August 8, 2015 Theme for the Week: Mental Hygiene
“Just as the physical body requires incessant attention to prevent the entrance of a disease, so also the inner man requires an unremitting watch, so that no conscious or unconscious thought may attract atoms unsuited to its progress.�
—D.K. Mavalankar
Any suggestions on how to go about this?
August 9, 2015 Theme for the Week: Mental Hygiene
� Let a man guard himself against mental irritations, let him be well restrained in mind. Having relinquished mental misconduct, let him practice purity of thought .�
— Buddha
“Strive with thy thoughts unclean before they overpower thee.�
— The Voice of the Silence
What is purity of thought?
"What is purity of thought?"
I assume thoughts are products of the very wide page of
Nature. They, thoughts, are governed by an array of
energies or specific grades and classes of deities. Our
observed thoughts might be more or less quasi-psychic
flutters and electro-magnetic disturbances, in short
fluctuations of various degrees.
If we consider the mind as somewhat of a matrix,
or a field, we must take care to sort out the weeds that
might be inherent in the soils. Purity of thought, to
me, implies a constant weeding out, starving out, and
shutting out the lower tendencies. Damodar has
beautifully stated this in his analogy to the physical
body;
Just as the physical body requires incessant attention
to prevent the entrance of a disease, so also the inner
man requires an unremitting watch, so that no conscious
or unconscious thought may attract atoms unsuited to its
progress.
The idea of the attraction of atoms is very significant
regarding the impressions of thoughts upon matter and
elemental forces which all make the mind- perhaps the
one we're all well acquainted with.
August 10, 2015 Theme of the Week: Mental Hygiene
“As a result of the yoga-fire, the gross particles of his physical body have been purified and etherealized, making that body a vehicle refined enough for the functioning of the higher consciousness.�
— Bhavani Shankar
“We live in an atmosphere of gloom and despairs…… because our eyes are downcast and are riveted to the earth.�
— H.P. Blavatsky
What is the role of ideals in mental hygiene?
I would think that an ideal has a cleansing effect. It would shake off illusion. It would expand beyond the personal. It would help to distinguish the real from the unreal. When we contemplate the ideal we see the gap between what we have realized and what is potential and that by definition provides direction to our growth and chases away lethargy and false contentment.
What Pndt. Bhavani Shankar states, explains what D.K.
Mavalankar introduced regarding the atoms of
the physical body and the intimate relation of thought.
I believe, when this power of thought becomes
concentrated and fixed on an Idea, the material
particles and atoms in close proximation become purified
by the Yogic-Fire and a very sacred transference of life
is established.
It seems to be a fact that
mental austerity is recommended over and above all other
practices. This practice, I sense not only being the
most practical in a moral and ethical scope, but appears
to be a flawless method of Selfless Service and devotion
towards the One Life if/when done carefully, honestly,
and humbly. I also believe this is what is meant in
many Upanisads when the self is
spoken as the sacrificial alter.
There is a lot of overlap between this subject on mental hygiene and the previous week's theme on purity and pollution. You might say pollution starts in the mind.
I wonder if purity and pollution are analogous to darkness and light. If darkness is the absence of light, could pollution be the absence of purity?
The more light the more vision. The more darkness the murkier the view. So what would more vision mean? Would it indicate a movement towards universality?
Laura thank you for that comment. What do you suppose blocks the light? What does it mean to make the brain more porous. I am sure it is an analogy for us. It seems like it would help to get to the root of the problem. What is blocking the light?
How does the constant desire to serve others create a better purifier, Laura? I find this fascinating.
August 11, 2015 Theme for the Week: Mental Hygiene
“Half, if not two-thirds of our ailings and diseases are the fruit of our imagination and fears. Destroy the latter and give another bent to the former, and nature will do the rest.�
— H.P. Blavatsky
“The food taken into the body, the emotion taken into the heart, and the thoughts taken into the mind must be carefully screened.�
— Paul Brunton
What does HPB mean by putting a new bent on fear?
August 12, 2015 Theme of the Week: Mental Hygiene
“No creature can be sound so long as the higher part in it is sickly.�
— Apollonius
� He should not defile anything by the eye, or the mind, or by speech.�
— Anugita
What does it mean to defile?
To defile, I believe, is to make judgement of anything as either good or bad.
It is to rob the depth and truth of 'anything' by confining it into a box for human comprehension and believing this understanding to be absolute. In the process, it is forgetting that our world is more than meets the eyes, ears and mind.
August 13, 2015 Theme for the Week: Mental Hygiene
“God be in my eyes
And in my looking.�
— Sarum Missal
“By gentleness, detachment, strict attention to duty, and retiring now and then to the quiet place, bring up good currents and keep back all evil ones.�
— William Quan Judge
August 14, 2015 Theme for the Week: Mental Hygiene
“O Desire, I know where thy root lies. Thou art born of thought. I shall not think of thee, and thou shalt cease to exist as well as thy root.�
— Mahabharata
“Len not thy strength to obstacles
Which are already falling away.�
— Evangelium Veritatis
