You hardly talk. One must talk a lot,” my then mother-in-law always insisted. I was a keen ‘listener’. Or at least I believed I was one till I walked into a dark cacophonic cloud on one gloomy September evening in 2014. The noise was louder than all the honking that my ears were used to in Mumbai’s traffic. There seemed to be a chatter party going on. But I was home alone. Where was all this noise coming from?
When I first met Balagopalji, my spiritual guide and teacher, he introduced me to one of the core sadhanas taught at Oneness University — seven-minute thought watching. All I had to do was sit down in padmasana, close my eyes and watch my thoughts. Simple, right? Wrong. I would soon realise that thoughts are like monkeys. They leap from one branch to another. They screech in and scratch on every corner of your mind.
During my initial days of thought watching, I struggled to find thoughts. Where were they? Why was I not finding a single thought? Was I already experiencing the eternal sunshine of a thoughtless mind? Much to my dismay, no. A few days of practice, and I began watching my mind party its heart
out with new voices almost every nanosecond.
Sri Bhagavan, the founder of Oneness, often tells us, ‘there is a whole crowd inside you.’ I began to feel that crowd inside me. All these years, the crowd has been working diligently to build multi-storeyed and multi-coloured mansions of thought inside.
I just discovered that I do talk a lot.
Let me share an instance of how this crowd works. In my previous role, I worked on the main news desk for a brief period. One day, I was asked to anchor the nation pages. A colleague who was a couple of days old in the organisation was asked to work with me. After our evening edit meeting, the plan changed. She was told to anchor the pages, and I was asked to assist her. My mind decided to throw a party right then; the crowd inside clinked their thought goblets. Many voices emerged. One said, ‘I don’t think my reporting manager has confidence in my abilities’. A second voice said, ‘I should just quit this job.’ A third voice said, ‘I am not good at anything. Journalism is not for me.’ And a fourth one said, ‘She’s new and she’s already anchoring the page. You are a failure.’ The inner chatter turned shriller and bulkier. The weight was unbearable.
The weight of this mental noise, Sri Bhagavan says, is our (inner) suffering.
Are we listening to this crowd? More importantly, are we aware of this crowd inside us? Are we rubbishing the crowd because we’re often told, ‘just don’t think about it. Don’t let thoughts affect you. Don’t be bothered.’
The last four years of my thought-watching practice have made me realise that one cannot stop thoughts and this crowd from assaulting the inner state. It is the discipline of this sadhana that does all the magic. Thought watching is like, Balagopalji says, sitting in the balcony of a high-rise building and watching the traffic go by on the road outside. We spot all kind of vehicles, don’t we? A big yellow truck, a red hatchback, a white van... Our thoughts too come in all sizes, shapes and decibel levels.
If one had to map my thought-watching sadhana, it would be something like this: “There is no page one lead-worthy piece for Tuesday, send a text to the team. I think I’ll make noodles for dinner. Why didn’t she check my message yet? Oh no, phone bill! When are these seven minutes going to be over? I cannot afford any more cab rides. That uncle always comments on my weight. How is Meghan Markle going to live up to the royal expectations? I wish Diana was alive. Harry would have probably found a better match. I need to buy new pants to match with that orange top.”
This is just seven minutes. Take a moment. Pause. Go through all the voices in your head from your waking moment to the moment you fall asleep. You’ll discover it’s noise and not voice. This noise is the jukebox you never wanted. It plays on a loop all day — constantly approving, rejecting, analysing, judging, and making every attempt to move you away from experiencing the moment. It relives your past, makes you visualise your fears, and dwells on rampant rants.
So, yes, chatty Cathy, the pull-string talking doll, is each one of us — in our internal worlds.
Let me share a mundane incident. I moved to Chennai in January this year. During my first week here, one morning, I was busy toasting the last four slices of bread when my maid came in. She said she’d eat too. While toasting, I heard a loud chatter inside. ‘Should I give her the last slice and eat the nicer ones? Will she think I am insensitive? Does she know the difference between the texture? I should never have asked. There would have been no conflict.’ For as long as the bread slices were being toasted, I watched the chatter inside. What helped me dissociate myself from these questions is the thought-watching sadhana. It’s magical.
The inner chatter doesn’t choose who it wants to befriend. It’s we who do. It’s we who hold on to the constant commentary, grip every thought and bottle it up. You cannot stop the commentary of your own volition. The seven-minute thought watching sadhana is a powerful tool to become conscious, aware and eventually catch the chatter, thereby reducing its frequency.
Remember, Arjuna lost his intelligence, too, on the eve of the battle. Feeling utterly disconsolate, he told Krishna that his mind is restless, unsteady, turbulent, wild, and stubborn. The Kurukshetra is the battlefield of our minds every day. Arjuna’s struggle is ours, too. Every day.
(These are experiences, insights and realisations that I receive by attending courses at Oneness University and the monthly Ekatva Gita classes held in Mumbai.)
Rama ramanan
Twitter@rums2780
The writer is the Editor of City Express