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POSITIVE THINKING
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operation in everyday life. Gazetted officers cannot be retired before their tenure is over. If the government attempts to do so, the law courts come to the rescue of the affected officer. The service of a suspended officer is restored. The government is bound by the decision of the court. The government cannot suspend an officer arbitrarily; it can only transfer a person to a place where, without being actually suspended, he strongly feels the taste of suspension.
Similar is the condition of negative emotions. These have been so long established that it is not easy to dislodge them or suspend them altogether. However, these can be deprived of their primacy and relegated to a subordmate position. When the positive vision is strong, the negative approach loses its potency. The only way to strengthen the constructive approach is through impartial observation, by seeing things as they are. In calm observation, the stream of positive thinking regains its primacy of itself and negative thinking becomes a thing of little importance.
Acharya Vagbhat defined health and illness as follows: "The evenness of humours constitutes health whereas their incongruity makes for ill-health." There are three humours in the body: the wind, the bile and the phlegm. The mind has two flaws -- intemperance and ignorance. To annihilate them altogether is to court death itself. Generally, a man thinks in terms of annihilation. One who suffers from the wind, dreams of doing away with the wind altogether; likewise the man suffering from the bile or the phlegm. However, divested of the wind, the bile and the phlegm, the body cannot survive. All the three humours are necessary for life. There is no need to work for the removal of any one of them. What is required is to maintain them in an even degree. The disparity between them is what constitutes disorder. The excess of wind gives rise to one kind of disease, and the excess of bile or phlegm produces another kind. Likewise their deficiency gives rise to a still another set of maladies. The excess or deficiency of any one of the humours leads to disorder. The disproportion between these humours consti. tutes disease, but their existence in the body in right proportion, their equilibrium, is health itself. Health means, perfect balance - nothing in excess or deficient, the maintenance of all that is necessary for life. According to Acharya Sri Tulsi, life is nothing but humours in perfect equilibrium.
Regarding psychological disorders, one might safely assert that as we are constituted today, the state of complete detachment is for the time being unimaginable. If attachment goes, life would not be as we live it now; it would be a different kind of life altogether. Lise, as we know it, cannot go on without attachment. And with 'attachment', with 'like', goes dislike' and 'aversion'. Like and
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