Letter 6:
On thoughts
09/04/07
Everyone,
Hello. How are you? My visit to Barcelona was very nice. Thank you to everybody. Let us talk about thoughts.
Slaves of our minds
We are not the mind. The mind is an instrument we have so that we can do what we want. However, sometimes it seems that the mind has a life of its own. The dog wags the tail. The dog is the master, and the tail the slave. However, it seems that the tail is wagging the dog, so the tail is the master and the dog the slave. We, instead of being masters, seem to be slaves of our minds. We should straighten out this undignified situation as quickly as possible.
Invited and uninvited thoughts
Thoughts are vibrations in the mind. We may analyse thoughts into two classes; thoughts we have invited into the mind, and thoughts that have appeared uninvited. When we decide to do some work, we invite necessary thoughts into the mind to do the work. We cannot do normal works without thoughts. The only work we can do without thoughts is being sat in samadhi so that we become more spiritual, and people around have the opportunity to absorb spiritual vibrations.
Thoughts that come uninvited and are about irrelevant things disturb the peace of the mind. Those thoughts use up a lot of our energy, which could be used much better in another way. Having a lot of these thoughts is a great misuse of the mind, which we must overcome. Other misuses have this misuse as their root. If we do things that we should not do, it means there is some problem with the mind, as everything we do is a manifestation of something within our own minds. Avoiding misuse is the fourth sadhana of Bhagavan.
Masters of mind
A sage of the twentieth century, Krishnamurti, lived a busy life. Every morning, he would go walking for an hour or two. One day after coming back from his walk, referring to the walk, he told someone that during that time, not a single thought had come to him. Only the vibrations called up to make walking possible appeared. A mind so well disciplined shows a great level of spirituality. The illuminato is he who is master of his own mind, who has understood that his mind is merely an instrument that one picks up when it is required and puts away when it is not, and lives according to this knowledge.
The first time that the aspirant experiences a state similar to the one that Krishnamurti was experiencing is for a time after a samadhi of a certain depth. No effort is made to keep the mind empty. It simply remains like that automatically. When we are not calling thoughts in to do works in that state, the internal silence is profound at a level unknown before samadhi, and it remains undisturbed.
Becoming master of one’s mind
For those trying to attain that level, it is very good to chant Hare Krishna. Just keeping the mind empty all the time is great if you can do it, however, it is not easy. Therefore, we can put the mind that is not concentrated on work, or if we are doing nothing, all the mind on the mantra. For the majority of people, this is easier. When the mind contains only one vibration, the vibration of the mantra, that vibration will ultimately itself fall away. When no vibration remains, we will be in samadhi. Moreover, the mantra itself will do most of the work, as contained within the mantra is spiritual power and the connection with the guru that has given it to us. When we utter the mantra, we invoke spiritual power that purifies our mind, and we open the connection with the master so that more power may enter. Therefore, it is extremely useful to chant it.
Hare Krishna then,
Koji