Management of Thought

Let us understand – what is thought when we say – a thought came to my mind, I had good thought. Baba has given a definition “A thought is a spark of energy” – What is energy? In class IV when we teach science we tell a child-energy is the capacity to work.

Thoughts take energy and that is the definition when these sparks (single particles) of energy come together it forms a desire and when a number of these desires come together they form the mind.

Baba gives the wonderful example of a handkerchief. Handkerchief is made of cotton. Cotton is like thought and the yarn threads spun together are desire, when we warp and woof, that is, weave these threads – put them together we get a handkerchief which is a mind. While the brain is a physical entity, the mind is not a physical entity.

If I ask you where your mind is, it might be inside you or it might be away. For instance while I am speaking to you, it is 9.45am and Ramayan is going on elsewhere and some of you might be thinking what happened to Hanuman who had his leg in the crocodile’s mouth last week. Your mind is not here, it is in front of your television. Mind might not be in the body, but the ability to have it in the body under your control is what is called the control of mind. We are the master.

Baba gives us a wonderful example about the handkerchief if you want a clean handkerchief, if you want it to be white, washing with one kind of special detergent will not help, weaving will not help and spinning will not help. What is essential to restore its whiteness is the quality of the cotton. Where there are no waste components in the cotton, the quality of cotton is controlled, the kerchief will be good and it will be white. In the same way if there is control of the quality of our thoughts, our mind is taken care. Baba draws our attention to another very important idea. What is the speed of a thought? I am speaking to you with the help of this mike. The sound waves created are travelling in the air; they are striking the membrane in the ear, going through the auditory canal to the brain. The brain in turn is decodifying them and then you are listening.

Sound travels at 332 m/sec i.e 1120 ft/sec, you are seeing me because of light and light travels. There is no time gap, you are seeing me almost continuously and yet we know that every time you are seeing me, there is a ray of light going to you from me and from you to me. You are seeing because light travels at the rate of 1 lakh 86000 miles per sec. and yet a ray of light from the sky takes 9 minutes time span to reach the earth. May I ask you to close your eyes and think of the sun. How much time does it take you – Less than the batting of an eyelid – Thought therefore travels at a speed infinitely more than that of the speed of light.

Let me take an example of a man travelling in a car. There are traffic lights at Gemini studio and my speed is 40km, per hour. If my brakes were to fail and if there is a car in front of me or behind me, red lights are gone, the consequence will be accident, it is beyond my control so in the same way if there is no braking mechanism in a thought, no control and they travel at an enormous speed then the consequence is terrorism, confusion and chaos.

Because we are equipped with this power of thought which is travelling at an enormous speed and if we do not have the mechanism to brake it – control it, we will go head long into an accident. It is not something new. This knowledge has been available to man for a longtime. Let us go back to the Mahabharata – The four Pandava brothers were lying beside a lake fainted having wanted water. Yudhishthira reached there when the Yaksh said “Oh Dharma unless you answer my questions you shall also meet the fate of your brothers”.

40-50 questions are asked – which form a wonderful body of knowledge. One of them was:

Yaksha Q : What travels faster than, Wind?

Yudhishtra A : It is the mind of man that travels faster than wind.

Yaksha Q : What is more numerous than all the blades of grass put together in this world?

Yudhishtra A : The number of thoughts present in the mind of a man at any part of time is more numerous than all the blades of grass put together.

This is the truth. The first step in concentration is the ability to control thoughts through concentration. Baba gives a simple example – When we expose a paper to sunlight nothing happens, but when we bring a lens in between, then the concentrated light turns to fire and burns the paper.

Similarly we can use another lens to achieve this concentration the SAI + LENS = Silence.

Next we must question ourselves “Are we silent when we are sitting silently?” When we believe we are silent no sound is coming out of the mouth. But man’s mind is constantly in dialogue, the mind is constantly talking ceaselessly, chattering. What is required is silent sitting in which chattering of mind is reduced. For that most important technique is Jyothi Meditation. What is achieved is that the light goes through us entirely if we can reduce the speed of thought to the speed of light, it produces illumination within and it is called intuition. When we want to have intuition, again the technique of management is silent sitting. We recommend it to parents but for Sai devotees, they must do it everyday. When it should be done? For others before going to office, please sit down and compose your thoughts for two minutes, be to yourself and then one finds what will happen. Baba gives an example of a watch, it takes only one or two minutes for winding, that takes care for 24 hours.

The technique is self-audit. It is not an unusual affair. It is a daily affair. Before we go to sleep we must sit down, ask ourselves what did we do during the day? Where did we contradict Bhagwan’s message? Where did we commit the breach of dharma? Then pray to God that I should not lose again and again. Next morning, when we sit, take the light to that limb or that part of body which had let us down, previous day e.g., the tongue which spoke wrongly. Then Baba says if you fight with me not physically (i.e) if we pray and we want to be good and yet we are not good, then the divine grace flows double – folded. So silent sitting self-audit will lead to management of thought.