The Ten-Minute Experiment🔗

Try a very simple experiment for just ten minutes.

Take a sheet of paper and a pen. Sit down alone. Write down whatever thought comes to mind – as if a transcribing software has been connected to your mind; transcribe exactly what you think. Do not edit or suppress any thoughts. It is an experiment only for you. No one else is going to look at what you have written. Just like how the transcribing software which is connected to a taped speech transcribes everything, transcribe whatever is going on in your mind verbatim. At the end of ten minutes, read what you wrote just once. You will be amazed! You can clearly see that there is no logic in the way thoughts form in your mind!

For example, you see a dog on the street. Immediately you remember the dog you were afraid of when you were young, or the one you used to play with when you were young. The next thought could be about your childhood. The third may be about the teacher and the room you used to sit in at school. The fourth may be about the house where your teacher used to live.

There is no logical connection between the dog that you recently saw on the street and the teacher who taught you in school. However, in a few seconds you simply jumped from seeing the dog to your childhood teacher. You can see that your thoughts are just moving, drifting from one thing to another. We can't even call this 'thinking'. It is just 'association', that's all. You associate the dog with your childhood, your childhood with the teacher, and so on.

Actually, if you do this exercise just once, the very understanding that it gives you will transform the way you think about yourself, and how you treat yourself and others. Your whole life will be transformed.

How does our mind work?

How do we create thoughts and how do we give meaning to them?

How do we experience life?

Let me give you a simple diagram to understand how thoughts flow in the mind and how you connect them.

Each thought in your mind is shown here as a square or rectangle. Each is a different shape, size, and color. Different thoughts are continuously flowing in you. One may be related to pain or a painful experience. Another may be related to joy or a joyful experience. The next one may be related to joy, but you think of it as pain. It is referred to as JP on the chart – joyful experience, painful impression. Similarly you may have a thought that is related to a painful experience, but you think of it as joy. It is referred to as PJ – painful experience, joyful impression.

Generally, all your thoughts are related to something about the past or the future. You cannot have thoughts about the present. In the present moment you can have only consciousness, no thoughts. Thoughts are either related to some joyful experiences that you had in the past and want to have in the future, or painful experiences that you had in the past and don't want to have again.

Even at the time of some serious problem, you will suddenly have a positive thought. Even in the peak of joy, you will have some unconnected negative thought. Each thought is completely independent, completely unconnected to the previous thought. That is why you are able to have a happy thought amidst sad thoughts and vice versa.

Understand that no two thoughts are logically connected. No thought is responsible for the creation of another thought. They all appear randomly, independently, and illogically.

How do you 'unclutch' from this random stream of thoughts? We will be using the word 'unclutch' again and again. Let's clearly define what is meant by 'unclutch'. When we change gears while driving a car, whether we change from first to second, or second to third, or any gear for that matter, we have to pass through neutral every time. We have to completely depress the clutch, or 'unclutch', move through neutral, and only then we can go to the next gear, right? In the same way, we experience a neutral space between any two thoughts in our mind. That neutral space, that silence that exists between two thoughts, is peace and bliss. When we no longer grab onto thoughts and connect them to the past or future, we remain 'unclutched.' As we remain 'unclutched' from our thoughts we become more aware of the neutral spaces between thoughts. The gap between the thoughts will automatically extend when we remain 'unclutched' from the stream of thoughts. We will dwell in the neutral space longer and experience more and more peace and bliss.

Awareness – The Ultimate Key

When you suddenly become aware, any thought that flows in front of you becomes your life for that moment. You start giving attention to it, either to fulfill it or to escape from it. It is like slides on a projector. Any slide that is kept in front of the projector light is seen as reality on the screen. The problem is that in your inner space, the projector light is not continuously on. When I say projector light, I mean your awareness. It just comesand goes, comes and goes – you are not fully, continuously aware.

Many times, even though your eyes are open and your body is moving, you are not aware of your existence. An example from everyday life is like when you get into your car and drive for half an hour to the office. It is only after you reach the office, park the car, and get out, do you suddenly realize, 'Oh, I have reached the office!' It means that in those moments of driving, the projector light was off most of the time.

Any slide that is placed in front of the projector during moments that the projector light, your awareness, is off is not part of your life. You don't remember it at all. When the light comes on again, when your awareness comes back again, whatever thought you have at that time becomes a part of you. Understand that this is a very subtle truth. Your life is the totality of all the thoughts you have when you are aware and unaware.

