Thinking cannot be stopped.
Not that it does not stop, but it cannot be stopped. It stops of its
own accord. This distinction has to be understood, otherwise you can
go mad chasing your mind. No-mind does not arise by stopping
thinking. When the thinking is no more, no-mind is. The very effort
to stop will create more anxiety, it will create conflict, it will
make you split. You will be in a constant turmoil within. This is
not going to help.
And even if you succeed in stopping it forcibly for a few
moments, it is not an achievement at all - because those few moments
will be almost dead, they will not be alive. You may feel a sort of
stillness, but not silence, because a forced stillness is not
silence. Underneath it, deep in the unconscious, the repressed mind
goes on working. So, there is no way to stop the mind. But the mind
stops - that is certain. It stops of its own accord.
So what to do? Watch - don′t try to stop. There is no need to
do any action against the mind. In the first place, who will do it?
It will be mind fighting mind itself. You will divide your mind into
two; one that is trying to boss over - the top-dog - trying to kill
the other part of itself, which is absurd. It is a foolish game. It
can drive you crazy. Don′t try to stop the mind or the thinking -
just watch it, allow it. Allow it total freedom. Let it run as fast
as it wants. You don′t try in any way to control it. You just be a
witness. It is beautiful! Mind is one of the most beautiful
mechanisms. Science has not yet been able to create anything
parallel to mind. Mind still remains the masterpiece - so
complicated, so tremendously powerful, with so many potentialities.
Watch it! Enjoy it!
And don′t watch like an enemy, because if you look at the mind
like an enemy, you cannot watch. You are already prejudiced; you are
already against. You have already decided that something is wrong
with the mind - you have already concluded. And whenever you look at
somebody as an enemy you never look deep, you never look into the
eyes. You avoid! Watching the mind means: look at it with deep love,
with deep respect, reverence - it is God′s gift to you! Nothing is
wrong in mind itself. Nothing is wrong in thinking itself. It is a
beautiful process as other processes are. Clouds moving in the sky
are beautiful - why not thoughts moving into the inner sky? Flowers
coming to the trees are beautiful - why not thoughts flowering into
your being. The river running to the ocean is beautiful - why not
this stream of thoughts running somewhere to an unknown destiny? is
it not beautiful?
Look with deep reverence. Don′t be a fighter - be a lover.
Watch! - the subtle nuances of the mind; the sudden turns, the
beautiful turns; the sudden jumps and leaps; the games that mind
goes on playing; the dreams that it weaves - the imagination, the
memory; the thousand and one projections that it creates. Watch!
Standing there, aloof, distant, not involved, by and by you will
start feeling. The deeper your watchfulness becomes, the deeper your
awareness becomes, and gaps start arising, intervals. One thought
goes and another has not come, and there is a gap. One cloud has
passed, another is coming and there is a gap. In those gaps, for the
first time you will have glimpses of no-mind, you will have the
taste of no-mind. Call it taste of Zen, or Tao, or Yoga. In those
small intervals, suddenly the sky is clear and the sun is shining.
Suddenly the world is full of mystery because all barriers are
dropped. The screen on your eyes is no more there. You see clearly,
you see penetratingly. The whole existence becomes transparent.
In the beginning, these will be just rare moments, few and far in
between. But they will give you glimpses of what Samadhi is. Small
pools of silence - they will come and they will disappear. But now
you know that you are on the right track - you start watching again.
When a thought passes, you watch it; when an interval passes, you
watch it. Clouds are also beautiful; sunshine also is beautiful. Now
you are not a chooser. Now you don′t have a fixed mind: you don′t
say, "I would like only the intervals." That is stupid - because
once you become attached to wanting only the intervals, you have
decided again against thinking. And then those intervals will
disappear. They happen only when you are very distant, aloof. They
happen, they cannot be brought. They happen, you cannot force them
to happen. They are spontaneous happenings.
