Power of the Mind.

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Dear Devotees of Divinity,

Love and Love alone...

 

Here is a speech of Swami Vivekanamda on the powers of the mind

received from a different source. I hope you all enjoy it reading

and reflecting.

 

Love and Love alone....

 

P. Gopi Krishna

===

THE POWERS OF THE MIND

Posted by: " Uttishthata " uttishthata

Mon Apr 9, 2007 8:21 pm (PST)

THE POWERS OF THE MIND

 

- Swami Vivekananda

 

(Delivered at Los Angeles, California, January 8, 1900)

 

All over the world there has been the belief in the supernatural

throughout the ages. All of us have heard of extraordinary

happenings, and many of us have had some personal experience of

them. I would rather introduce the subject by telling you certain

facts which have come within my own experience. I once heard of a

man who, if any one went to him with questions in his mind, would

answer them immediately; and I was also informed that he foretold

events. I was curious and went to see him with a few friends. We

each had something in our minds to ask, and, to avoid mistakes, we

wrote down our questions and put them in our pockets. As soon as the

man saw one of us, he repeated our questions and gave the answers to

them. Then he wrote something on paper, which he folded up, asked me

to sign on the back, and said, " Don't look at it; put it in your

pocket and keep it there till I ask for it again. " And so on to each

one of us. He next told us about some events that would happen to us

in the future. Then he said, " Now, think of a word or a sentence,

from any language you like. " I thought of a long sentence from

Sanskrit, a language of which he was entirely ignorant. " Now, take

out the paper from your pocket, " he said. The Sanskrit sentence was

written there! He had written it an hour before with the remark, " In

confirmation of what I have written, this man will think of this

sentence. " It was correct. Another of us who had been given a

similar paper which he had signed and placed in his pocket, was also

asked to think of a sentence. He thought of a sentence in Arabic,

which it was still less possible for the man to know; it was some

passage from the Koran. And my friend found this written down on the

paper.

 

Another of us was a physician. He thought of a sentence from a

German medical book. It was written on his paper.

 

Several days later I went to this man again, thinking possibly I had

been deluded somehow before. I took other friends, and on this

occasion also he came out wonderfully triumphant.

 

Another time I was in the city of Hyderabad in India, and I was told

of a Brahmin there who could produce numbers of things from where,

nobody knew. This man was in business there; he was a respectable

gentleman. And I asked him to show me his tricks. It so happened

that this man had a fever, and in India there is a general belief

that if a holy man puts his hand on a sick man he would be well.

This Brahmin came to me and said, " Sir, put your hand on my head, so

that my fever may be cured. " I said, " Very good; but you show me

your tricks. " He promised. I put my hand on his head as desired, and

later he came to fulfil his promise. He had only a strip of cloth

about his loins, we took off everything else from him. I had a

blanket which I gave him to wrap round himself, because it was cold,

and made him sit in a corner. Twenty-five pairs of eyes were looking

at him. And he said, " Now, look, write down anything you want. " We

all wrote down names of fruits that never grew in that country,

bunches of grapes, oranges, and so on. And we gave him those bits of

paper. And there came from under his blanket, bushels of grapes,

oranges, and so forth, so much that if all that fruit was weighed,

it would have been twice as heavy as the man. He asked us to eat the

fruit. Some of us objected, thinking it was hypnotism; but the man

began eating himself -- so we all ate. It was all right.

 

He ended by producing a mass of roses. Each flower was perfect, with

dew - drops on the petals, not one crushed, not one injured. And

masses of them! When I asked the man for an explanation, he

said, " It is all sleight of hand. "

 

Whatever it was, it seemed to be impossible that it could be sleight

of hand merely. From whence could he have got such large quantities

of things?

 

Well, I saw many things like that. Going about India you find

hundreds of similar things in different places. These are in every

country. Even in this country you will find some such wonderful

things. Of course there is a great deal of fraud, no doubt; but

then, whenever you see fraud, you have also to say that fraud is an

imitation. There must be some truth somewhere, that is being

imitated; you cannot imitate nothing. Imitation must be of something

substantially true.

 

In very remote times in India, thousands of years ago, these facts

used to happen even more than they do today. It seems to me that

when a country becomes very thickly populated, psychical power

deteriorates. Given a vast country thinly inhabited, there will,

perhaps, be more of psychical power there. These facts, the Hindus,

being analytically minded, took up and investigated. And they came

to certain conclusions; that is, they made a science of it. They

found out that all these, though extraordinary, are also natural;

there is nothing supernatural. They are under laws just the same as

any other physical phenomenon. It is not a freak of nature that a

man is born with such powers. They can be systematically studied,

practised, and acquired. This science they call the science of Raja -

Yoga. There are thousands of people who cultivate the study of this

science, and for the whole nation it has become a part of daily

worship.

 

The conclusion they have reached is that all these extraordinary

powers are in the mind of man. This mind is a part of the universal

mind. Each mind is connected with every other mind. And each mind,

wherever it is located, is in actual communication with the whole

world.

 

To be continued...

 

The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda Volume 2 [ Page : 10 ]

Gopi Krishna <gopi