1] Prayer is not a "spare wheel" that you pull out when in trouble,
but it is a "steering wheel" that directs the right path throughout

2] Do you know why a Car's WINDSHIELD is so large & the Rear view Mirror is so small?
Because our PAST is not as important as our FUTURE. Look Ahead and Move on

3] Friendship is like a BOOK. It takes few seconds to burn, but it takes years to write
4] All things in life are temporary. If going well, enjoy it, they will not last forever.
If going wrong, don't worry, they can't last long either.

5] Old Friends are Gold! New Friends are Diamond! If you get a Diamond,
don't forget the Gold! Because to hold a Diamond, you always need a Base of Gold!

6] Often when we lose hope and think this is the end, GOD smiles from above and says,
"Relax, sweetheart, it's just a bend, not the end!

7] When GOD solves your problems, you have faith in HIS abilities;
when GOD doesn't solve your problems HE has faith in your abilities.

8] A blind person asked Swami Vivekanand: "Can there be anything worse than losing eye sight?"
He replied: "Yes, losing your vision!"

9] When you pray for others, God listens to you and blesses them, and
sometimes,when you are safe and happy, remember that someone has prayed for you.

10] WORRYING does not take away tomorrows' TROUBLES, it takes away today's' PEACE

Between work, family obligations and money worries,
it may all feel too overwhelming sometimes.
Of course, there is good stress and bad stress.
The first one can motivate you to become more productive.
The second kind, the type that makes you lose sleep,
can actually be bad for your mental and physical health.
Here's a handy guide to help you assess whether you're stressed,
how serious your stress is, and how to deal with it.

Stress warning signs
Of course, different people deal with stress in different ways,
but here is a list of mental and physical symptoms to help you
understand if you're stressed.

The mental symptoms may involve you being:
�Angry
�Depressed
�Anxious
�Always hungry, or having no appetite
�Crying often
�Have trouble sleeping and feel tired
�Have trouble concentrating

The physical symptoms may involve:
�Chest pains
�Constipation, or diarrhoea
�Cramps, or muscle aches
�Feeling dizzy, or fainting
�Engaging in nervous behavior like biting your nails
�Twitches, or experiencing pins and needles
�Feeling restless
�Having sexual problems, from erectile dysfunction to lowered
sex drive.
�Feeling breathless
�Can't sleep

How stress works
When you are in a stressful situation, your body releases the hormones cortisol,
adrenaline, and noradrenaline, and these go on to cause the physical symptoms of stress.
You may start sweating, and your blood pressure and heart rate may rise.
This, in turn, may undermine your immune system, making you more
susceptible to illness, as well as lead your body to release fat and sugar
into your blood stream, which may lead you to gain weight.

As stress raises your blood pressure, if you are stressed in the long term,
you can develop high blood pressure, which in turn can increase your risk of
having a heart attack or a stroke.
If you feel that you are suffering from stress, see you GP,
but do not accept long term tranquilliser prescriptions.
Ask for help from a psychologist, stress counsellor, relaxation therapist,
qualified hypnotherapist or even alternative therapist.
If these do not work, you must go back to your GP for professional guidance

