovery of the gravitational force. It was critical thinking that
> led to a new discovery when some water spilt from the bathtub. More
> recently, it was decades of critical thinking that led to the discovery of
> gravitational waves. Critical thinking requires that all observed data is
> systematically analysed, evaluated, and conceptualised.
>
> Here, the process of thinking starts right from the process of observation
> and so, the observation has to be as precise as possible and also such
> observation should not be affected by any extraneous elements or phenomena.
> For example, if a person is observing another person from a distance, the
> observer’s culture and upbringing affect the manner in which the observed
> person is seen. Most of the time, such an observation fails to be critical.
> Only if the observer can free oneself from all preconceived notions and
> other mental baggage will it be possible for the observer to make a
> critical and unbiased observation.
>
> Reason is the bedrock of critical thinking. Without a rationale or logic
> to build upon, critical thinking is impossible. Any logical method tainted
> by selfish interests ceases to be logical. Selfishness is the ultimate bias
> of all logic. That is why we see that a carefully thought out structure of
> anything is inexplicably destroyed because of some vested interest. For
> instance, when an organisation has to buy some equipment, sometimes it is
> seen that in spite of getting many quotes for the equipment, the order is
> given to a firm based on some personal preferences. This destroys the very
> foundation of critical thinking. Sometimes, people have ridiculously
> irrational ideas or notions about some people, countries, or cultures
> because of their perceptions that have never been critically analysed.
>
> The litmus test of critical thinking is that one should be able to
> critically analyse oneself. That is, the very observer critically analyses
> oneself. The tendency to analyse the other is very common, but to analyse
> oneself is a rare trait. This is where candour enters critical thinking.
> Without being candid about oneself, particularly about one’s weaknesses and
> failings, logic can be twisted to achieve practically anything that one
> desires. The proverbial devil starts quoting the scriptures and in no time
> something that is viscerally understood to be wrong gets the sanction of
> logic! This is why unselfishness is very important in critical thinking.
>
> That brings us to a more important question. Is it possible for people to
> be unselfish? What would happen to critical thinking then? Yes, it is
> difficult to become completely unselfish, particularly for a person, who
> does not have any divine calling or does not live a spiritual life. And
> therefore, it is equally difficult to practise critical thinking in its
> true form. It is not surprising, therefore, to note that across the world,
> the first attempts at philosophy or science, were made not in laboratories
> or universities, but in monasteries; not by scientists or teachers, but by
> monks dedicated to knowing the final truth about God and this universe. It
> would not be entirely wrong to assume that the unselfish lifestyle of
> monastics led them to chart a path towards the unbiased analysis of
> observed data.
>
> What we learn out of this discussion is that for being truly logical or
> critical in one’s thought, one needs to be mercilessly candid about
> oneself, or to put it in simpler terms, to be uncompromisingly truthful.
> Most of those claiming to practise truthfulness are really critical only of
> the others, and not of themselves. This is hypocrisy of the worst kind.
> Critical thinking requires that each aspect of the data observed gets the
> same kind of logical and systematic analysis. There cannot be a selective
> analysis nor a hypothesis or notion that has to be proven, which would
> obviously lead the data to be interpreted in a manner that supports the
> hypothesis. That is why many scientific experiments start with great
> enthusiasm but fail miserably because the initial enthusiasm was generated
> by a wrong reading of the observed data.
>
> Logical fallacies are one of the biggest hurdles in critical thinking.
> Just as the Advaitin would call this entire universe as an illusion, there
> are many ways of illusory thinking. For example, one of the major fallacies
> is the failure to consider all the causes that lead to an event or
> phenomenon. Then, there is the fallacy of mistaking correlation for
> causation. If an event happens with another event, instead of considering
> it as a case of correlation, many consider it to be the cause, thereby
> declaring that one event is dependent upon another. Also, there may be many
> aspects of a problem and that problem cannot be properly analysed without
> considering all the aspects. However, we see in practice that many aspects
> of a problem are simply ignored while trying to solve a problem.
>
> One could conclude that without an unselfish nature and complete
> dedication to the knowledge of the truth, it is impossible to have complete
> and undiluted critical thinking. It can be said that true critical thinking
> is possible only when one sees the reality of one’s own nature and also of
> the manifested world, this universe.
>
> Author is Editor of Prabuddha Bharata.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
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