The sign of good mental health.
Experiment and Experience is the basis of progress in mental health.
The signs of good mental health have been defined. Aspiration and effort require guidance, direction and the time. There is enough accumulated and recorded experience of past and present generations to guide us - scriptural sources, biographical studies of ideal models of mental health and living examples in one’s own circle.
These, however, are of no avail unless they are within the personal experience of the aspirant for good mental health. Experience cannot be durable unless conscious personal experiment is at the basis. However, a person wishing to be a space physicist does not flounder about in aimless, unguided experimentation. He puts himself through a discipline in the light of past experience of the society in physics. He may even cause disasters to himself and others if he is not properly guided by past experience and present teachers. Similarly, it will be unprofitable and even self-destructive for a person to discard recorded past experience and present teachers when experimenting in mental health. Thus, personal experience is essential. Experience must be founded on conscious experiment. Unguided experiment is wasteful.
- The degree to which you have an inner sense of comfort in as many situations as possible is the measure of your mental health.
- The faces of your intimate associates are an index of your level of mental health. The more unhappy and tense they look, or the more happy and relaxed they look in your presence is the minus and plus of your store of mental health.
- Your account may be very poor in the above two, but the degree and duration of your aspiration and effort to change for the better is the most positive index of the state of your mental health.
Experiment and Experience is the basis of progress in mental health.
The signs of good mental health have been defined. Aspiration and effort require guidance, direction and the time. There is enough accumulated and recorded experience of past and present generations to guide us - scriptural sources, biographical studies of ideal models of mental health and living examples in one’s own circle.
These, however, are of no avail unless they are within the personal experience of the aspirant for good mental health. Experience cannot be durable unless conscious personal experiment is at the basis. However, a person wishing to be a space physicist does not flounder about in aimless, unguided experimentation. He puts himself through a discipline in the light of past experience of the society in physics. He may even cause disasters to himself and others if he is not properly guided by past experience and present teachers. Similarly, it will be unprofitable and even self-destructive for a person to discard recorded past experience and present teachers when experimenting in mental health. Thus, personal experience is essential. Experience must be founded on conscious experiment. Unguided experiment is wasteful.
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| Anderson Mancini from Sao Paulo, Brazil (Three wise monkeys), via Wikimedia Commons |
One concrete example: Recorded past experience goes to show that indulging in gossip about others disturbs one’s own and other’s peace of mind. See no evil, hear no evil is the old adage. Systematically study the effects on yourself, your sleep, your behaviour and on that of your family by constantly telling yourself and your family all the bad things that you have seen and heard at the market and the office. Follow this up, by a week in which you talk to your family only of the good and kind things that have happened to you during the day. While dozens of modern books on psychology have changed editions and fashions, the three monkeys stand firm in our memories. See if your experiment can demolish them. The probability is that you will replace negative monkeys by the positive ones which will only see good, hear good and speak good. If you have started with this experiment you are on the high road towards positive mental health.
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