We cannot succeed if we have made up our minds that we are incapable of succeeding. All great men have had faith in themselves. Psychologists studied the business practices of Henry Ford, the automobile manufacturer, and also his ways of thinking, and came to the conclusion that he was programmed to succeed. If all his wealth had been taken away, in just a year he would have made more wealth than he had lost, they found. That was because of the way he thought, strategised and planned, and executed his plans. Thus the first step to succeeding is to think that we can succeed.
Our thoughts can be sensed by sages, even if we do not express our thoughts to them, said Suki Sivam.
Had a sage been asked to analyse Henry Ford's personality, he would have come to a conclusion more quickly than the psychologists, and his assessment would have been right too.
Once a man went to the ashram of a sage. The man was about to enter the ashram, when the sage told his disciples: “Do not admit that man in. He is a sinner.” He said this repeatedly, and the disciples were therefore forced to send the man away, although they did not know the reason for the sage's reaction. They had their answer in the next day's newspapers: the man had committed a murder. He had come to the sage immediately after committing the heinous crime. The sage could, through his powers, sense what had happened, and hence he had refused admittance to the man.
The Saivite saint Thirumoolar says that our thoughts and our breath are connected. If our thoughts are about something we have done, or are planning to do, then the same will be reflected in our breath. Just by breathing, we make holy men aware of our thoughts.
Our bodies too are temples, in a sense, because God resides inside every one of us. So we should not have bad thoughts, for to do so, would be to treat the God resident in us with disrespect. Recognising that the body is a temple too, the Chidambaram Nataraja temple has been designed keeping the human body in mind. Thus, shunning bad thoughts, we must aspire towards salvation.
