WITNESS YOUR THOUGHTS

When you go beyond the mind you will be conscious of great uniqueness. In that self- remembering, all inferiority evaporates. When the mind is not, where are the thoughts, where is that 'I'? In the interval between thoughts, there is real comprehension, nothing to compare with, the real understanding of who you are.

Pay attention. When the mind doesn't exist, comprehension and not comprehension are true. When the mind exists, comprehension and non comprehension are the error, so how can the knowledge be true in the mind existence? How can you include the truth in your thinking? When you comprehend something, this reality depends on your choices. All choices are thoughts. When you don't comprehend anything, you don't compare, you only depend on the choice-less moment of now. The choice-less now is the wholeness. When this reality requires your support, that what is not real becomes real in your mind. When you require the support of now, everything becomes true, be- cause everything is emptiness. Thus, the consciousness doesn't rely on the mind to look for reality, or the reality to look for your mind. Both reality and the mind are empty in the consciousness because the consciousness is always now.

Confucius said once, “The way out is through the door. Why is it that no one will use this method?”

The door is simply witnessing the thoughts passing before you. Just silently watching without interfering or judging. The very moment you judge, you identify with the thought of judgment and you have lost the witness. The very moment you say, 'I like this, I don't like that', you are already attached to the thought process

Through witnessing the thought process you are creating a gap between the witness and the mind. This process of witnessing is what real religion is. As you become more religious, you become more rooted in witnessing, and thoughts stop functioning, suddenly you are in, you will be at the centre, you will be free and conscious.

If you think of using the mind to find consciousness, you are in deception. How can you find emptiness? How can you find an interval between thoughts? How can you find the space beyond the mind? Thoughts cannot take you to the essential, they can take you only to your ego. When you get deceived by your mind and you become aware of it through your witnessing, you are liberated, and the emptiness becomes the fullness of your awareness, and your awareness becomes the fullness of the wholeness. You come to realize that the interval between thoughts was always present and you were not aware of it. You come to understand that the space beyond the mind is your awareness right now. In that meeting between awareness and now, compassion is born.

Understand this. The meditative state of being is born of compassion. Establish contentment in meditation, and comprehension and non comprehension becomes the contentment. If you embody both compassion and contentment in harmony you are the wholeness. In the wholeness, you attain wisdom. The emptiness within and compassion without, meditation within and love without is your consciousness in separation from the mind.

Now, let's go a little bit further. Wisdom is not in the library that you can claim as your knowledge. There is no shortcut to wisdom. You cannot have it in any other way than through experience. You cannot become wise out of the blue. You will have to move, to acquire, to fail, to be frustrated, to be foolish, to desire, to dream, to think, to do this and do that, and only then, out of your total failure and total acceptance of your ignorance, all acquiring obtained by the mind will have to be dropped. When you are not searching for wisdom, when you drop the whole movement in your mind, when all experiences become the emptiness, only then can you accept your ignorance. In accept- ing your ignorance, you have a feeling that 'I don't know'. Witness start witnessing the witness. Socrates said, 'know only one thing, that I don't know anything.' If you know that you don't know, only then it is possible for you to know.

Wisdom is not knowledge, it is the not-knowing state of being. In that state, one be- comes innocent in the heart and the without becomes sacred. Only the awareness that 'I am ignorant. I don't know anything. I don't know myself,' creates the possibility for the truth to be you, and that truth within is shared without as compassion. So wisdom is emptiness of your mind, your thinking, your ego. Wisdom is no-mind, a compassion- ate state of simply being.

Buddha said, ‘Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts.’

Your guarded thoughts with awareness are your friends and your blessings. Remember. Misfortune can be turned into fortune with awareness.

The thoughts are occupying the space of no-mind and creating something that we call 'the mind.' In that process of occupation, the essential is suppressed - your consciousness.

