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<title>-038_The Force of Body Consciousness.htm</title>
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<p class="paracenter">THE FORCE OF BODY-CONSCIOUSNESS
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<p class="para">
There is a state of consciousness in which 
you perceive that the effect of things, circumstances, movements, all 
the activities of life upon yourself depends almost exclusively upon 
your attitude towards them. You become then conscious, conscious to the 
extent of realising that things in themselves are neither good nor bad, 
they are so only in relation to ourselves: their effect, I say, depends 
entirely upon the way in which we regard these things. If we take, for 
example, a circumstance as a gift from God, as a divine Grace, as an 
outcome of the total harmony, it will help us to become more conscious 
and truer and stronger. The same identical circumstance, if we take it 
differently, as a blow of Fate, as a bad force wishing us harm, becomes,
 on the contrary, a damper on our consciousness, it takes away our 
strength, brings obscurity, creates disharmony. And yet in either case 
it is altogether the same circumstance. I would like you to have the 
experience and make the experiment. For your ideal is to be master of 
yourselves. But not that only. You should not only be master of your own
 selves, but master of the circumstances of your life, the 
circumstances, at least, that immediately surround you and concern you. 
You must note further that it is an experience that is not confined to 
the mind alone: it need not happen in your head only, it may and indeed 
must continue into the body.
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-137</p>
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<p class="para">Certainly, this is a realisation needing great 
labour, much concentration and self-mastery: you have to force the 
consciousness into the body, into dense Matter. It is the attitude of 
the body that will in the end determine everything: shocks and contacts 
of the outside world will change its nature according to the way in 
which they are received by the body. And if you attain perfection in 
that line, you can become even master of accidents. Such a thing is 
possible, not only possible, but it is sure to happen, for it is a 
forward step in man's progress. First of all, you have to realise the 
power in your mind to the extent that it can act upon circumstances and 
change their effect upon you. Then the power can descend into Matter, 
into the substance, the cells of your body and endow the body with this 
capacity of control over things outside and around you.
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<p class="para">
There is nothing impossible in the world. We 
ourselves put the limit; always we say, this is possible, that is 
impossible, one can do this, one cannot do that. Sometimes we admit a 
thing to be possible but ask who would do it, so it is impossible and so
 on. Like slaves, like prisoners we bind ourselves to our limits. You 
call it common sense, but it is a stupid, narrow, ignorant sense; it 
does not truly know the laws of life. The laws of life are not what we 
think them to be, what our mind or intellect conceives them to be; they 
are quite otherwise.
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-138</p>
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