Story 153 - Like cures like

A man suffered from diarrhea, and the Doctor gave him a purgative, and he was cured. The diarrhea made his go to the bath-room over and over again. Now a purgative taken willingly acts the same way, but there is a world of difference between the two. A purgative is a remedy while diarrhea is a disease; and while both work in the same way, there is a world of difference between them.

Worldly thought enslaves you, it is a disease, it binds you and keeps you at the mercy of all sorts of circumstances; every wind and storm can upset you. The diarrhea of thought is human idea. Take up the purgative which Vedanta furnishes. This is also thought to be a kind of imagination. So is all thought of the world; but worldly thoughts and human ideas are a diarrhea, and the kind of imagination or thought advocated by Vedanta is a purgative. Take up this purgative and you will be cured of your malady, your disease; you will be relieved of all suffering, anxiety, and trouble.

In India, people do not wash their hands with soap but with ashes. Ashes are one kind of dirt, one kind of earth, and the soil which is polluting your hands is also dirt or earth. When the ashes are applied to the hands and the hands are washed in water, they not only remove the dirt from the hands but are also removed themselves.

Similarly, the kind of thought which you will have to dwell upon, the kind of imagination, according to the teachings of Vedanta, is like ashes; it will wash you clean of every impurity and every weakness, it will raise you above the kind of imagination which is inculated in this.

It is imagination and the current of ideas in the wrong direction which binds you and it is imagination directed in the right channel which liberates you. Similia similibus curantur - like cures like.

MORAL: Imagination or thought, directed wrongly, binds, a man; while, directed rightly, liberates him.

Vol. 2 (75-74)