We don't have a relationship with our mind but with the thoughts, because we cannot be conscious of the mind, but of the thoughts. Thoughts are learned from society, but not the process of thinking. To think you have to learn yourself. Global education is teaching people thoughts not the process of thinking. You see, that process can be learned unconsciously or consciously. You can be used by the mind, learn the process of thinking, and create your personality; or you can be the master of the process, drop the mind, be awareness and use thinking when you need it. When you attain mastery over your thinking, you attain your being, and by attaining your being, the process of thinking will be in your own hands.

What does 'Mastery of Thinking' mean? It means to be in consciousness, to be in witnessing, to know that you are not the process or in the process, but the one who is witnessing the process, who is allowing the process to simply be as it is. In mastering your thinking, you are alert, attentive and aware that you are beyond any process, beyond any thinking. You are not in reaction and comparison to things being seen, sensed, thought and experienced. You are in awareness, responding to situations with 'The Right Response.'

When you are not in 'The Right Response" you are just imitating others, and always in trouble because you have to do this and cannot do that. The entire world suffers from inferiority complexes in one way or another, because people go on comparing. People have never encountered the real One Self, they have never entered their own being. People are unconscious, possessed and identified with their minds. Even the most important people in human history, the people you learn from and compare yourself with, all feel in some way or another spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, or physically inferi- or.

What is 'The Right Response' then? It is being responsible for any situations created or controlled by the mind, and doing nothing to it, not reacting to it, not identifying with it. In The Right Response, you are not the master of things, but the master of your think- ing. By being mastered by the mind you are in reaction to things, trying to master the things by thinking and comparing.

All things appear and disappear right now. If you are able to see the gap between the appearance and disappearance of things, you are in The Right Response.

By being mastered by your mind, you are being unconscious, the thoughts are instantaneously jumping and concluding your beliefs, judgments, opinions and reasons. Those ready-made answers come from the memories that you carry as precious treasures imprinted from society. If something doesn't agree with the mind belief or reason- ing, the mind will automatically disregard, condemn, or judge the situation as good or bad, or simply delete it from its perception as not possible, valuable or real, or it will invent the situation as the most preferable and the most suitable for the moment.

The mind is not substantial. In fact, it is a substitute for not being conscious, for not being responsible for who you are existentially and essentially. Try to have a thought of how would you live without your mind? It is impossible because you don't know who you are, so how can you imagine yourself beyond your mind? Because of this difficulty, you have to create a certain idea about yourself, by relying on thoughts given to you by others, by your parents, your teachers, your friends. You have to think of yourself as something separate from the whole, otherwise you will simply go mad, your mind will kill you with anxiety.

The whole process of thinking has to be reversed. You have to unlearn the unconscious process of thinking, and in that unlearning, you will learn the conscious process of thinking, you will become the master of thinking.

This has to be understood deeply. You cannot do anything to the mind - period. If the mind is substantial, you will be able to find it and do something about it. Because of the mind not being real, you cannot learn to be conscious, you can only unlearn the way of unconsciousness. Let's say, you don't want to think, and you keep saying, 'Stop', the mind goes on thinking, it never listens to you, it never stops. If you think that the mind is stopping, that is the mind thinking of stopping? Do you get it? How can you learn consciousness from the unconscious point of view? How can you learn to be One Self from the point of being yourself? You are already One Self. Self is not yours, it is not to be possessed by the mind, it is the wholeness, it is the oneness - One Self.

So we now understand that the mind doesn't exist, only thoughts. But the thoughts appears to exist because of the fast movement. Thoughts are moving so fast that you think that continuity of that process is substantial and real. The reality of your thinking is that one thought appears and disappears, and immediately another thought takes its place, and the process goes on and on. The break between two thought is so small that they become joined together creating a continuity. Also, the speed of coming and going thoughts are so fast, faster than the speed of light, and because of this fast movement you are not able to see the thoughts or the interval between them, or have any ability to stop them in any way, in order to see the interval.

