VBT – Meditation 82.3

VBT – Meditation 82.3

Consciousness Is Yours

You can fight for your thoughts, you can even become a martyr for your thoughts. Or, you can become a killer, a murderer for your thoughts. And thoughts are not yours. Consciousness is yours, but thoughts are not yours. And why will this help? – Because if you can see that thoughts are not yours, then nothing is yours because thought is the root of all. The house is mine and the property is mine and the family is mine – these are the outer things. Deep down the thoughts are mine. Only if thoughts are mine can all these things, the superstructure, be mine.

If thoughts are not mine then nothing matters, because this too is a thought – that you are my wife, or you are my husband. This too is a thought. And if basically thought itself is not mine, then how can the husband be mine? Or how can the wife be mine? Thoughts uprooted, the whole world is uprooted. Then you can live in the world and not live in it.

You can move to the Himalayas, you can leave the world, but if you think that your thoughts are yours, you have not moved a single inch. Sitting there in the Himalayas, you will be as much in the world as here because thoughts are the world. You carry your thoughts to the Himalayas. You leave the house – but the real house is inner, and the real house is built by the bricks of thought. It is not the outer house.

So this is strange, but this happens every day: I see a person who has left the world but still he remains a Hindu. He becomes a sannyasin and still he remains a Hindu or remains a Jain. What does it mean? He renounces the world but he doesn’t renounce the thoughts. He is still a Jain, he is still a Hindu – the thought-world is carried still. And that thought-world is the real world.

If you can see that no thought is yours…. And you will see, because you will be the seer and thoughts will become the objects. When you silently look at the thoughts, thoughts will be the objects and you will be the looker. You will be the seer, the witness, and thoughts will be flowing before you.

And if you look deeply and feel deeply, you will see that there are no roots. Thoughts are floating like clouds in the sky; they have no roots in you. They come and go. You are just a victim, and you unnecessarily become identified with them. About every cloud that passes by your house you say, ‘This is my cloud.’ Thoughts are like clouds: in the sky of your consciousness they go on passing and you go on clinging to each one. You say, ‘This is mine’ – and this is only a vagrant cloud that is passing. And it will pass.

Go back in your childhood. You had certain thoughts, and you used to cling to them and you used to say that they were your thoughts. Then the childhood disappeared, and with that childhood those clouds disappeared. Now you don’t even remember. Then you were young: then other clouds which are attracted when you are young came to you and then you started clinging to them.

Now you are old: those thoughts are no more there, you don’t even remember them. And they were so significant that you could have died for them, and now you don’t even remember. Now you can laugh at the whole nonsense that you once thought that you could die for them, you could become a martyr for them. Now you are not ready to give even a single penny to them. They don’t belong to you now. Now those clouds have gone but other clouds have come, and you are clinging to them.

Clouds go on changing but your clinging never changes. That’s the problem. And it is not that only when you are no longer a child they will change; every moment they are changing. A minute ago you were filled with certain clouds; now you are filled with other clouds. When you came here, certain clouds were hovering on you; when you leave this room, other clouds will be hovering on you – and you go on clinging to every cloud. If in the end you find nothing in your hand, it is natural because nothing can come of clouds – and thoughts are just clouds.