THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

VII. 11. Yoga and Hypnotism389or sweetness is not in the vinegar or sugar, but in the mind. Theheart also is the subject of the mind. My emotions are like myphysical feelings, the result of association, and my character isthe result of accumulated past experiences with their resultantassociations and reactions crystallising into habits of mind andheart summed up in the word, character. These things like allthe rest that are made of the stuff of associations are not permanentor binding but fluid and mutable, anityÀÕ sarve saÌskÀrÀÕ.If my friend blames me, I am grieved; that is an association andnot binding. The grief is not the result of the blame but of anassociation in the mind. I can change the association so far thatblame will cause me no grief, praise no elation. I can entirelystop the reactions of joy and grief by the same force that createdthem. They are habits of the mind, nothing more. In the sameway though with more difficulty I can stop the reactions of physicalpain and pleasure so that nothing will hurt my body. If I am acoward today, I can be a hero tomorrow. The cowardice wasmerely the habit of associating certain things with pain and griefand the shrinking from the pain and grief; this shrinking and thephysical sensations in the vital or nervous man which accompanyit are called fear and they can be dismissed by the action ofthe mind which created them. All these are propositions whichEuropean science is even now unwilling to admit, yet it is beingproved more and more by the phenomena of hypnotism that theseeffects can be temporarily at least produced by one man uponanother; and it has even been proved that disease can be permanentlycured or character permanently changed by the actionof one mind upon another. The rest will be established in timeby the development of hypnotism.The difference between Yoga and hypnotism is that whathypnotism does for a man through the agency of another and inthe sleeping state, Yoga does for him by his own agency and inthe waking state. The hypnotic sleep is necessary in order toprevent the activity of the subject's mind full of old ideas andassociations, from interfering with the operator.In the waking state he would naturally refuse to experiencesweetness in vinegar or sourness in sugar or to believe that hecan change from disease to health, cowardice to heroism by a mere