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Yogi and mystic, Sadhguru, answers a question on how to

control your thoughts during meditation. He banishes several
myths about controlling your thoughts and explores how we
can take the mind from being a compulsive process to an entirely conscious
process.
Question: Namaskaram. During the practice of kriyas, there is
always this challenge of thoughts entering my mind. Im trying
hard to keep them away and focus on the kriya, but this doesnt
really work. How to control your thoughts during meditation or
kriyas?
Sadhguru:You are focusing hard and trying to banish the thoughts,
and they are not going away. This is the nature of the mind, but it
looks like you are very prejudiced against your mind. When you are
doing your kriya or your meditation, you dont mind if your kidneys
or your lungs are functioning or if your heart is beating. You dont
mind all the other processes in the body only your brain should
not function! The notion that if you do something spiritual, your
brain should stop working is simply wrong.
Your thoughts are just the smells either fragrance or stink of
the stu that you carry within you. Nothing new arises. If you dont
let the stu that you have gathered go into your brain, your brain
will work in phenomenal ways. It can do things that you have not

imagined possible. But it is full of your own rubbish right now

that is the struggle; that is why you want it to stop. Instead of the
brain being the crown of your life, it has become the garbage bin of
your life. Physically, it is the crown. In the symbolism of yoga,
Sahasrar is a lotus with one thousand petals one thousand not
as a literal number, but as something innumerable. If your brain
was rooted in the existential process, innumerable possibilities
would open up. But right now, your brain is only rooted in the
mental process.
Now you may say, Sadhguru, thats exactly what I am saying
how to control thoughts? No, that is not what you are saying. You
dont want your thoughts to interfere with your illusory idea of
enlightenment. Illusory because enlightenment is not something
that you cause. You dont cause light, but you see light. When the
sun rises in the morning, you do not cause the light, but you are
able to see it if your eyes are open. If you cause light lets say with
a torch or by any other means you always have to keep it up, and
there will always be the fear that it will go out.
The dierence between education and enlightenment is just this
you can educate yourself with 1, 10, or 1000 books, but still you will
run out of material at some point. Enlightenment means you did
not educate yourself with books you are simply there; it is an
endless process. Is there something particular that an enlightened
person knows that you do not know? No. Is there something
particular that an enlightened person does not know? No. I am not
playing with words. This is the nature of existence.

An Inecient Mind
What is happening in your liver and kidneys is a lot more complex
than the thoughts that you generate. If the activity of your organs
does not disturb you, why do your thoughts disturb you? Because
you think you are your thoughts. When you think, you dont see it
as my thoughts you say, I think so. Because you are deeply
identied with your thought process, it is bothering you. You are
not identied with your kidneys unless you have a kidney problem.
If they function normally, most people do not even feel if they have
kidneys or not. Kidneys are a device they are functioning so
eciently we can forget about them.
You are always conscious of that which does not function
eciently. You know, I am making a statement about your brain. If
it was functioning smoothly, you would not notice your brain, like
you do not notice your kidneys or liver. If you were not identied

with it, you would not notice it. If you are identied with it, it is a
big deal. You are not your thought. You are identied with
something that you are not. Once you are identied with something
that you are not, you cannot stop the mental process it will just
go on endlessly. It is like when you have eaten bad food, gas will
develop. You cannot stop it with a wine cork. You just have to stop
eating bad food.
The bad food for you is right now,

The notion that if

you do something
spiritual, your brain
should stop working
is simply wrong.

you believe yourself to be things

that you are not. The moment you
identify yourself with your body,
your thoughts, your emotions, and
many other things around you, the
thought process will be endless.
People think that is how the mind
is. That is not how mind is, or
rather, that it is not how it is
supposed to be. If you constantly
had a stomach ache, you would

think that is how the stomach is.

The Human Possibility

The brain is much more sensitive than other organs. All other
organs have specic functions, but the brain has a few specic
functions, and the rest is left open. This is the problem of being
human. Any other creature has specic goals, nothing more. They
must eat well, grow well, reproduce well, and die one day

everything is set. Only a human being is wondering, Why am I

here? What is the nature of my life? Where do I come from? Where
do I go? All these questions only come up when you are human.
The dierence between a human being and any other creature is
that in human beings, the cerebral cortex and other parts of the
brain have owered.
You complain about a new possibility that has arisen within you, a
possibility that an ape, a monkey, or any other creature does not
have. Do not treat a possibility as a problem. It is not a problem it
is a possibility that you can sit here and think of something that is
1000 miles away, 1000 years ago, 1000 years later, or whatever else.
It has become a problem for a lot of people because they have never
looked at the user manual.
First stop giving the brain bad food feed it with Truth, not
untruth. We are in the hands of Truth. We dont have Truth in our
hands. We have a complex bunch of lies in our hands. If you keep
down all the things that you believe, all the things that you have
made up, you will see, if you sit here, your mind could be simply
empty. If it is empty, what is the use? The use is it can reect the
whole cosmos. Otherwise, it is quite comic. This is the choice you
can make your mind into a comical place or a cosmic space. For it to
become a cosmic space, you must keep all the lies down then
Truth will ourish by its own nature. The absence of falsehood is
Truth.
Only a fool will talk about what Truth is. One who knows will only
talk around it, because you cannot talk about it. You can only dene

and describe that which has some kind of substance, that which has
measurable parameters, or boundaries. If something has no
boundaries and no parameters, you cannot talk about it. The whole
work is about clearing the mess you have created, not about
establishing Truth. There is no need to establish Truth. It is in the
lap of Truth that all of us exist.
I will not ask you to confess what thoughts you are getting while
doing your kriya. Do not be concerned about your thoughts. Above
all, do not try to stop them. Let them happen like the activity of
your kidneys is happening. Not everything in your kidneys is clean.
Not everything in your brain is clean either what is your problem?

How Can the Mind Be Quiet?

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Good Thoughts and Bad Thoughts

Do not discriminate between good and bad thoughts. There are no

good and bad thoughts there are just thoughts. Your thoughts
depend upon what kind of garbage you have that kind of smell
will emanate. Todays smell depends on yesterdays garbage. It
depends on what you threw into the bin. If you watched a movie
yesterday or something else happened, today, that will come back to
you again. Do not judge your thoughts it is just rubbish. First of
all, they are not even real. A thought means that it is not real. The
largest part of who you are is unconscious right now. You are
making things up all the time. If you want to know the nature of
creation and the Creator, it is important that you do not make
things up, which is what you are trying to do right now. Trying to
make things up is a hopeless method.
If you try to maintain a continuous stream of thoughts while doing
your kriya, suddenly, they will not come. Suddenly, you will get
constipated in the head. Do not bother about your thoughts or about
how to control your thoughts. Depending upon what is there inside
today, thoughts will ow. There is no signicance or consequence
to this. You just need to do the kriya do not do the thoughts.
Whether you try to remove them or to have continuous thoughts or
108 sacred thoughts during meditation, you are still trying to do the
thoughts. The kidneys will do their own thing; the liver will do its
own thing; the brain will do its own thing; you do the kriya that is
all.

Editors Note: Sadhguru oers Isha Kriya, a free, online guided meditation
that helps bring health and wellbeing. Daily practice of this simple yet
eective 12-minute process can transform ones life.