Emotions have a function. It’s a detailed study, and some of this study is found in the Sanskrit texts of literary criticism, or analysis; what constitutes literature. I speak of the baseline emotion that an individual maintains. We all maintain a baseline emotion. It could be anger, it could be sorrow, it could be fear. And, in that baseline emotion, as you write letters against a line, other emotions rise and fall, and that is what constitutes literature. Your whole life is literature. If you were to write every thought that has occurred in you from the moment of stirring in the mother’s womb to the last lying still in the lap of Mother Death, what a novel, what a piece of literature that would be!

A person who is making spiritual progress has total control over the functions of the mind and functions of the emotions. He wants to feel love, he feels love. He wants to feel neutrality, he feels neutrality. He does not wish to feel hatred, he chooses not to feel hatred. He wants to exhibit anger without being angry, he exhibits anger without being angry. He chooses to love, and thereby loves. He chooses to be neutral, and thereby becomes neutral. He chooses the intensity of the exhibition/expression of love, to that chosen intensity and degree he or she expresses/communicates that love. And the rest he or she, withholds.

Emotions are the most easily controlled phenomena of human personality. Thoughts are more difficult. You can engrave it in your mind. I am speaking to you out of my personal self-experimentation. You have chosen not to experiment. You can choose to experiment.

A person who is making spiritual progress has total control over the functions of the mind. This moment he may be dealing with the most profound, philosophical text and someone in need of reassurance walks in; he listens to the story, gives reassurance; the person walks out and leaves no residue behind in your mind.

Editor’s Note

This is an excerpt from the book Signs of Spiritual Progress, p 32, by Swami Veda Bharati, published 2023 by the Himalayan Yoga Publications Trust. This book is also available on Kindle as an ebook.

For published works of Swami Rama and Swami Veda Bharati, kindly email hyptbooks@gmail.com