Contemplate this phenomenon differently. There is no matter, just speeding electrons. Stop the electron, the matter will disappear. The electron is the energy, a wave in motion, giving the appearance of solid matter. Stop the motion, the electron will disappear and matter will not be in your perception. What will remain after that stopping - the infinite emptiness.

The whole point of meditation is to witness the thoughts. When you witness the thoughts, you witness the mind, and the mind simply disappears from your perception, because the mind is not. Actually, the mind did not disappear, but through your witnessing consciousness, your thinking stops and mind collapses. Do you get it? In that cessation of the mind, still, there is the possibility of creating the thoughts if you need them. Now, you have knowingness that thoughts are like electrons, going in circles, they come and go covering the infinite emptiness. You come to know that you are that emptiness, you are infinite. Now, you can use the thoughts to create, communicate and designate, and when you don't need them, you can simply disperse them into emptiness.

In meditation when there is no mind, and you invite the thoughts in your conscious- ness, immediately the perception comes that you are not involved in the process of thoughts. Thoughts are there, passing at a distance, but they are not an obstacle, they are not a barrier to your consciousness. You are not attached to the process. You are the master. When there is no mind, only thought in your witnessing consciousness, you will notice the space between you and the process of thinking. In that awareness, it will be so easy to see the interval between thoughts.

You see, thoughts exist only when you pay attention to them. You are always attentive, you are always in consciousness, but you don’t remember that because of the thinking in the background. Now, attentiveness infused with thinking creates the tension, that becomes your attention. Thoughts are you when you are unconscious, and when you become conscious yourself, they simply disappear. Thoughts can appear our of thin air with a conscious invitation. The mind is nothing but the absence of your conscious- ness. Be conscious, where is the mind?

In meditation you will come to understanding that thoughts are not yours, they did not originate from you, in you, they don't belong to you, they are not real. Thoughts are part of this world, but you are not the world, and you are not controlled by the world in any way. By not being controlled by this world you are not being controlled by your mind. You can use the thoughts, but you cannot associate yourself with them. You can live in this world but you are not from it.

In that understanding, the whole process of thinking will cease. In that dropping of your thinking, you become the master of no-mind, you become the master of your thinking.

Be aware. Conscious people never reject anything. In acceptance, you cannot be a controller and cannot be controlled. Rejection is the opposite of acceptance and it comes from unconsciousness. Unconsciousness is the fear of unknown. Actually, whenever you reject something you are rejecting some part of your being, you are in a dominance of the mind. Those rejected parts of your being try to express themselves, but the mind is saying, 'This is wrong. I don't want this to happen, I don't like it.' Who is making these rejections? The one who is choosing, the ego mind who is afraid for its own existence, the ego mind who doesn't like the unknown, who doesn't want to be empty. Do you understand?

The mind cannot live without a strong feeling of wanting something or wishing some- thing to happen in the future. The mind cannot live without trying to control existence. The whole problem is the fear of death, and a deep sense of insecurity, and because of this fear there are a thousand and one rejections.

One Rumanian Orthodox priest suffering from lung cancer asked me to heal him. I said, "Your healing is not in me but in you. For healing to happen, you have to be happy the way you are.”

"How can I be happy when this cancer is taking me to my grave". he said.

"Who is the master here? It seems that your master is the fear, and the fear is your mind. By being in fear you are in submission, you are in rejection of yourself. Where are you? Who are you? Wake up!”

"I was praying to God and he said that you are going to help me. It seems that you don't have that ability. I am very sad" he replied.

'You are not questioning my ability to help you because you know that I am helping you. Actually, you are questioning your belief in God? God is in your being. Do not re-ject your being. By being your being, everything natural will happen. Healing is a natural consequence of being. Be One Self, trust One Self, accept One Self and all that is happening now, including your suffering and your cancer. In that acceptance, God will accept you, and through that acceptance, you will realize your health. That is the heal- ing. You see, I am helping you and your being. Now, help yourself by not rejecting your being . In acceptance you will let go of the mind and its fearful thoughts of rejections; then the mind will drop itself, and you will be healed."

