Commanding the Mind

[juliank]

I've been reading the writings of Robert Adams and Sri Aurobindo lately, and they both talk about the ability for us to command the stillness of mind. After a certain amount of meditation experience, and one is in the realm of practicing throughout the day during life activities, one can literally just talk to the mind and say "BE STILL" and the mind will acquiesce.

 

I have been putting this to the test, and I must say, it works! Just simply saying "be still" when you start to notice a cacophony of thoughts and the mind shuts up. 

 

Aurobindo talks alot about our own power to accept and reject thoughts, but he does see this as advanced practice, after a certain amount of equanimity is established. The command itself must come from a place of calm lordship over the mind, not from a place of agitation, for it to have the desired effect.

 

I know that this goes against many traditions where you simply allow the mind to do what it does, and I do believe that this has value, however, at a certain point in one's development this practice makes sense.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

[liminal_luke]

This isn´t really my area but I´ll offer two thoughts anyway.  First, this seems like a very nifty thing to be able to do.  If you´ve trained yourself to the point where you have that kind of control, kudos to you.  Second, I think it´s possible to integrate this very proactive take-charge position with the hands-off just noting-what-is ethos of the some traditions: you could passively observe yourself commanding your mind. 

Edited July 29, 2016 by liminal_luke

[Karl]

Not thinking is the easiest thing in the world. The hardest is coherent, logical reasoned thought at all times instead of chaotic churning.

[WisteriaWinds]

I would agree with the second part that reasoning is a major spiritual discipline neglected by most. The New Agey types tend to see "all as One" except the cerebral cortex.

 

Not thinking is the easiest thing in the world. The hardest is coherent, logical reasoned thought at all times instead of chaotic churning.

Edited July 29, 2016 by WisteriaWinds

[3bob]

be the programmer not the program...for the mind is a lot like a computer although much more complex

[RiverSnake]

If it works then it works. Sounds like a good technique to me. 

Edited July 29, 2016 by OldChi

[Karl]

Theres thinking and then there's thinking. If the aim is to turn off drifting thoughts then it's easier to encourage the use of reason/logic to make your mind into a tool to work for you. The undisciplined mind will drift in a chaos of ungrounded conceptual churning clutter. It's like letting a dog do whatever it wants, so, the responsibility is to the owner to give the correct training and not to chain it up.

[3bob]

Mankind's reason and logic alone or without Spirit can deliver one into forms of hell such as the "Vanity of vanities"...

[Karl]

Mankind's reason and logic alone or without Spirit can deliver one into forms of hell such as the "Vanity of vanities"...

Spirit is an integral part of reason and logic.

[3bob]

for some yes, for some maybe, for some no

[Daeluin]

Stillness is akin to cleanliness. When cleaning say, a bedroom, it can be as easy as picking up a pair of socks or as difficult as remodeling. Depends on how clean you keep it. If we don't do much to make it dirty, not much cleaning needs to be done. If we have parties there every night there is a lot to do.

 

The whole body is like this, not just the mind. The more we clean the energy body, the more we can abide in natural stillness and clarity.

[Karl]

for some yes, for some maybe, for some no

There is no way to apply reason if there is no spirit. Some apply reason and create disintegration or floating concepts, they create errors, but they still require spirit. Spirit being the conscious awareness of existence.

[3bob]

reason can reason away whatever you are saying Karl, whether or not that is "reasonable" per your definition is moot.

Edited July 30, 2016 by 3bob

[Karl]

reason can reason away whatever you are saying Karl, whether or not that is "reasonable" per your definition is moot.

That's all we have. Just as you are reasoning now. You can only do so if you are an existent, independent consciously aware entity. Without a spirit there would be no 'you' and no way of reasoning. Existence comes before consciousness and consciousness comes before reason/logic.

 

Consciousness awareness grows as the ability to reason becomes stronger and more reliable integrations are made. Bad reasoning shrinks conscious awareness. We often refer to people in the state of total irrationality as withdrawn. They become tied up in mind clutter from disintegrated concepts which produces a mnd that grinds away without managing to integrate much at all. Conscious awareness closes down.

[thelerner]

random thoughts..

 

hmnn, commanding the mind,

you've already split yourself into two.

 

Be like the commercial, Just Do It.  Don't argue or rationalize; seek pleasure or to avoid pain (even if that pain is boredom), just do it.  Act completely then relax knowing it is done. 

 

Lastly, mind controls mind, poorly.  Start with the breath.  Breathing evenly, accept all thoughts, slow the thoughts, focus on the act, focus on how it'll feel when you're finished, then ready set go. 

[juliank]

random thoughts..

 

hmnn, commanding the mind,

you've already split yourself into two.

 

Be like the commercial, Just Do It.  Don't argue or rationalize; seek pleasure or to avoid pain (even if that pain is boredom), just do it.  Act completely then relax knowing it is done. 

 

Lastly, mind controls mind, poorly.  Start with the breath.  Breathing evenly, accept all thoughts, slow the thoughts, focus on the act, focus on how it'll feel when you're finished, then ready set go. 

 

I hear you lerner, Aurobindo takes a different approach to this idea. His approach is that mind is actually not "ours", so in his view there is no split to be had. His view is that thoughts don't come from "my" mind, but arise from what he calls "Universal Mind", and yet we identify with them as if the thoughts are actually ours. Mind and thoughts do not arise in you, but until you have achieved stillness, we do not experience thoughts in this way. Hence, his idea is that once stillness has been established, then one can begin to have "true agency" and actually accept/reject thoughts from a place of divine stillness. Even folks who are 'quote on quote' awakened, still report the experience where thoughts do show up, but they simply wave them away like flies on the window-shield of mind. 

 

That being said, I do agree with you that breath is the channel, amongst many others, that is very effective in quieting the internal space.

 

Here is his quoted experience:

 

But let us listen to Sri Aurobindo himself describe the experience as he first had it with another yogi, Bhaskar Lele, who spent three days with him: All developed mental men, those who get beyond the average, have in one way or other, or at least at certain times and for certain purposes to separate the two parts of the mind, the active part, which is a factory of thoughts and the quiet masterful part which is at once a Witness and a Will, observing them, judging, rejecting, eliminating, accepting, ordering corrections and changes, the Master in the House of Mind, capable of self-empire, samrajya. The Yogi goes still further, – he is not only a master there but even while in mind in a way, he gets out of it as it were, and stands above or quite back from it and free.

 

For him the image of the factory of thoughts is no longer quite valid; for he sees that thoughts come from outside, from the universal Mind, or universal Nature, sometimes formed and distinct, sometimes unformed and then they are given shape somewhere in us. The principal business of our mind is either a response of acceptance or a refusal to these thought waves (as also vital waves, subtle physical energy waves) or this giving a personal-mental form to thought-stuff (or vital movements) from the environing Nature-Force.

 

It was my great debt to Lele that he showed me this. "Sit in meditation," he said, "but do not think, look only at your mind; you will see thoughts coming into it; before they can enter throw these away from your mind till your mind is capable of entire silence." I had never heard before of thoughts coming visibly into the mind from outside, but I did not think either of questioning the truth of the possibility, I simply sat down and did it. In a moment my mind became silent as a windless air on a high mountain summit and then I was one thought and then another coming in a concrete way from outside; I flung them away before they could enter and take hold of the brain and in three days I was free. From that moment, in principle, the mental being in me became a free Intelligence, a universal Mind, not limited to the narrow circle of personal thoughts as a labourer in a thought factory, but a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred realms of being and free to choose what it willed in this vast sight-empire andthought-empire