Go on watching. Let thoughts come and go - wherever they want
to go. Nothing is wrong! Don′t try to manipulate and don′t try to
direct. Let thoughts move in total freedom. And then bigger
intervals will be coming. You will be blessed with small satoris.
Sometimes minutes will pass and no thought will be there; there will
be no traffic - a total silence, undisturbed.
When the bigger gaps come, you will not only have clarity to
see into the world - with the bigger gaps you will have a new
clarity arising - you will be able to see into the inner world. With
the first gaps you will see into the world: trees will be more green
than they look right now. You will be surrounded by an infinite
music - the music of the spheres. You will be suddenly in the
presence of God - ineffable, mysterious. Touching you although you
can not grasp it. Within your reach and yet beyond. With the bigger
gaps, the same will happen inside. God will not only be outside, you
will be suddenly surprised - He is inside also. He is not only in
the seen; He is in the seer also - within and without. By and by...
But don′t get attached to that either.
Attachment is the food for the mind to continue. Non-attached
witnessing is the way to stop it without any effort to stop it. And
when you start enjoying those blissful moments, your capacity to
retain them for longer periods arises. Finally, eventually, one day,
you become master. Then when you want to think, you think; if
thought is needed, you use it; if thought is not needed, you allow
it to rest. Not that mind is simply no more there: mind is there,
but you can use it or not use it. Now it is your decision. Just like
legs: if you want to run you use them; if you don′t want to run you
simply rest - legs are there. In the same way, mind is always there.
When I am talking to you I am using the mind - there is no
other way to talk. When I am answering your question I am using the
mind - there is no other way. I have to respond and relate, and mind
is a beautiful mechanism. When I am not talking to you and I am
alone, there is no mind - because it is a medium to relate through.
Sitting alone it is not needed.
You have not given it a rest; hence, the mind becomes mediocre.
Continuously used, tired, it goes on and on and on. Day it works;
night it works. In the day you think; in the night you dream. Day
in, day out, it goes on working. If you live for seventy or eighty
years it will be continuously working. Look at the delicacy and the
endure-ability of the mind; so delicate! In a small head all the
libraries of the world can be contained; all that has ever been
written can be contained in one single mind. Tremendous is the
capacity of the mind - and in such a small space! and not making
much noise.
If scientists some day become capable of creating a parallel
computer to mind... computers are there, but they are not yet minds.
They are still mechanisms, they have no organic unity; they don′t
have any center yet. If some day it becomes possible... and it is
possible that scientists may some day be able to create minds - then
you will know how much space that computer will take, and how much
noise it will make.
Mind is making almost no noise; goes on working silently. And
such a servant - for seventy, eighty years. And then, too, when you
are dying your body may be old but your mind remains young. Its
capacity remains yet the same. Sometimes, if you have used it
rightly, it even increases with your age! - because the more you
know, the more you understand, the more you have experienced and
lived, the more capable your mind becomes. When you die, everything
in your body is ready to die - except the mind.
That′s why in the East we say mind leaves the body and enters
another womb, because it is not yet ready to die. The rebirth is of
the mind. Once you have attained the state of Samadhi, no-mind, then
there will be no rebirth. Then you will simply die. And with your
dying, everything will be dissolved - your body, your mind... only
your witnessing soul will remain. That is beyond time and space.
Then you become one with existence; then you are no more separate
from it. The separation comes from the mind.
But there is no way to stop it forcibly - don′t be violent.
Move lovingly, with a deep reverence - and it will start happening
of its own accord. You just watch. And don′t be in a hurry.
The modern mind is in much hurry. It wants instant methods for
stopping the mind. Hence, drugs have appeal. Mm? - you can force the
mind to stop by using chemicals, drugs, but again you are being
violent with the mechanism. It is not good. It is destructive. In
this way you are not going to become a master. You may be able to
stop the mind through the drugs, but then drugs will become your
master - you are not going to become the master. You have simply
changed your bosses, and you have changed for the worse. Now the
drugs will hold power over you, they will possess you; without them
you will be nowhere.
