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THE POWER OF KARMA
have paused and reflected, and have begun to reduce our wants to a minimum. We live on rice, and most of us are satisfied with one meal a day. All our immediate wants, if translated into time, would mean less than twenty minutes work per day: we can devote all the remainder of our time to mental cultureto thinking-not to book-study, but to the solution of the world mystery. And we have done a good deal of thinking, as you are prepared to admit; we have developed, during the last fifty centuries, mind-faculties which are a source of constant surprise to you; in fact, while you have been working for the stomach, we have been working for the brain. You Westerners, in fact, are all stomach, and we are all brain."
Although this indictment of Western ideals is a trifle severe, it is true in the main. Coomra Sami intimates very clearly how persistent an effort of will must be made to arrive at the end in view. The will being thus steadfastly focused upon and exercised about a clearly defined ideal becomes at last stabilized, and is then no longer subject to the attraction exerted by extraneous and less desirable things that are in conflict with the ideal. The stabilization and fixation of the will reacts on the whole physical organism