Should we become a Devotee? Teachings of swami Vivekananda

Prof Gourishankar Patnaik; Bhubaneswar


Swami Vivekananda became one of India's leading social reformers of the modern era and was a champion of humanitarianism and service to God through service to others. He is revered both in the East and West as a rejuvenator of mankind through the eternal truths of Hinduism. He spoke widely on Hinduism and its true meaning as written in the vedas and founded the Ramkrishna Mission, one of India's leading charitable institutions.
What is Life
Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy---by one or more or all of these--and be free.
Pleasure is not the goal of man, but knowledge. Pleasure and happiness comes to an end. It is a mistake to suppose that pleasure is the goal. The cause of all the miseries we have in the world is that men foolishly think pleasure to be the ideal to strive for. After a time man finds that it is not happiness, but knowledge, towards which he is going, and that both pleasure and pain are great teachers; the ultimate goal of all mankind, the aim and end of all religions, is but one--reunion with God, or what amounts to the same, with the divinity which is every man's true nature.
The ideal of man is to see God in everything. But if you cannot see Him in everything, see Him in one thing, in that thing which you like best, and then see Him in another. So on you can go.
In this world of many, he who sees the One, in this ever-changing world, he who sees Him, who never changes, as the Soul of his own soul, as his own self, he is free, he is blessed, he has reached the goal.
Bhakti Yoga
Bhakti-Yoga is a real, genuine search after the Lord, a search beginning, continuing and ending in Love. One single moment of the madness of extreme love to God brings us eternal freedom. "Bhakti is intense love to God." "When a man gets it he loves all, hates none; he becomes satisfied forever." "This love cannot be reduced to any earthly benefit," because so long as worldly desires last that kind of love does not come. Bhakti-Yoga does not say "give up"; it only says "Love; love the Highest"; and everything low naturally falls off from him, the object of whose love is this Highest.
Purpose of Devotion
Bhakti is its own fruition, its own means and its own end. Those to whom the eternal interests of the soul are of much higher value than the fleeting interests of this mundane life, to whom the gratification of the senses is but like the thoughtless play of the baby, to them, God and the love of God form the highest and the only utility of human existence.
Bhakti admits no elements of fear, no being to be appeased or propitiated. There are even Bhaktas who worship God as their own child, so that there may remain no feeling even of awe or reverance. There can be no fear in true love, and so long as there is the least fear, Bhakti cannot even begin. In Bhakti there is also no place for begging or bargaining with God. The idea of asking God for anything is sacrilege to a Bhakta. He will not pray for health or wealth or even to go to heaven.
Advantages of Devotion
The peace of the Bhakta's calm resignation is a peace that passeth all understanding, and is of incomparable value. The great quality of Bhakti is that it cleanses the mind, and the firmly established Bhakti for the Supreme Lord is alone sufficient to purify the mind.
Of all renunciation, the most natural, so to say, is that of the Bhakti-Yoga. Here, there is no violence, nothing to give up, and nothing to tear off, as it were, from ourselves, nothing from which we have violently to separate ourselves; the Bhakta's renunciation is easy, smooth, flowing, and as natural as the things around us.
"Bhakti is greater than Karma, greater than Yoga, because these are intended for an object in view, while Bhakti is its own fruition, its own means and its own end." The one great advantage of Bhakti is that it is the easiest, and the most natural way to reach the great divine end in view; The path of devotion is natural and pleasant. Philosophy is taking the mountain stream back to its source by force. It is a quicker method but very hard. Philosophy says, "Check everything." Devotion says, "Give up all to the stream, have eternal self-surrender." It is a longer way, but easier and happier.
Bhakti-Yoga does not say "give up"; it only says "Love; love the Highest"; and everything low naturally falls off from him, the object of whose love is this Highest.
With love there is no painful reaction; love only brings a reaction of bliss; if it does not, it is not love; it is mistaking something else for love. When you have succeeded in loving your husband, your wife, your children, the whole world, the universe, in such a manner that there is no reaction of pain or jealousy, no selfish feeling, then you are in a fit state to be unattached.
Disadvantages of Devotion
Its great disadvantage is that in its lower forms it oftentimes degenerates into hideous fanaticism. The fanatical crew in Hinduism, or Mohammedanism, or Christanity, have always been almost exclusively recruited from these worshippers on the lower planes of Bhakti.

That singleness of attachment to a loved object, without which no genuine love can grow, is very often also the cause of the denunciation of everything else. All the weak and undeveloped minds in every religion or country have only one way of loving their own ideal, i.e. by hating every other ideal. Herein is the explanation of why the same man who is so lovingly attached to his own ideal of God, so devoted to his own ideal of religion, becomes a howling fanatic as soon as he sees or hears anything of any other ideal.