Meditation is not an effort against the mind. It is a way of
understanding the mind. It is a very loving way of witnessing the
mind - but, of course, one has to be very patient. This mind that
you are carrying in your head has arisen over centuries, millennia.
Your small mind carries the whole experience of humanity - and not
only of humanity: of animals, of birds, of plants, of rocks. You
have passed through all those experiences. All that has happened up
to now has happened in you also. In a very small nutshell, you carry
the whole experience of existence. That′s what your mind is. In
fact, to say it is yours is not right: it is collective; it belongs
to us all.
Modern psychology has been approaching it, particularly Jungian
analysis has been approaching it, and they have started feeling
something like a collective unconscious. Your mind is not yours - it
belongs to us all. Our bodies are very separate; our minds are not
so separate. Our bodies are clear-cutly separate; our minds overlap
- and our souls are one.
Bodies separate, minds overlapping, and souls are one. I don′t
have a different soul and you don′t have a different soul. At the
very center of existence we meet and are one. That′s what God is:
the meeting-point of all. Between the God and the world - ′the
world′ means the bodies - is mind. Mind is a bridge: a bridge
between the body and the soul, between the world and God. Don′t try
to destroy it!
Many have tried to destroy it through Yoga. That is a misuse of
Yoga. Many have tried to destroy it through body posture, breathing
- that too brings subtle chemical changes inside. For example: if
you stand on your head in shirshasan - in the headstand - you can
destroy the mind very easily. Because when the blood rushes too
much, like a flood, into the head - when you stand on your head
that′s what you are trying to do.... The mind mechanism is very
delicate; you are flooding it with blood. The delicate tissues will
die.
That′s why you never come across a very intelligent yogi - no.
Yogis are, more or less, stupid. Their bodies are healthy - that′s
true - strong, but their minds are just dead. You will not see the
glimmer of intelligence. You will see a very robust body,
animal-like, but somehow the human has disappeared. Standing on your
head, you are forcing your blood into the head through gravitation.
The head needs blood, but in a very, very small quantity; and very
slowly, not flood-like. Against gravitation, very little blood
reaches to the head. And that, too, in a very silent way. If too
much blood is reaching into the head it is destructive.
Yoga has been used to kill the mind; breathing can be used to
kill the mind. There are rhythms of breath, subtle vibrations of
breath, which can be very, very drastic to the delicate mind. The
mind can be destroyed through them. These are old tricks. Now the
latest tricks are supplied by science: LSD, marijuana, and others.
More and more sophisticated drugs will be available sooner or later.
I am not in favour of stopping the mind. I am in favour of
watching it. It stops of its own accord - and then it is beautiful.
When something happens without any violence it has a beauty of its
own, it has a natural growth. You can force a flower and open it by
force; you can pull the petals of a bud and open it by force - but
you have destroyed the beauty of the flower. Now it is almost dead.
It cannot stand your violence. The petals will be hanging loose,
limp, dying. When the bud opens by its own energy, when it opens of
its own accord, then those petals are alive.
The mind is your flowering - don′t force it in any way. I am
against all force and against all violence, and particularly
violence that is directed towards yourself. Just watch - in deep
prayer, love, reverence. And see what happens! Miracles happen of
their own accord. There is no need to pull and push.
You ask:
I say: Just watch, be alert. And drop this idea of
stopping, otherwise it will stop the natural transformation of the
mind. Drop this idea of stopping! Who are you to stop? At the most,
enjoy.
And nothing is wrong - even if immoral thoughts, so-called
immoral thoughts, pass through your mind, let them pass; nothing is
wrong. You remain detached. No harm is being done. It is just
fiction; you are seeing an inner movie. Allow it its own way and it
will lead you, by and by, to the state of no-mind. Watching
ultimately culminates in no-mind. No-mind is not against mind:
no-mind is beyond mind. No-mind does not come by killing and
destroying the mind: no-mind comes when you have understood the mind
so totally that thinking is no longer needed - your understanding
has replaced it.