Surge Fifty Five

Thoughts and Their Sad Limitations

Most people in the world go for the simple philosophy of ‘Be good; do good’. Noble thoughts, for them, are the means to such spirituality and they often boast of their understanding as being the most practical. They regard good thoughts as everything. In a manner of saying, they worship thoughts. For them, thoughts are the ultimate.

The truth is different though. True spirituality is the glimpse of what lies behind (or beyond) thoughts. “Mind alone is maya at play,” observed Swami Chinmayananda, who also defined the mind as nothing else but the flow of thoughts. Many mystics have gone to the extent of saying that we can never know the truth as long as there is the play of thoughts.

No doubt great people like Swami Vivekananda have extolled the power of thoughts. He remarked, “We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.” There is the popular saying too, “As you think, so you become.” All these pass for basic spiritual education. Deeper literature makes us shift our attention in a totally new direction.

Thoughts flow from a thinker. This thinker, which becomes the ‘I’ in a lot of contexts, is a product of memories or conditionings. Accordingly, all the thoughts are the outcome of conditionings. Therefore they are not real; they project a world which is self-created. The thinker himself/herself is a bundle of thoughts. To see the truth of this is to get down into intense self-inquiry. “Who am I?” then gains tremendous significance in our eyes.

When we understand that we need to doubt (or question) the sense of ‘I and me’, which drives a number of thoughts, we no more concern ourselves with merely controlling thoughts. Just controlling the mind or channeling it in some desired direction loses all meaning because the self (for whose sake all this is done) is an impostor. If the ‘me’ presently is a product of the past, who am I really?

All sadhana (spiritual practice) comes under a cloud now. If we lose trust in a man, all he does becomes questionable. In the same way, when the ‘me’ is of dubious validity, the practices that this ‘me’ takes up lose their credibility. What do we do then?

The doors of the ‘great yoga of doing nothing’ now open. We do not decide not to do anything; we see that doing anything reinforces the self, therefore we cease to do anything. The energy saved through abandoning all those ego-prompted activities now acts on its own. This energy, when we stop doing the wrong things, brings about a deep inner change. This is not an activity of thought (or thinking) but is a flame; it is the flame of awareness that burns away both the thinker and the thoughts. Then takes place radical change of the human being.

Swami Chidananda

Varanasi

Monday, January 14, 2008