当下的力量 3

Just because you can solve a crossword puzzle or build an atom bomb doesn't mean that you use your mind. Just as dogs love to chew bones, the mind loves to get its teeth into problems. That’s why it does crossword puzzles and builds atom bombs. You have no interest in either. Let me ask you this: can you be free of your mind whenever you want to? Have you found the "off" button?

You mean stop thinking altogether? No, I can't, except maybe for a moment or two.

Then the mind is using you. You are unconsciously identified with it, so you don't even know that you are its slave. It's almost as if you were possessed without knowing it, and so you take the possessing entity to be yourself. The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity — the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter — beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace — arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.

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FREEING YOURSELF FROM YOUR MIND

What exactly do you mean by "watching the thinker"?

When someone goes to the doctor and says, "I hear a voice in my head," he or she will most likely be sent to a psychiatrist. The fact is that, in a very similar way, virtually everyone hears a voice, or several voices, in their head all the time: the involuntary thought processes that you don't realize you have the power to stop. Continuous monologues or dialogues.

You have probably come across "mad" people in the street incessantly talking or muttering to themselves. Well, that’s not much different from what you and all other "normal" people do, except that you don't do it out loud. The voice comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. The voice isn't necessarily relevant to the situation you find yourself in at the time; it may be reviving the recent or distant past or rehearsing or imagining possible future situations. Here it often imagines things going wrong and negative outcomes; this is called worry. Sometimes this soundtrack is accompanied by visual images or "mental movies." Even if the voice is relevant to the situation at hand, it will interpret it in terms of the past. This is because the voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited. So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it. It is not uncommon for the voice to be a person's own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease.

The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now. Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by "watching the thinker," which is another way of saying: listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence.

When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door. You'll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.

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So when you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. As you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence — your deeper self— behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses its power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking.

When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental stream — a gap of "no-mind." At first, the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become longer. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside you. This is the beginning of your natural state of felt oneness with Being, which is usually obscured by the mind. With practice, the sense of stillness and peace will deepen. In fact, there is no end to its depth. You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy arising from deep within: the joy of Being.

It is not a trancelike state. Not at all. There is no loss of consciousness here. The opposite is the case. If the price of peace were a lowering of your consciousness, and the price of stillness a lack of vitality and alertness, then they would not be worth having. In this state of inner connectedness, you are much more alert, more awake than in the mind-identified state. You are fully present. It also raises the vibrational frequency of the energy field that gives life to the physical body.

 As you go more deeply into this realm of no-mind, as it is sometimes called in the East, you realize the state of pure consciousness. In that state, you feel your own presence with such intensity and such joy that all thinking, all emotions, your physical body, as well as the whole external world become relatively insignificant in comparison to it. And yet this is not a selfish but a selfless state. It takes you beyond what you previously thought of as "your self." That presence is essentially you and at the same time inconceivably greater than you. What I am trying to convey here may sound paradoxical or even contradictory, but there is no other way that I can express it.

你能解答一个填字谜语或制造一颗原子弹，并不能说明你利用了你的大脑。就像狗喜欢啃骨头一样，大脑喜欢思考问题。这就是为什么它要去玩填字游戏和制造原子弹的原因。你或许对这两个活动都不感兴趣，让我这样问你吧：无论何时，当你想从思维中解放出来的时候，你能做到吗？你找到了停止思考的那个按钮吗？

你是说完全停止思考吗？不，我做不到，一两分钟或许还可以。

那么，就是你的大脑在利用你了。你无意识地认同了它，所以你甚至不知道自己是它的奴隶。这几乎就像你在毫不知情的情况下被它所俘虏，所以你认为思考问题的这个实体就是你自己。从思维中解放出来的开始就是认识到你不是一个思考问题的实体——思考者。认识到这一点能使你很好地观察这个思考者。在你观察这个思考者时，一个更高层次的意识就被激活了。然后，你会开始意识到有很大的一片超越思想的智性，思想只是这个智性的一个小方面。你同样还会认识到所有真正重要的事情，如美貌、爱情、创造力、欢乐、内在的宁静等，都来自大脑之外。你开始觉醒了。

