Are You Choosing Your Thoughts?
Acharya Prashant: Anything arising from these tendencies cannot bring these tendencies to an end. A new thought will not bring the old thoughts to an end, because the new thought is the furtherance of the old thought. It is actually ‘old’.
What to do then? Not to do anything. Not to do anything is the answer to – what to do? Will you remember this? What to do? Not to do. What does that mean? Whatever the mind does, even though it does it as a conditioned machine, yet that machine seeks its fuel from outside.
Just as a car is there, a car is a conditioned machine. Is a car a conditioned machine, or not? Its design is preset. A car cannot fly; it is conditioned to run on the road. It is conditioned, every machine is conditioned. But a car seeks its fuel from outside. No car is self-sufficient in terms of generating its fuel.
No conditioned system is so self-sufficient that it can survive and thrive on its own. This fundamental thing has to be understood. (Pointing at the camera placed in front, for recording) This camera might be self-sufficient in terms of recording what is going on, but still, it is dependent on somebody else for its operation, and for its energy.
There has to be somebody behind it, to control it, and there has to be an external source from where it is gaining electrical energy. Is that so, or not? Even though it is totally conditioned, yet there is then some kind of a choice available.
You are the one who can make that choice. You are not the one who goes by the automatic choices of the mind. You are the one who can choose to be swept away by the mind; if you are unaware, if you are inebriated, if you are drunk. Or you may be the one who can decide whether or not to give energy to the mind.
Take a simple example. A thought arises. What is the process through which a thought arises? There is an external stimulus, and because you have an inherent tendency to think, you are conditioned to think, so because of the stimulus, a thought arises.
But that is all about it. That is the maximum that the external stimulus can do. It can provoke a thought within you. But then you provide fuel to that thought; you provide energy to that thought. And then the thought becomes a fixation with you. Now you are thinking the entire day.
Now you are thinking the entire day. Does that happen or not? At the moment when you are providing the energy, there is a faint choice available to you. “Yes the thought is arising, but I see that the thought has been provoked by an external agent,” and the moment you realize this, there is no need to give any more energy to the thought.
Remember: you are not controlling the mind; you are just cutting off the supply of its fuel. You are the one who supplies energy to the mind. The mind might be automatic.
Somebody presses a button; the mind wants to get angry. And people know your buttons. Somebody can come and press a button, and you want to get angry; a wave of anger surges. But that’s about it. The wave can arise, but the wave cannot sustain itself for long, without your help.
