<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=WINDOWS-1252">
<title>-020_VALUE OF GYMNASTICS, MENTAL OR OTHER .htm</title>
</head>
<div align="center">
	<table border="0" cellpadding="6" style="border-collapse: collapse" width="100%">
<tr>
	<td>
<p class="paracenter">VALUE OF GYMNASTICS, MENTAL OR OTHER
</p>
<p class="paracenter"></p>
<p class="para"> Intellectual<b> </b>activity is a 
kind of gymnastics. What is the value of physical gymnastics? It develops the 
muscles, makes them strong, supple and agile. But simply to develop them, to 
make them grow as much as possible or to take delight in mere muscle-binding a 
body is not the ideal; it rather frustrates the very object of gymnastics. The 
object is to develop, strengthen, shape all the limbs of the body and organise 
and harmonise them into a beautiful and capable whole. A particular exercise is 
not to be indulged for its own sake: all the energy of the body turned to that 
alone and the whole attention devoted to that one thing. An exclusive 
concentration upon a single physical feat does not bring out the full capacity 
of the body. It is to that end, the fullness of the body potential, that the 
culture of the bodily limbs is to be directed. In the same way, mental 
culture—the power of thinking, reasoning, arguing—has its value in its relation 
to the total culture of the mind and consciousness. There are higher regions of 
consciousness beyond the reach of the intellect; and you have to
</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-63</p>
<hr>
<p class="para">stop all intellectual activity, make your mind a total blank 
before you can hope to reach there. And indulgence even in so-called higher or 
philosophical speculations can only block the way to the true consciousness and 
knowledge. And yet you cannot leave the intellectual faculties uncared for or 
undeveloped on the plea that something higher is needed. In the physical body it 
need not be your ideal to become a &quot;muscle man&quot;; but neither would you like to 
have frail, ill-grown, rickety limbs that are weak and unshapely. With regard to 
your mental body too it would not serve any purpose to have a mind or intellect 
that is unable to think powerfully, cogently, closely. It is harmful when you 
take to mental gymnastics only for its own sake, to exclusive intellectual 
acrobatics—discussions, disputations, verbal quibbles etc., etc.; in that case 
the result attained is a disproportionate growth. But the development of the 
mind,<sub> </sub>even of the logical mind, can be and must be made part of the 
integral development, it must attain its true form, stature and strength, as a 
help towards and finally as an expression in its own field of the divinity, the 
highest and richest consciousness in man, even as the body too is to express and 
make concrete the supreme beauty and vigour of the perfect being.
</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-64</p>
	</td>
</tr>
	</table>
</div>
</html>
