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Wakeful Intelligence

The one who is watching the thoughts is your wakeful intelligence. It is very easy to find thinkers, but it is difficult to find someone whose intelligence is awake. “Awaken your intelligence. By watching your thoughts with awareness. If you watch the actions of the body, the body will disappear; if you watch your racing thoughts, the thought process, then the thoughts will disappear; and if you observe your emotions closely, then the emotions will disappear. For the purification of emotions, allow love to come in place of hatred and friendship in place of enmity. Now you also need to also be aware of this truth: there is a dimension behind the one who is loving and the one who is hating, which is just awareness – which neither love, nor hate. It is simply a witness. It sometimes watches hatred and sometimes watches love happening, but it is simply watching.”

Witnessing simply means a detached observation, unprejudiced

Meditation is a very simple process: all that you need to know is the right button. The Upanishads call it ‘witnessing’ – the right button. Just witness your mind process, don’t do anything at all. Nothing needs to be done, just be a witness, an observer, a watcher, looking at the traffic of the mind – thoughts passing by, desires, memories, dreams, fantasies.

Simply stand aloof, cool – watching it, seeing it, with no judgment, with no condemnation, neither saying, “This is good,” nor saying, “This is bad.” Don’t bring your moral concepts in, otherwise you will never be able to meditate.

That’s why I am against so-called morality: it is anti-meditation, because a so-called moral person is so full of his moral ideas, shoulds and should-nots, that he cannot watch, he cannot simply watch. He jumps to conclusions: “This is not right and this is right.” And whatsoever he feels is right, he wants to cling to it; and whatsoever he thinks is wrong, he wants to throw it out. He jumps among the thoughts, starts fighting, grabbing, and that’s where he loses all witnessing.

Witnessing simply means a detached observation, unprejudiced; that’s the whole secret of meditation. It is simple! Once you have known the knack of it it is the most simple thing in the world, because each child is born in that innocence. You have known it in your mother’s womb, you have known it when you were a small child, so it is only a rediscovery. Meditation is not something NEW; you had come with it into the world. MIND IS something new; meditation is your nature, it is your very being. How can it be difficult? You just have to know the knack: watch.

Sit by the side of a river and watch the river flowing. Yes, sometimes driftwood passes by and sometimes a boat comes and sometimes a dead body and sometimes a beautiful woman may be swimming in the river – you simply watch, you don’t get bothered, you remain cool, you don’t get excited. You are not supposed to do anything, you have nothing to do. It is the river and it is the river’s business. You simply sit silently. Sitting silently, slowly slowly the art is learnt… and one day, the moment your watchfulness is total, the mind evaporates.

If you are fifty percent watchful, fifty percent of the traffic disappears; if you are ninety percent watchful, ninety percent of the traffic disappears; if you are one hundred percent watchful, totally watchful, the mind totally disappears, the river is no more there. And in that moment when the mind is no more there, the sound is heard.