They are always consequences of rejections. You see, ordinary acceptance is opposite of rejection, but the ultimate acceptance is not opposite of rejection. In ordinary reality of the dualistic mind, accepting something means you have already rejected something else. You might think, 'I have to accept", and the mind immediately says, 'Why?' If you think 'I have to reject', the mind is already following the command, accepting not the acceptance but the idea of acceptance, the thought of acceptance.

Rejection is always before acceptance. If there is no rejection, there will be no thought of acceptance. You will simply be conscious and flow in Now. That is the Ultimate Acceptance, even though there is nothing to accept. If there is something to accept, then there is something to reject as well, and the ultimate is out of alignment with the wholeness.

You cannot come to ultimate acceptance without consciously accepting first and being aware of the mind who is ready to sabotage that process by thinking of rejections. The mind will always ask 'Why?"

In awareness, there are no rejections. Meditate. Meditation is helping you to be aware of all rejections in your mind, being neutral to them, doing nothing to them, accepting all that is right now, and the ultimate acceptance simply is.

Rejections are closely linked to desires. The mind can only move through the desire, and desires are thoughts of the future. If the mind is attached to desires, this attachment becomes an entanglement, an obstacle to wholeness.

If the mind doesn't move to the future, if it's freed from the desire, it can be used as a vehicle to liberate the consciousness. When desires are no more in the mind, then the mind is not attracted towards the objects of desire. When the mind is not obsessed by itself anymore, it stops thinking, its ego becomes empty.

When the mind moves to the object, it moves through its own desire, suppressing con- sciousness, and creating the compromising relationship with its own picture of self. When the mind stops moving without, it becomes empty, the consciousness is free to use the mind and start moving within.

The mind is the energy of your attention, existing through your attachment. The same energy, the same attention can liberate your consciousness. You see, your conscious- ness can be freed from the mind only when the mind is not rejecting anything, when the mind is not thinking and not moving through desires. The consciousness is pure only when the mind is empty of thoughts moving without, in the outside reality of ' why', 'should', and 'want'.

Mind desires have no end, it is and endless journey of coming and going. Needs are linked to consciousness and they are very few, while desires have no limit. You see, the power does not enslave you, but the lust, the desire for power enslaves you.

The second point to wholeness is purity of thinking, becoming a witness to your own thinking process, becoming The Master of Thinking.

You meet the truth only when you surrender all lies. You meet the consciousness only when you surrender all thoughts to emptiness. You meet the absolute only when you do nothing, when you become nothing. You become wholeness only in emptiness.

If you are feeling powerful in any way, you are overflowing yourself with lies, you are creating a barrier to the truth, you are becoming blind to the wholeness.

The emphasis of meditation is to understand the non-existential mind, to bring existence into non-existence, to bring consciousness into unconsciousness, and to dis- solve mind ego in the interval between thoughts in order to enter the divine.

Everyone and everything in existence is divine.

At one of my meditation retreat, I said,"Divine is inside of me" Someone replied, "How can you say that, aren't you a humble man?"

"You see, through my humbleness, I am claiming your own divinity. My claim about divinity being in me is the invocation for you. Can you recognize your divine inside of you, sir? Can you really listen to what I am saying?"

Right listening is right remembering, and right remembering is right meditation. You cannot experience those things by thinking about them, or by reading in libraries or by studying in monasteries; only a lived experience can make you capable of finding your divine within, your own wisdom within.

The whole society is teaching you not to listen, but to chatter, to talk to yourself all the time. The education systems around the world are not teaching people right listening, but proper lecturing. Unless you know how to listen, how can you understand what I am pointing at? Your mind has to be completely silent, not speaking, not recording anything, not thinking, and only then can you listen and be responsive to now. Only then can you become the master of thinking.