Although
we human beings are free where the external world is concerned, we often feel a
sense of imprisonment internally. Why do we feel so? The feeling of
restriction, lack of space and freedom, of claustrophobia, comes purely because
of our thoughts. Since the time a man becomes aware of himself, he is under the
constant unending influence of his thoughts. The mind, which creates these
thoughts, is an instrument which helps us think clearly and logically,
rationalise, make judgements, choose the right option among many available,
plan, visualise, be creative, and to execute tasks. However, in addition to
doing all this, the mind is also a generator---of thoughts, worries, anxieties,
fears, jealousies, greed, anger---the list is practically endless. And these
thoughts and the emotions that these thoughts produce in us become our masters,
and we become prisoners of our own thoughts.
Most of
us know ourselves and the world around us, by our thoughts. Who we are, what is
our qualification, what we do, what are our beliefs and ideals, who are the
people who are near and dear to us, our aspirations and ambitions, our
religious inclinations, our hopes and worries-----everything comes down to a
thought. If we were to take away thought, what or who would we be? In most
forms of meditation, as we go deeper and deeper, we choose to ignore all the
thoughts that are arising, giving them up one by one, till nothing remains.
This no-thought stage is often the end point of meditation, where we only know
that we exist. In the no-mind state, we don’t have any identity, except as pure
consciousness or pure witness. This is our true self, which can be felt or
experienced, only when there are absolutely no thoughts.
But the
moment our meditation is over, we are back in the world of thoughts. And the
world of thoughts, unfortunately, is not the world of reality. Whatever we see,
hear, smell, touch, think, conceptualise---everything is our own reaction to
the reality. There appears to be a prism or a glass between us and true
reality. This prism is our mind and its thoughts, which distorts every aspect
of reality, before delivering it to our brain and our areas of cognition and
understanding. Something appear blue, something appears red, some people appear
to be good while others seem to be evil, life alternates between good, bad and
acceptable, things seem to be different on the surface and at deeper
levels---basically, since we get a distorted view of reality rather than a real
one, life often makes no sense, seems purposeless and chaotic. The end result
of all this is conflict, frustration, unhappiness, despair, unfulfilled desires
and futility.
Once
the self is known, all the thoughts which have imprisoned us no longer have any
power over us. In order to
experience life as it exists, in order to experience happiness and ecstasy, one
has to go beyond all the thoughts that anchor us to our so called reality. Not
that these thoughts will not be there, but one must see the thoughts for what
they are----figments of imagination churned out by the overactive mind. The
problem is that we often believe everything that our mind tell us, through
these thoughts, and we act and live our lives according to our belief in these
thoughts, most of which are only random raves and rants of the mind. Motivation
guru Byron Katie used to say “I used to believe my thoughts and I suffered. The
day I stopped believing my thoughts, my suffering ended.”Her entire teaching,
called ‘the work’ is based on deeply questioning each and every thought, till
the falsity of the thought is established, so that we can throw them away,
leading to freedom from imprisonment.
