Mystic Mantra: Think not, just feel

Columnist  | Swami Chaitanya Keerti

Opinion, Oped

Everybody is thinking furiously to achieve something and ruining the wonderful gift of life in hollow pursuits.

Osho

It is often said that you become what you think. Thinking is thought to be so powerful that it can transform anybody. Though this is a hypnotic belief, not everybody believes in it, the majority of people doubt it. But the motivational thinkers and writers keep motivating people: You truly become what you think about. Have positive, joyous thoughts and you will attract more joy and love in your life. Thoughts do become actions. So the more you think about what you want as opposed to what you don’t want, the more you will attract what you want.

So, it all depends on your thoughts — but the trouble is that you don’t have your own thoughts. You do have thoughts, thoughts in abundance — but they are not yours. You are filled with them — inundated with thoughts, you cannot contain them. It is such a mess — this mind of yours. Bringing one more thought of being successful in life, thoughts of being younger than what you are — a 70-year-old person thinking that he is 35 will not make him 35 years younger. An idiot (a buddhu person) thinking that he is the Buddha, the enlightened one, will not make him the Buddha, the awakened one. Such auto-suggestive thinking will lead him to a futile imagination, a hallucination.

But the successful authors of motivational books, the so-called bestsellers, keep alluring common people — “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” And then one thinks: So by changing your thoughts to the best case scenario, you start changing your world to become what you think about.

This kind of thinking, based on the idea of success, ambition, and greed may change you — but this change is worthless. You may even become cruel and violent more than what you were before you thought about all this. This is what the whole world is today. Everybody is thinking furiously to achieve something and ruining the wonderful gift of life in hollow pursuits. All these thoughts are desires — a jungle of desires.

No, forget all sorts of thinking — rather, drop all thinking, have a holiday from it. Go into feeling. Enter your heart and transform your energy. Do something with your energy and consciousness. In one word, we can say: meditate. Meditation is not thinking or desiring. It is much closer to feeling.

Osho reminds us: Remember, this shift has to happen — from thinking you have to go to feeling. Feeling is closer, closer to something in you that is called intuition. Thinking is the farthest point from intuition. Thinking is a kind of tuition. You have been taught by others — that is tuition. Something that has not been taught to you and blooms in you, that is intuition. Nobody has taught you — no school, no university, no college. Nobody has said anything about it to you. It explodes in you — that is intuition. You need not go anywhere, you only need to go inside yourself. Feeling is closer to intuition.

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