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Leading A Spiritual Life

habits are ruining your health, and are also slowing
your intellectual development. From all points of view,
this is a disaster.” I advised him to treat getting rid of
these habits as an emergency. After a pause, he replied:
“I’ll do it.” I said: “No, you should say, ‘I have done it.’”
In life the principle that works is ‘now or never’. We
don’t have any time to lose. Saying ‘I will do it’ is a kind
of luxury that we cannot afford. We have not only to
take quick decisions, but we must also act upon them at
once. You should think that every day is the last day for
you, so you have to decide what to do in the very first
instant, otherwise you will not be able to do anything.
Time is running out fast. Remember the old saying,
‘Time and tide wait for no man.’

I pointed out to the young man that the mind, with
its various windows, has enormous capacity. These
windows normally open up only in emergencies when
a man has to take an urgent decision. For example, if
you are suddenly faced with a cobra, you will retreat
with great speed. The reason is that the fear of the cobra
activates your mind and the result is that some of the
windows of your mind, which had remained closed, are
immediately thrown open.
Every human mind has this potential, but generally
people utilize this capacity of the mind only in moments
of extremity. But, a wise man is one who heeds the
maxim, ‘There is no time like the present’ and opens up
the windows of his mind even in normal circumstances
in order to utilize the full capacity of his brain for
positive planning. Human beings and animals are both
activated by fear. But what differentiates a human being

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