“He who, lives constantly in the conception of noble and lofty thoughts, who dwells upon All that is Pure and unselfish, will, as surely as the sun reaches its zenith and the moon its full, become wise and noble in character.”
AS a man thinketh
This was my second non-fiction book of this year. Today we see everywhere self-help encashing homo sapiens. They are abundant. Their books are best-selling books and the ideas they provide have everything but a novelty. Yet we humans are forgetful by nature. We forget what we read and sometimes we forget what we eat. So our forgetfulness is really an aspiration for someone else. It’s not a bad thing if the motive is to serve. Serving mankind is a great virtue.
The bare-bones version of the story is that we must revisit what is rudimentary. We have to fix our fickle gaze sometimes on the fact that is foundational. The author of this book seems to be the pioneer of the self-help movement, especially in the western world I must say, in the early 20th century. I read this book and found not a single new idea or thought, yet I very much liked this book. Forgetfulness you know!
And in the very beginning, James Allen proclaimed in the book that it is not intended as an exhaustive treatise of a much-written-upon subject of the power of thought. It’s a result of experience and meditation and the book is suggestive in nature rather than explanatory. This makes this book important. Preservation of thought in this book is very precise.
“of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul which have been restored and brought to light in this age, none is more gladdening or fruitful of divine promise and confidence than this- that man is a master of thought, the molder of character and the maker and shaper of condition environment and destiny.”
We must take care of the gardens of our mind, like the earthly one it can seed or weed or even reed!
It can not remain barren, something or the other will grow in it. If it is as per one’s own volition, that is good. If it’s not your volition, rubbish will grow at the drop of a hat. That’s the nature of the mind.
“MAN’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.”
Further, it states how we allow our inmost desires, aspirations, and thoughts to dominate ourselves, and pursuing the will-o’-the-wisp of impure imaginings, we walk on the pathway of strong endeavor, and finally, we start to crumble to circumstance.
“man does not come to the almshouse or the jail by the tyranny of fate or circumstance but by the pathway of groveling thoughts and base desires. Nor does a pure-minded man fall suddenly, into crime by stress of any mere external force. The criminal thought had long been secretly fostered in the heart, and the hour of opportunity revealed its gathered power”
The author takes a stance, he says a man may be honest in a certain direction yet he suffers privation, another man may be dishonest in a direction yet he acquires wealth. And we usually form an opinion that the man fails because he is honest and the other prospers because of his dishonesty.
“In the light of deeper knowledge and wider experience such judgement is found to be erroneous. The dishonest man may have some admirable virtues, which the other does not possess and the honest man may have some obnoxious vices which are absent in the other. The honest man reaps the good results of his own thoughts and acts; he also brings upon himself the suffering, which his vices produce. The dishonest man likewise garners his own suffering and happiness”
There is a chapter that very beautifully described that both disease and health, are rooted in thought. The body is the servant of the mind and it obeys the operations of the mind, deliberately or automatically. strong, pure, and happy thoughts build up a body of vigor and grace and we continue to have impure of poisoned blood, so long as we allow to propagate the unclean thoughts.
It says.
“Change of diet will not help a man who will not change his thought. If you want to protect your body guard your mind.”
In a chapter, it beautifully expresses that the dreamers are the saviors of this world. Humanity can not forget its dreamers. Composers, sculptors, painters, poets, Prophets, Sage, these are the makers of the after-world the architect of heaven the world is beautiful because they have lived; without them laboring humanity would perish. and in the last chapter, it says that the calmness of the mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom.
Did you find anything new in whatever you read above? Nothing? They are all well-established facts, they are all well-preached facts, and they are all well-received ideas across all the cultures and geographies whether they are modern or atavistic! isn’t it? Still, I will recommend this book to everyone. Try it once at least even if you know everything, that it is trying to preach!
Do you remember what I said in the beginning? Forgetfulness! I will finish with these lines of Pablo Neruda. “Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” ― Pablo Neruda
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