Laughter is a tonic – physical, mental, spiritual. It is a dry cleaner, which cleanses you from inside. It gives a new tone to your life. The day on which you have not laughed is a lost day, indeed.

Victor Hugo said, “Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.” George Santayana said, “The young man who has not shed tears is a savage, and the old man who has not laughed is a fool.” I would suggest, “The young man who has not shed tears needs to move in the company of the lovers of God, and the old man who has not laughed needs the company of the little ones.”

Laughter is a medicine. It helps in building up moral muscles. It is a spiritual tonic and has a great cleansing power. When you feel sad or downcast, look at your face in a mirror. It looks so tense, so ugly, so unlike the face you would wish others to see. The strain in the face is due to some negative emotion, which is playing havoc in the mind. One way of breaking the force of the negative emotion is to relax. Relax the whole body.

As you do so, you will find that the part of the body to relax last is always the face: and of the face, the mouth is the last part to relax. So smile, and laugh! You will see how quickly the clouds vanish and you are happy again!

It is a fact that the great need of modern man is silence. To help us avoid stress and tension, the noted psychologist, Deborah Bright, recommends 20 minutes of PQT (personal quiet time) twice a day for mental well-being. Just as particles of dust cling to our clothes, particles of noise cling to our hearts. Like we clean our clothes with soap and water, we need to take a dip in the waters of silence to cleanse our souls. Thus, it is necessary to practice silence every day.

You get up in the morning, even before you open your eyes, let there be a smile on your face and the words on your lips, “Good morning Lord” Then pick up a great thought of a great one or a shloka from a scripture which is der to you or a line which stirs your heart, and repeat it ten times. Then, during the day in the midst of your work, if possible, after every hour, remind yourself of the line or shloka with which you woke up in the morning. If you cannot think of any other line, you may consider this simple prayer, “Deena Bandhu Deena Nath, Meri Dori Tere Haath” - "O Lord of those who approach you in a spirit of humility, I surrender the thread of my life in your safe hands, and all is well. In any case, you must repeat the prayer at least five times, once in the morning as you wake up, te second time before you take your breakfast, the third time before you you havelunch \, the fourth time before you have dinner and the fifth time as you are about to sleep. This should in a state of recollection..

This is a difficulty experienced by many seekers on the Path. When they sit to meditate, they find that their mind goes berserk. The reason is that through many years-- through many births-- the mind has acquired the habit of wandering. It can not be suddenly stopped through a few minutes practice everyday.

In the Bhagawad Gita, Arjuna asks Sri Krishna: “Tell me if it is possible to control the wandering of the mind.” Sri Krishna answers: “It is very difficult but possible. The mind can be controlled by (1) vairagya (detachment) and (2) abhyasa (repeating the same thing over and over again).

Gurudev Sadhu Vaswani taught us a far simpler method. He said your mind is where your heart is. If you love someone, your mind will keep thinking of that someone all the time. If only you can love God, then even in the midst of your work and, more so, when you sit in silence, your mind will flow to the Lotus Feet of the Lord.

Have you ever told God “I love you, God!” Love of God is a gift which God and the Guru can bestow on us. Continue to offer this simple prayers again and again— as many times everyday as possible: “I love you, God! I want to love you more and more! I want to love you more than anything in the world! I want to love you to distraction, to intoxication! Grant me pure love and devotion for Thy Lotus Feet and so bless me that this world-bewitching maya may not lead me astray!

As you know, the best way to treat a disease is to treat the cause. The cause of anxiety is lack of faith. Faith and anxiety can never go together even as light and darkness can not live together. If your patient can keep on repeating to himself, time and again: “By God’s grace, all is well, all was well, all will be well both today and a hundred years hence,” he may be helped to overcome his anxiety.