How to Acquire Good Impressions?

Try to acquire some good spiritual Impressions in this birth at least, if you are not able to devote all your time in spiritual pursuit. Do some kind of meditation for a short time at least daily, say for half an hour in the morning or evening. Have a meditation room. By doing so, you will acquire some spiritual Impressions which will be a valuable spiritual asset for a new, good life.

You will have a very good birth. You will be placed in suitable environments in the next birth for unfolding the Divinity that is lurking in your heart, for practice of Yoga. Even by a little systematic spiritual practice, you can change your mentality, your old vicious Impressions. You can cut short several future births. By practice for three years, you can free yourself from the clutches of births and deaths. Why not now in this very birth? Why don’t you cut short the cycle of unnecessary births and consequent miseries? How long do you want to be a slave of the world, a slave of passions and Senses? Wake up now. Rouse the self by the Self.

New, healthy Impressions can be implanted by new, healthy suggestions. Suppose your brain is a plank in which are driven nails which represent the ideas, habits and instincts which determine your actions. If you find that there exists in you a bad idea, a bad habit, a bad instinct, a bad nail, as it were, in the plank of your mind, you should take another, viz., a good idea, habit or instinct, place it on the top of the bad one and give a hard tap with a hammer. In other words, you should make a healthy, useful suggestion. The new nail will be driven in perhaps a fraction of an inch while the old one will come out to the same extent. At each fresh blow with the hammer, that is to say, at each fresh suggestion, the one will be driven in a little further and the other will be driven out just that much until, after a certain number of blows, the old habits will be completely replaced by the new habits, new ideas. It demands, doubtless, strenuous efforts. It needs constant repetition of the new, healthy suggestions. Habit is second nature. But, pure, irresistible, determined will is bound to succeed eventually.

End of Impressions Leads to Moksha/Nirvana

The physical body may die. But, the thoughts and Impressions of actions, enjoyments and thinking follow you after death till you attain Moksha. In different births, you create different kinds of Impressions. It is the end of the Impressions, it is the death of the causal body that leads to the final Moksha. It leads to the attainment of Self Realization. You will be getting fresh births so long as there are Impressions. You will have to take birth again and again till all the Impressions are obliterated or fried up by the acquisition of Self Knowledge. When the Impressions are wiped out, Self Knowledge shines by itself in its own glory.

Reference

Mind – Its Mysteries and Control by Sri Swami Sivananda