The greatest trick of the mind is to give you the idea of that which you are not, and to help you feel that you are already that.
Gurdjieff used to tell a parable…. There was a magician who was also a shepherd. He had thousands of sheep to look after and he was a very miserly man so he didn’t want many servants and he didn’t want many watchmen. He did not want to pay anybody and he did not want his sheep to be lost or taken by the wolves. But it was very difficult for him to take care of all the sheep alone. He was very rich and he had many sheep.
So he played a trick on the sheep. He hypnotised them — he was a magician. He hypnotised them and told every sheep, ‘You are not a sheep. Don’t be afraid.’ To some he said, ‘You are a lion.’ To some he said, ‘You are tigers.’ To some he even said, ‘You are men. Nobody is going to kill you. Don’t be afraid and don’t try to escape from here.’
The sheep started believing in his hypnosis. Every day he would butcher a few sheep but the others would think, ‘We are not sheep. He is butchering only sheep. We are lions, we are tigers, we are wolves, we are this and that…’ even that they were men. Some were even told that they were magicians — and they believed it. It was always some sheep which was to be butchered. They remained aloof, distant. They were not worried. And by and by they were all butchered.
Accumulates Thought Energy
The great physicist, Eddington, has said that the deeper science goes into matter, the more it becomes a realization that things are thoughts. That may be so, that Eddington may be true that things look more and more like thoughts if you go deeper; if you go deeper into yourself, thoughts will look more and more like things.
In fact, these are two aspects of the same phenomenon: a thing is a thought, a thought is a thing.
You can throw your thought just like a thing. You can hit somebody’s head with a thought just like a thing. You can kill a person through a thought just as you can throw a dagger. You can give your thought as a gift, or as an infection. Thoughts are things, they are forces, but they don’t belong to you. They come to you; they abide for a while in you and then they leave you. The whole universe is filled with thoughts and things. Things are just the physical part of thoughts, and thoughts are the mental part of things.
Because of this fact, many miracles happen — because thoughts are things. If a person continuously thinks about you and your welfare, it will happen — because he is throwing a continuous force at you. That’s why blessings are useful, helpful. If you can be blessed by someone who has attained no-mind, the blessing is going to be true — because a man who never uses thought accumulates thought energy, so whatsoever he says is going to be true.
Learning from the story The Greatest Trick Of The Mind: Accumulates Thought Energy
Experience Learning
In all the Eastern traditions, before a person starts learning no-mind, there are techniques and much emphasis that he should stop being negative, because if you once attain to no-mind and your trend remains negative, you can become a dangerous force. Before the no-mind is attained, one should become absolutely positive. That is the whole difference between white and black magic.
Black magic is nothing more than when a man has accumulated thought energy without throwing out his negativity beforehand. And white magic is nothing more than when a man has attained too much thought energy, and has based his total being on a positive attitude. The same energy with negativity becomes black; the same energy with positivity becomes white. A thought is a great force, it is a thing.
This will be the insight. It has to be understood and watched within yourself.
Sometimes it happens that you see your thought functioning as a thing, but just because of too much conditioning of materialism you think this may be just a coincidence. You neglect the fact, you simply don’t give any attention to it; you remain indifferent, you forget about it. But many times you know that sometimes you were thinking about the death of a certain person – and he is dead. You think it is just a coincidence. Sometime you were thinking about a friend and a desire arose in you that it would be good if he comes – and he is on the door, knocking. You think it is a coincidence. It is not coincidence. In fact, there is nothing like coincidence, everything has its causality.