Ways of Attaining Devotion
There is Bhakti within you, only a veil of lust-and-wealth covers it, and as soon as that is removed Bhakti will manifest by itself. In Bhakti-Yoga the first essential is to want God honestly and intensely. One way for attaining Bhakti is by repeating the name of God a number of times. Mantras have effect---the mere repetition of words...To obtain Bhakti, seek the company of holy men who have Bhakti, and read books like Gita and the Imitation of Christ; always think of the attributes of God.
But theorizing about God will not do; we must love and work. Give up the world and all worldly things, especially while the "plant" is tender. Day and night think of nothing else as far as possible. The daily necessary thoughts can all be thought through God. Eat to Him, drink to Him, sleep to Him, and see Him in all. Talk of God to others; this is most beneficial.

Get the mercy of God and of His greatest children; these are the two chief ways to God. The company of these children of Light is very hard to get; five minutes in their company will change a whole life, and if you really want it enough, one will come to you. The presence of those who love God makes a place holy, "such is the glory of the children of the Lord". They are He; and when they speak, their words are Scriptures. The place where they have been becomes filled with their vibrations, and those going there feel them and have a tendency to become holy also.
Stages of Devotion
We all have to begin as dualists in the religion of love. God is to us a separate Being, and we feel ourselves to be separate beings also. Love then comes in the middle, and man begins to approach God, and God also comes nearer and nearer to man. Man takes up all the various relationships of life, as father, as mother, as son, as friend, as master, as lover, and projects them on his ideal of love, on his God. To him God exists as all these, and the last point of his progress is reached when he feels that he has become absolutely merged in the object of his worship.

We all begin with love for ourselves and the unfair claims of the little self make even love selfish; at last, however, comes the full blaze of light, in which this little self is seen to have become one with the Infinite. Man himself is transfigured in the presence of this Light of Love, and he realizes at last the beautiful and inspiring truth that Love, the Lover, and the Beloved are one.

When the devotee has reached this point he is no more impelled to ask whether God can be demonstrated or not, whether He is omnipresent and omniscient, or not. To him He is only the God of Love; He is the highest ideal of love, and that is sufficient for all his purposes; He, as love, is self-evident; it requires no proof to demonstrate the existence of the beloved to the lover. The magistrate-Gods of other forms of religion may require a good deal of proof to prove them, but the Bhakta does not and cannot think of such Gods at all. To him God exists entirely as love. The perfected Bhakta no more goes to see God in temples and churches; he knows no place where he will not find Him. He finds Him in the temple as well as out of the temple; he finds Him in the saint's saintliness as well as in the wicked man's wickedness, because he has Him already seated in glory in his own heart, as the one Almighty, inextinguishable Light of Love, which is ever shining and eternally present.
The Bhakta at last comes to this that love itself is God and nothing else. Where should man go to prove the existence of God? Love was the most visible of all visible things. It was the force that was moving the sun, the moon and the stars, manifesting itself in men, women and in animals, everywhere and in everything. It was expressed in material forces as gravitation and so on. It was everywhere, in every atom, manifesting everywhere. It was that Infinite Love, the only motive power of this universe, visible everywhere, and this was God Himself.

"I may know that I am He, yet will I take myself away from Him and become different, so that I may enjoy the Beloved." That is what the Bhakta says.
Feelings of Devotee
If a man does not get food one day, he is troubled; if his son dies how agonising it is to him! The true Bhakta feels the same pangs in his heart when he yearns for God. The great quality of Bhakti is that it cleanses the mind, and the firmly established Bhakti for the Supreme Lord is alone sufficient to purify the mind. "Lord, they build high temples in your name; they make gifts in your name; I am poor; I have nothing; so I take this body of mine and place it at your feet. Do not give me up, O Lord." Such is the prayer proceeding out of the depths of the Bhakta's heart. To him who has experienced it, this eternal sacrifice of the self unto the Beloved Lord is higher by far than all wealth and power, than even all soaring thoughts of renown and enjoyment.