Unfortunately, many times there are thoughts, many major decisions, and life-changing incidents that happen when you are not aware. These are also part of your life, part of your biography. Unfortunately, you are not aware of these scenes, decisions, or thoughts when they come up. Without your knowledge they have contributed significantly to your life.

Be very clear, every moment that passes in your life without you being aware of it, without your presence, is suffering. You will either directly or indirectly create situations for suffering. Just like when the turn indicator light in your car blinks, your consciousness blinks also. But, because of your lack of awareness, you do not know when it is on and when it is off.

I read a joke the other day:

One man got into his car and started the engine. He flipped on the turn indicator and asked his son to see if the light blinked in the rear of the car.

His son shouted back, 'Yes, it's on … no, it's not on … yes it's on … no it's off … now it's on!'

If you just see the thought flow in front of you, suddenly you will realize, 'Oh god, all these things are actually going on in me! I don't have a clue where I am heading. I don't know what is happening in me!'

You are not aware, but constantly you believe you are aware. That is the first illusion.

If you become aware continuously, you open up to reality for the first time. It might be a bit intense initially, because until now, you have spent most of your time in unawareness. Ultimately, it will lead you to experience only joy and bliss.

This is the first truth – you are not aware of all the things that are happening in front of you. You do not remember your biography as it happened. You remember it only as you want it.

Just take a simple example. Your life is filled with different kinds of incidents relating to joy, suffering, guilt, pain, and depression. You don't look at life as it is. What do you usually do? You collect only the incidents related to suffering and create a shaft, connecting only these ideas, and you think your life is nothing but suffering. You think that your life is a long chain of suffering, a pain shaft.

Very rarely, you create a joy shaft. It is very rare that you collect joyful incidents, create a joy shaft, and feel life is joy. It is rare not only in the number of joyful shafts, but also in the quality of them. Most of the time you collect all the painful memories and incidents, and create the idea that life is only pain. The moment you believe life is continuous painful occurrences, unconsciously you try to strengthen that belief, even though consciously you try to break the pain shaft. Please understand, your belief that life is a pain shaft or a joy shaft will stay only as long as you are unconscious, not when you are aware.

If you normally enjoy lustful thoughts, then whenever lustful thoughts cross your system, you come to the awareness, 'I exist'. If you normally enjoy violent thoughts, whenever violent thoughts come into your system, you come to life and know that you exist. This is what I call a vicious circle: you empowering negativity and negativity bringing you back to life; you empowering more negativity, and more negativity bringing to life perceived excitement.

The Shaft That Does Not Exist

There is a very beautiful analogy by Ramana Maharishi, an enlightened master from Bharat. A dog will chew a dry bone. As it chews, fragments of the bone will poke into its mouth making it bleed. The dog thinks the blood is coming from the bone and it enjoys the blood. It continues to chew on the bone for the pleasure of the blood! It doesn't realize that the blood is coming from its own mouth and not at all from the bone.

If violence excites you, you wait for that kind of incident in your life. If pain excites you, if you believe life is a pain shaft, you wait for that kind of incident in your life in order to strengthen and reinforce your belief. That is the general human psychology. Although people claim they want to break the violence shaft or pain shaft, they secretly nurture it.

Let me provide a deeper understanding. The pain that you had ten years ago, the pain that you had nine years ago, the pain that you experienced seven years ago, the pain that you experienced three years ago, and the pain that you experienced yesterday are all unconnected, independent, individual incidents. But you start connecting all of them and create a shaft of pain. You connect all these thought shafts and create one big shaft. You start thinking and believing, 'My life is pain.' Is that true? No! What happened to all the sweet incidents of joy that you experienced in between? Surely, there must have been at least a few moments of joy in between? They are simply forgotten. They are never picked to form a shaft. So the shaft, any shaft, is never true, because it focuses on only a fragment of your complete biography.

First, you start archiving the painful memories for utility purpose. You archive all your pains, probably for medical history sake or to tell your doctor. By and by, you start believing that all these pains that happened in your life are connected. You decide that your life is pain; your life is suffering. The moment you come to the decision that your life is pain or your life is suffering, you create hell for yourself.

For example, until yesterday you were only walking, you were not able to fly. You know in your past you never flew, you only walked. Can you believe you can start flying from tomorrow onwards? You can't. You know tomorrow you will still only be walking. You rely solely on your remembered past experiences to predict your future, eliminating many new possibilities.

