A Very wise physician has said that “every illness has two parts—what it is, and what the patient thinks about it.” What the patient thinks about it is often more important and more troublesome than the real disease. What the patient thinks of life, what life means to him is also of great importance and may be the bar that shuts out all real health and happiness. The following pages are devoted to certain ideals of life which I would like to give to my patients, the long-time patients who have especially fallen to my lot. They are not all here, the steps to health and happiness. The reader may even be annoyed and baffled by my indirectness and unwillingness to be specific. That I cannot help—it is a personal peculiarity; I cannot ask any one to live by rule, because I do not believe that rules are binding and final. There must be character behind the rule and then the rule is unnecessary. All that I have written has doubtless been presented before, in better ways, by wiser men, but I believe that each writer may expect to find his small public, his own particular public who can understand and profit by his teachings, having partly or wholly failed with the others. For that reason I am encouraged to write upon a subject usually shunned by medical men, being assured of at least a small company of friendly readers. I am grateful to a number of friends and patients who have read the manuscript of the following chapters. These reviewers have been frank and kind and very helpful. I am particularly indebted to Dr. Richard C. Cabot, who has given me much valuable assistance...FROM THE BOOKS.
In the course of time, it has become increasingly difficult for human beings to get along. Somehow each one of us has been exposed to a level of animosity, misunderstandings, false accusations, betrayals, and deceptions. The shame of this situation is the fact that, for the most part, it comes from people we love and who are very close to us: friends, family members, coworkers, and so on. Thus, throughout the present book, which is the first volume, we try to bring sparks of light on certain dark spots that we presume are responsible for triggering misfortunate thoughts and behaviors in human beings. Those dark spots are the vehicles through which are conducted ungratefulness, delusion, frustration, and anger. Inattention to the expressions of our own mind and insensibility to the expressions of our body favor the elaboration and the enlargement of darkness within us. Then our presentation is a juxtaposition of philosophical concepts and philanthropic approaches centered on gaining more knowledge and mastering of self. In brief, we propose a metaphysical learning of who we are as human beings. This will lead to the concourse of the universal wisdom, which is the authentic wisdom. Once initiated, we need to apply it to ourselves and share it with others through actions of quietness, of tolerance, of love, of gratefulness, and of happiness. It is above all sectarian faith and beliefs, and it is beyond politics and religions; it is simply the liberation of the thoughts from vanity, prejudice, bigotry, envy, disdain, indulgence, and wretchedness.
I was selected as an external expert examiner for his dissertation. I have read the book from start to finish for fifteen days. I took extra time to read it …. it pulled me; it pulled me to adhy?tma. Such a good book. I read it with much eagerness and enjoyed it very much. Even I was unable to write a book like this. It took me back to all that I had studied in my youth. I understood the G?t? again as I had understood it as a student. … … Listening to him, I remembered my Guru parampar?, my Vyasa parampar?, my own student days. … It was such an adbhut viva, great experience, unforgettable and ever memorable. .. I did PhD and have worked as a Head of Department in SVYASA in 2012 and have worked as Vice Chancellor of SVYASA. We must try and reach the level I have seen and experienced in this case. There have been PhD’s, but none like this. .. I returned from my journey and am back home but I still remember that Vyasa parampar?. This is the way. This is the quality we have to maintain. (Extracted from an audio message to his disciple after the presentation of this dissertation where he was Chief Examiner) ***** Prof. Ramachandra G. Bhatt, Former Vice Chancellor, S.Vyasa University, Bangalore, Chairman, Veda Vijnana Shodha Samsthana, Bangalore, and Convener, Karnataka Gurukula Education.
The addresses contained in this volume were delivered by me at the Dore Gallery, Bond Street, London, on the Sundays of the first three months of the present year, and are now published at the kind request of many of my hearers, hence their title of "The Dore Lectures." A number of separate discourses on a variety of subjects necessarily labours under the disadvantage of want of continuity, and also under that of a liability to the frequent repetition of similar ideas and expressions, and the reader will, I trust, pardon these defects as inherent in the circumstances of the work. At the same time it will be found that, although not specially so designed, there is a certain progressive development of thought through the dozen lectures which compose this volume, the reason for which is that they all aim at expressing the same fundamental idea, namely that, though the laws of the universe can never be broken, they can be made to work under special conditions which will produce results that could not be produced under the conditions spontaneously provided by nature. This is a simple scientific principle and it shows us the place which is occupied by the personal factor, that, namely, of an intelligence which sees beyond the present limited manifestation of the Law into its real essence, and which thus constitutes the instru-mentality by which the infinite possibilities of the Law can be evoked into forms of power, usefulness, and beauty. The more perfect, therefore, the working of the personal factor, the greater will be the results developed from the Universal Law; and hence our lines of study should be two-fold—on the one hand the theoretical study of the action of Universal Law, and on the other the practical fitting of ourselves to make use of it; and if the present volume should assist any reader in this two-fold quest, it will have answered its purpose.