从你的大脑中解放出来

“观察思考者”的准确含义是什么？

当某人去看病时说“在我的脑海里有一个声音”，他或她很可能就被送去精神病医院了。事实是，几乎每个人都会以相似的方式在他们的脑海中听到一种或几种声音：这就是所谓不自主的思考过程，你却没有意识到你有阻止这种独白或对话的力量。

在街道上，你可能会遇到不断喃喃自语的“疯子”。其实他的行为与你和其他“正常人”区别不大，只是你们没有大声说出来而已。那个声音不停地在评论、推测、批判、比较、抱怨、选择好恶等。这种声音可能与你当下所在的情况无关，它可能是关于过去或未来的一些事情，它可能是在回忆往昔，或是在幻想未来可能发生的事情。它经常想象事情可能会出差错，或产生不利的后果，这就是杞人忧天。有时这种声音还会伴随着一些视觉意象或“心理电影”。即使这种声音与现在的情况相关，它也会以过去的形式来解释它，这是因为声音属于你被制约了的大脑，它是你过去的经历以及你继承下来的集体文化思维模式的结果。所以，你以对过去的看法来判断现在的事情，一定会得到一个完全被歪曲的理解。这个声音是人类自己最大的敌人，这是毫不夸张的。许多人在大脑的折磨下度过一生，任由它攻击、惩罚，并耗尽生命的能量。这就是数不清的灾难、痛苦以及疾病产生的原因。

好消息是你能从你的思维中解放出来。这是唯一的真正的解放。现在，你可以采取第一个步骤了——经常倾听你大脑中的声音。特别关注那些重复性的思维模式，那些多年来缠绕你的“旧唱片”。这就是我说的“观察思考者”的含义，换句话说：倾听你脑袋中的声音并作为一个观察者的临在。

当你在倾听那种声音时，不要去做任何评判。不要对你所听到的声音做出判断或进行谴责，因为这样做意味着同样的声音又会从后门乘虚而入。你将会很快地认识到：那里有一种声音，而我在这里倾听它，观察它。这是一种自我存在的感觉而不是思维。它超越了你的思维。

所以当你在倾听思维时，你不仅意识到了这种思维，而且还意识到了你在观察这种思维。这样，一个新的意识层面就产生了。随着你倾听思维，你会感觉到在这种思维之下或之后的一种有意识的临在，那就是你更深的自我。于是，这种思维丧失了它的力量而且很快地消散，因为你不再通过对思维的认同而为其注入活力。这是不自主以及强迫性思维终结的开始。

当一种思维止息时，你会在自己的心智流（mental stream）中体验到一种思维的中断——思维空白。首先，这种空白是短暂的，或许仅几秒钟，但是渐渐地它们会变得长久些。当这种空白出现时，你在内心会感觉到一种静止和宁静的状态。于是，你开始感觉到与本体合二为一的自然状态，通常这种状态受到思维的蒙蔽而模糊，多加练习之后，你的这种平和与宁静的感觉会加深。实际上，这种深度是无止境的。你同样会感觉到一种来自你内心深处的喜悦。

这不是一种意识模糊的状态。一点儿都不是。在这里，意识不会丢失。恰恰相反，如果内心的平和是以意识水平的下降作为代价，如果获得宁静的代价是变得缺乏生命力与警觉性的话，那它们就不值得拥有。在这种内在的联结之中，你会比思维认同状态下更为警惕，更为清醒，更为临在。它同样会提升赋予你身体生命能量的振动频率。

随着你进一步深入这种“无念”的状态（东方人的说法），你会认识到一种纯意识状态。在这种状态下，你会如此喜悦地感受你的临在：所有的思维、情绪、身体以及整个外部世界，在与你的本体比较之下，都不那么重要了。然而这不是一种自我（selfish）的状态，而是一种无我（selfless）的状态。它超越了你原先认知的自己（yourself）。这种临在实际上就是你自己，但不可思议的是，它比你伟大。我在这里努力阐述的问题可能听起来荒谬甚至自相矛盾，但是我没有其他更好的表达方式了。