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to see not only his speed in beating, not only his way of thrashing it, not only showing his enmity against the pillow but his tearing it into shreds, and biting it with his mouth. He would tear the pillow into many pieces. Those who underwent this experiment say the mind became very light after the experiment. The mind was never so light before.
What does Pearse say? He says when you have the violence let out with a purpose against someone, it is exhausted. Now show your violence against air, don't show it against any person, because there will be reaction if it is let out against someone. If I box someone, it will not be lost in the sky, the sky will not absorb it. The person whom I box will react. He may react today, or tomorrow or in future. He may wait but he will surely react. If I box someone and if he happens to be a person like Buddha or Mahavira he may not react, but as soon as I box him, there will be reaction and repentance in his mind also. Bear in mind, anger alone is not bad, repentance is equally bad.
Repentance is anger upside-down. In fact when a person repents, he does nothing else except to start the preparation to become angry. When a man repents and says, 'It was very bad, I became angry', he is trying to persuade himself 'I am not so bad a person; I acted wrongly once, but it is not very important.' Thus by repenting man tries to re-establish himself as a good man. He is re-establishing his old mind from his own viewpoint. and when he is thus re-established, he will be ready to box someone. Again there will be repentance and again a box. In this way the vicious circle of anger and repentance will go on revolving. So when we strike somebody, there follows not only repentance but there is also a preparation to reply to the attack from another person.
Thus violence would create a vicious circle, and it becomes difficult to come out of it. But when a person is striking a pillow, this does not happen. In striking a pillow, catharsis takes place. So, Pearse is asking us to strike a pillow, because the present world in which we live has become very objective. Mahavira flourished 2500 years ago. He would have said, 'Strike the
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