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sympathetic understanding brighten up your life too? May I ask you whether you have at any time looked upon the body with an overflow of such loving sympathy? Have you ever felt yourselves blessed with its acts of service? Have you ever expressed your gratefulness to it? If not, how great had been the ingratitude! What an unbecoming discourtesy! What a misdemeanour!
The attitude towards the body should be one of understanding and deep sympathy. One should have knowledge enough to protect it and view it with friendliness. It is our fellow-traveller in a long uphill journey, sharing with us our joys and sorrows. It is an instrument; it is a means and a ladder. Hence, in my view, no man with an iota of sense in him can come into conflict with it or be wicked towards it. But, as ill luck would have it, there have been in the world, and there still are, many men of warped, distorted vision whose high-handedness, violence, unrelenting suppression and cruel tactics towards their own physical body provoke in our mind feelings of remorse and sorrow and eventually a fervent prayer, "Oh God! save mankind from such stupid spirituality!" Activities of this magnitude and seriousness go only to prove a total loss of intelligence in them. But alas! the evil influences of such people still linger and haunt us even today. Let us keep ourselves away from such sickening sermons. Such preachers do not deserve our reverence; they deserve to be cured instead. Certainly I hope we will be able to cure them.
This hostility to the physical body, as I said, is but a reaction to the weakness, failure and dissatisfaction resulting from unregulated sensual enjoyment. Thus the innocent physical body has been blamed for the sinfulness of the Self itself. I appeal to you to be alert in regard to agonizing self-denials based on hostility to the physical body. In view of the fact that you have been playing havoc with your body, you may feel tempted towards all forms of self-discipline. If on seeing the enormous wealth possessed by some one, one becomes greedy or on seeing someone's beauty, one is charmed, one does not normally puncture one's eyes; if one were to do so, I would definitely
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