A method to free the mind from fixed ideas and

fixations, and evil thoughts Aron, a brilliant trial lawyer, corpulent yet charismatic, fiery (in the courtroom) yet friendly with the family, driven to the point of a cardiac arrest in the courtroom, drops the whole shebang (which means matter, affairs and business) and goes to Kashmir to find peace..

He has no references or addresses where he could find peace and wisdom. He meets a sanyasi in a temple who speaks to him about sages in the higher reaches of the Kashmir Himalayas. Few knew the whereabouts of the yogic sages. One had to search for them in the vastness of the mountains.

Aron sets forth and climbs higher and higher, asking many about the Shiva sages. No one could guide him. Finally when climbing an especially high hill, he sees an orange robed man walking in the distance. He calls out to him, but the orange robed one hurries away. Finally Aron comes closer to him and asks about the Shiva sages. The orange robed one acknowledges that he belonged to that group and seeing the earnestness and eagerness of Aron to know about spiritual life, takes him to the flower bowered hut in a valley, out of sight to the world.

After recovering his physical health, Aron is led step by step into the path of overcoming the crap-load of thoughts he had brought from his law business, of a hedonist life style, a bloated ego, an opionated mind, aggression and so forth.

After kneading the personality of Aron, for weeks, then the sages tells him about a Yogic secret, which he had learnt from the Patanjali Yoga Sutra: he called it opposition thinking(y.s 2.34)

He tells Aron that if we have to free our mind from any violently pervasive thoughts we have to create an opposition to them by thinking of the opposites. These negative thoughts have numerous ramifications

and they hold us in thrall. Only one technique was needed to free oneself from these eighty odd ramifications of negative thinking. That

is the technique of positive thinking.

He asks Aron to tie a rubber band on his wrist and every time a negative thought came into his mind to pull the rubber band and think of a pleasant and positive thought. Within days Aron, enchanted with this simple technique was able to shed a substantial load of his negative thinking.

Please get your rubber band ready, reader.

Promil

(Biblio: The Monk who sold his ferrari, by Sharma)

Harold and Promil Jain-Sequeira