The joy that you experienced ten years ago, the joy that you experienced nine years ago, the joy that you experienced three years ago, and the joy that you experienced one year ago are all independent, individual, unconnected thought shafts. At the present time, you connect all of those thoughts and create a big shaft of joy.

You may identify your joy with an object, a person, or a space, like a particular vacation resort. Now you will try again and again to bring that back in your life, to bring that person, that object, that space, or that same incident back in your life. Try as you might, you will not be able experience the same joy again. This puts you in further pain!

In life, we constantly create either shafts of pain or joy. Once you create a shaft of pain, you try to break it. If you create the shaft of joy, you try to elongate it! But you don't understand that you can neither elongate the joy shaft nor break the pain shaft – simply because the shaft itself doesn't exist. It is just selective memory. The very shaft is your imagination.

Thoughts are like Bubbles in a Fish Tank

There is no linear connection between one thought that we have and another thought that we have. The only relationship between thoughts is that they come from the same source. But we constantly connect one thought and the next thought in a linear manner.

Just as bubbles in a fish tank rise from the bottom, our thoughts also rise in the same manner. When one bubble comes and reaches the surface of the water, the next bubble starts and then the third bubble starts. Because the bubbles are rising at a high speed, they look like a continuous stream! Actually there is always a gap between two bubbles.

Like the bubbles, we also experience a neutral space between two thoughts. Since the gap or the neutral space between two thoughts is so small, we think all thoughts are connected and form a shaft. But there is always a gap between two thoughts.

Let me tell you about an incident that happened:

A middle aged man came to me and said, 'I am going to divorce my wife. Please bless me! 'One gentleman around forty five years of age came up to me and said, 'Swamiji, I am going to divorce my wife, please bless me.' I told him, 'I only bless people for marriages. Why do you want me to bless you for a divorce?' He replied, 'No, you have to bless me, because I have suffered so much.' I told him, 'I only bless individuals for marriages. What made you come and ask me to bless you for a divorce?' He replied, 'No, no, Swamiji, you have to bless me, because I have suffered too much.'

I said, 'Suffering is always give-and-take. It is never just taking. You must have given your wife enough suffering too. So, please tell me the truth about what happened and then we will analyze the situation.'

He replied, 'How do I decide which incidents to tell you, and which ones to leave out? There are so many of them! From day one she has been torturing me. You don't know how much torture I have gone through!' Then he narrated an incident from the day of his marriage!

In Hindu villages, when a wedding takes place, the newly married couple plays games after the marriage ceremony. For one of the games, a ring is dropped inside a pot filled with water. The husband and wife put their hands inside and compete to pick up the ring. Whoever grabs it first wins. These small games were created mainly to reduce the unfamiliarity between the couple because in arranged marriages the bride and groom first meet during the wedding ceremony. They have small games to reduce the distance between the couple because they are new to each other.

This man said, 'During that game, she scratched my hand. With her nails, she scratched my hand!' And he started a big story about everything that she had done to him since that day! For all practical purposes, he had kept a file, like a police report from the first day of his marriage.

After two or three incidents, I told him, 'Please stop! If this is the case, she should be happier than you to part ways. It is very difficult to live with someone who keeps such large and detailed files in his head!' Any time she does something, this man will always be looking through the files.

Then he told me the immediate reason for the divorce. He said, 'She spilled some coffee on my clothes!' I told him, 'Spilling coffee on your clothes cannot be a reason for a divorce!'

He said, 'No, you don't know. Today she poured coffee; tomorrow she will pour acid!' He really said this. I did not understand the connection. I asked him how he could possibly connect coffee and acid. Again he said, 'No, no Swamiji, you don't know.'

He may seem extreme and you may laugh when you hear this. But just look intensely at your own life. You are doing the same thing – constantly creating illogical connections. You forget to see incidents as being independent of each other. You forget to see thoughts as independent.

If you just learn this one simple technique of unclutching, you will be able to retain a significant amount of energy in your system, in your being. As a result, you will be many times more productive and creative. Your relationships will be much friendlier because you will not clutch incidents that are not related. You will not feel suffocated by people or their expectations of you. You will have tremendous inner space available to you to fulfill your needs, as well as others' needs. You will also have tremendous compassion to know why others are suffering. It is only when you don't understand why the other person is suffering that you are harsh with them. When you unclutch, you are able to accommodate that person in your inner space. You are automatically compassionate. Your very life has a different quality and you become a different person in the world.