The peace of the Bhakta's calm resignation is a peace that passeth all understanding, and is of incomparable value. When the devotee has reached this point he is no more impelled to ask whether God can be demonstrated or not, whether He is omnipresent and omniscient, or not. To him He is only the God of Love; He is the highest ideal of love, and that is sufficient for all his purposes; He, as love, is self-evident; it requires no proof to demonstrate the existence of the beloved to the lover. The magistrate-Gods of other forms of religion may require a good deal of proof to prove them, but the Bhakta does not and cannot think of such Gods at all. To him God exists entirely as love. I know one whom the world used to call mad, and this was his answer: "My friends, the whole world is a lunatic asylum; some are mad after worldly love, some after name, some after fame, some after money, some after salvation and going to heaven. In this big lunatic asylum I am also mad, I am mad after God. You are mad; so am I. I think my madness is after all the best."
The true Bhakta's love is this burning madness, before which everything else vanishes for him. The whole universe is to him full of love and love alone; that is how it seems to the lover. So when a man has this love in him, he becomes eternally blessed, eternally happy; the blessed madness of divine love alone can cure for ever the disease of the world that is in us.
May we see the reflection of revered Swamiji in every Indian.

Prof Gourishankar patnaik is a consultant Orthopedic and spinal surgeon and social scientist based in Bhubaneswar. He can be contacted at drgsp66@yahoo.com and www.drgspatnaik.com

HEALTHY PERSONALITIES

People with healthy personalities are those who are judged to be well adjusted. They are so jugged because they are able to function efficiently in the world of people. They experience a kind of �Inner Harmony� in the sense that they are at peace with others as well as themselves.

�The core of a healthy personality is any image of the self that the individual can accept and live with, without feeling too guilty, anxious or hostile, without being self-defeated or destructive of others.�

Jourard has defined a person with a healthy personality as one who �is able to gratify his needs through behavior that conforms with both the norms of his society and the requirements of his conscience.�

Characteristics of Healthy Personalities:
Of the many characteristics of healthy personalities, the following are the most common:
1. Realistic self-appraisals
2. Realistic appraisal of situations
3. Realistic evaluation of achievements
4. Acceptance of reality
5. Acceptance of responsibility
6. Autonomy
7. Acceptable emotional control
8. Goal orientation
9. Outer orientation
10. Social acceptance
11. Philosophy-of-life-directed
12. Happiness

1. Realistic self-appraisals: The well adjusted person sees himself as he is, not as he would like to be. The gap between the real and the ideal self-concept, is very much smaller among the well-adjusted. Since the well-adjusted person can appraise himself, his abilities and his achievements realistically, he does not need to use defense mechanisms to try to convince himself and others that his failure to come up to his expectations is the fault of others or of environmental conditions over which he has no control. He accepts adverse evaluations as a form of constructive criticism and tries to improve qualities that others judge unfavorably. He is ready and willing to change, regard himself as worthy, even if not perfect.

2. Realistic appraisal of situations: He approaches situations with a realistic attitude, accepting the bad with the good. He realizes that there must be rules of conduct which protects the rights of others and himself, and he is willing to abide by them even when they are not entirely to his liking. He finds that it pays to be a law-abiding citizen rather than a troublemaker or law-breaker. He recognizes that success comes only with hard work, the willingness to make personal sacrifices and pass up immediate pleasures in favor of the long term gains he is striving for.

