Controlling One’s Thoughts

The mind is always active, jumping from one input source to another, depending on the senses and their objects, the various forms of media we are consuming, including radio, tv, music, reading, social media, etc.; but also on a variety of internal factors including nutritional factors, preoccupations with various concerns or emotions, fatigue, illness, hormonal activity, mental training, and level of focus or inspiration the individual is experiencing. Generally thoughts arise in a scattered and chaotic manner as each of these potential factors presents its energetic input. Those who have undergone forms of mental training, whether through education or through self-development, may be able to develop periods of coherence in the operations of the mind and experience periods of deep concentration or focus that effectively shuts out, or at least reduces the attention to, the normal chaotic sensory input and the subsequent thoughts that arise.

Most people do not think about controlling the processes of the mind; rather, they take this chaotic mix of thoughts arising as the natural state and do not reflect on the idea that there could be a different relationship to the operations of the mind than this ‘natural’ process. Some try to simplify their mental process by relying on another individual or group to determine what thoughts or ideas are acceptable and they try to imbibe these patterns and make them the gatekeepers for the ideas they will let in. This of course has led to unfortunate manipulation on the part of those who have an agenda of gaining and holding power, and has led to dogmatism, authoritarianism and other very limited outcomes.

The power to control one’s thoughts can, however, be of significant value in developing one’s life and achieving one’s goals. This power comes through the systematic development of an observational standpoint of the ‘witness’, who stands back and reviews the thoughts, their sources, impetus, amplitude and power, as they enter into the mental space, and then begins to both monitor and control the flow of the thought-process in the mind. This can bring about very powerful results.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “To reject doubt means control of one’s thoughts — very certainly so. But the control of one’s thoughts is as necessary as the control of one’s vital desires and passions or the control of the movements of one’s body — for the yoga, and not for the yoga only. One cannot be a fully developed mental being even, if one has not a control of the thoughts, is not their observer, judge, master, — the mental Purusha, manomaya purusa, saksi, anumanta, isvara. It is no more proper for the mental being to be the tennis-ball of unruly and uncontrollable thoughts than to be a rudderless ship in the storm of the desires and passions or a slave of either the inertia or the impulses of the body. I know it is more difficult because man being primarily a creature of mental Prakriti identifies himself with the movements of his mind and cannot at once dissociate himself and stand free from the swirl and eddies of the mind whirlpool. It is comparatively easy for him to put a control on his body, at least on a certain part of its movements; it is less easy but still very possible after a struggle to put a mental control on his vital impulsions and desires; but to sit like the Tantric yogi on the river, above the whirlpool of his thoughts, is less facile. Nevertheless, it can be done; all developed mental men, those who get beyond the average, have in one way or other or at least at certain times and for certain purposes to separate the two parts of the mind, the active part which is a factory of thoughts and the quiet masterful part which is at once a Witness and a Will, observing them, judging, rejecting, eliminating, accepting, ordering corrections and changes, the Master in the House of Mind, capable of self-empire, samrajya.“

“Detach yourself from it [the habitual movement of thoughts] — make your mind external to it, something that you can observe as you observe things occurring in the street. So long as you do not do that it is difficult to be the mind’s master.”

Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, Living Within: The Yoga Approach to Psychological Health and Growth, Disturbances of Mind, Unruly and Perturbing Thoughts, pp. 35-43