Thinking has so far never been able to solve the human problems of war, conflict, suffering. And what about basic questions like: Who are we? and Why are we here? Thought comes up with these questions but can thinking answer them? There must be another approach to life besides the mental approach. As a spiritual mentor recently pointed out to me, humanity is in a process of transition from thinking to being.
When I was in high school, I did a term paper on the nature of thinking. I wanted to know about the voice in my head that was always commenting everything. Was that voice me? And who was it talking to? Who was listening? Were there two of me? I guess I thought there was some definitive answer to the nature of thinking that had been discovered by science. After all, science had discovered the nature of the atom and other things like why the sky is blue. I figured I could find the answer by searching under the topic, “thinking,” in the card catalog at the local library. (This was long before Google.) Of course, I have since discovered that the nature of the mind and other basic questions about life remain a mystery despite being studied from time immemorial by philosophers and sages, and more recently, by science. No one really knows much about thought—where they come from or what they are exactly, or even what the mind is. Even Google doesn’t know. This is the purview of the spiritual path—to discover who we are, and in knowing ourselves, we know the world. Shankara, the 8th century Indian philosopher said, “Realized knowledge alone destroys ignorance…”
I don’t remember what I wrote in that paper, but I do remember the excitement of delving into a subject that was much more interesting to me than the mundane subjects we were studying in high school.
I remember a few years ago one of my spiritual teachers saying, “There is nothing wrong with thoughts, it’s thinking that is the problem.” Getting lost in the thinking process takes us out of the present. We lose our self. We lose the ‘now,’ which is where all life takes place. J. Krishnamurti says in The Network of Thought, “Thought creates the problem, psychologically; the mind is trained to solve problems with further thinking, so thought is creating the problem then tries to solve it…thought has brought about greater complexity.”
What is needed is greater simplicity. Thinking complicates our lives by creating stories about ‘what is.’ The drama created by thinking distracts us from who we really are—the still, silent center of awareness. In his book, Choiceless Awareness, Krishnamurti says, “There is a stillness which is not induced, a stillness in which the mind is no longer using thought to revive itself…There is only a state of experiencing.”
Of course, we need the mind to navigate this world. Thinking will continue, as that is the nature of the mind, but are we harnessing the power of thinking or is thinking controlling us? Are we using the mind as a tool to serve us rather than allowing it to enslave us with its incessant motion? The sages tell us we are presence, we are the here and now. The mind can never be present. It dwells in the realm of past and future, which are non-existent.
The fundamental questions about life—Who am I, Why am I here, and How did I get here—can never be answered on the level of the mind. Although science has come a long way in helping us understand the nature of reality, science alone will never solve the mystery of existence. What is required is an expansion of our consciousness, the cultivation of our ability to be present. This is the purpose of the spiritual path.
CONSIDER THIS: Contemplate how the mind can never be present here and now. Notice how you are the stillness beyond thought.