3. Realistic evaluation of achievements: A well-adjusted person is able to evaluate his achievements realistically and to react to them in a rational way. This contrasts with the maladjusted person who regards his successes as a personal triumph which shows others his superiority over them. The maladjusted person allows himself to develop a superiority complex which he expresses in boasting, bragging and derogatory comments about those whose achievements fall below this.
A well-adjusted person evaluates his failures realistically to see if they were actually failure for him or whether they were due to competition with persons whose abilities were greater than his. He also considers whether he tried hard enough and if he did not; whether his lack of effort was due to laziness, fear of failure, or some other cause. In addition, he assesses his aspirations to see if they were realistic and if not, he profits by his failure, setting his future aspirations at a more realistic level.

4. Acceptance of reality: The person must learn to accept his limitations, either physical or psychological, if he cannot change them and to do what he can with what he has. He can also compensate for his limitations by improving those characteristics in which he is strongest.
The poorly adjusted person, by contrast, develops a martyr complex, feeling sorry for himself or blaming himself or others for his limitations.

5. Acceptance of responsibility: The well adjusted person is enough of a realist to recognize that he should not accept responsibilities that he is unprepared to carry out successfully. He knows that by doing so he will not only win social disapproval for his failures but will undermine his self confidence to the point where he will be hesitant to accept future responsibilities. He accepts responsibility for himself and for his behavior. If things go wrong and if he is criticized, he accepts the blame and is willing to admit that he made a mistake. Acceptance of responsibility means that the well adjusted person is dependable.

6. Autonomy: Autonomy shows itself in independence. An autonomous person does not depend on others when he is capable of being independent. The well-adjusted person shows his autonomy in several ways. In decision making, he is able to make important decisions with a minimum of worry, conflict, advice seeking and other types of running away behavior. After making a choice, he abides by it, until new factors of crucial importance enter into the picture.

7. Acceptable emotional control: The person must assume the responsibility for keeping his emotions under control so that they will not hurt others or himself. A well adjusted person can live comfortably with his emotions. This is possible because he had developed, over a period, a degree of stress tolerance, anxiety tolerance, depression tolerance and pain tolerance.

8. Goal orientation: The well adjusted person set realistic goals while those who are poorly adjusted set more unrealistic goals. The second major difference between well and poorly adjusted people in goal setting is that the well adjusted make it their business to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to reach their goals. The result is that a well adjusted person is a well organized one. He integrates his various functions and roles in life according to a consistent, harmonious pattern. He is thus able to make the best use of his time and effort and this increases his chances of reaching his goals.

9. Outer orientation: The well adjusted person�s interest in others is revealed in a number of ways. He is unselfish about his time, effort and material possessions. He is willing to respond in any way he can to the needs of others and does not regard it as an imposition. The ability to empathize with others, to understand and to sympathize with them in happiness and sorrow without feeling envious of their successes or scornful of their failures.

10. Social acceptance: The well adjusted persons see themselves as adequate to meet social challenges, demands and expectations and so they are willing to participate in social activities and are highly capable of identifying with other people. He can be natural, at ease and friendly in his relationships with others and all this increases his social acceptance. Even though he may have little in common with those with whom he is associated, he makes it his business to get along with them if circumstances make it impossible for him to seek the companionship of persons whose interests are more similar to his and who would meet his needs better.

11. Philosophy-of-life-directed: As well adjusted people are goal-oriented, so do they direct their lives by a philosophy which helps them to formulate plans to meet their goals in a socially approved way. This philosophy of life may be based on religious beliefs, it may be based mainly on what they believe is right because it is best for all concerned or it may be based on personal experiences.

12. Happiness: One of the outstanding characteristics of the well adjusted person is happiness. This means that in the well adjusted person happiness outways unhappiness and the person is an essentially happy person. Three conditions contribute to the happiness of the well adjusted person. All enhance the person�s self-concept and lead to reasonable self satisfaction. These conditions have been called the �Three A�s of Happiness�:
- Achievement
- Acceptance
- Affection

Dr. Nahida M.Mulla M.D.MACH
Principal,
A M Shaikh Homoeopathic Medical College, Nehru Nagar, BELGAUM

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ज्ञानेश्वरी 9 वा अध्याय