Mind & Happiness 61

At any single moment our Mind can attend to only one thought. