BENGALURU : One can observe a cloud, a tree, a flowing river, with a fairly quiet brain. Right? You can see those mountains, the extraordinary light on those mountains, and the brain can be completely still. You have noticed this, haven’t you? Now how has that happened? How does the mind, facing something of extraordinary magnitude, like a very, very, very complex machinery, like a marvellous computer, or a magnificent sunset or a mountain, how does it become completely quiet, for even a split second? Have you noticed when you give a child a good toy, how the toy absorbs the child? Then the child is concerned with it, playing with it, and doesn’t – you know – he is absorbed by the toy.
In the same way the mountain, the beauty of a tree, the flowing waters, absorb the mind and makes the mind by its greatness still. Right? That is, the brain is made still by something. Now can the brain be quiet without an outside factor entering into it? You are following all this? And because they haven’t found a way, therefore they say, grace of God, prayers – right? – faith, absorption in Jesus, in this or in that. And we see all that, this absorption by something outside, a dull, a stupefied mind can do this.
We are trying to find out, can this happen: this quiet, free brain that is completely quiet, without any interference. Right? You have understood the question? If it is not quiet one of the factors is dreams. You are following all this? Is this too much? Tant pis, if you don’t understand, it’s up to you. The brain is active all day, endlessly, the moment it wakes up till it goes to sleep it is on the move. And when you go to bed and go to sleep, the activity of the brain is still going on. Right? The activity of the brain is dreams. Right? The same movement of the day is carried on during sleep. And therefore the brain has never a rest, never a moment it says, ‘I’ve finished, it’s over’, because it is carrying on the problems which it has accumulated into sleep, and when you wake up those problems go on.
It is a vicious circle. So a brain that is to be quiet must have no dreams at all. Because when the mind is quiet during sleep there is a totally different quality entering into the brain, into the mind. We will go into that a little later, if you are interested.So we are asking how does it happen that the brain, which is so tremendously, eagerly, enthusiastically active, can naturally, easily, without any effort and suppression, be quiet? I’ll show it to you. As we said, during the day it is active endlessly. The moment you wake up, you look out of the window and say, ‘Oh, awful rain’, or, ‘It’s a marvellous, lovely morning, but too hot’. You have started.
At that moment when you look out of the window not to say a word, not suppressing words, to realise that by saying, ‘What a lovely morning, what a horrible rain’, this or that, the mind has started, brain has started. But if you watch out of the window and not say a word, which doesn’t mean you suppress the word, just to observe without all the memory of the past rushing, just to observe. Right? So there you have the clue, there you have the key. To observe without the old brain responding. Therefore when the old brain doesn’t respond there is a quality of the new mind, new brain coming into being.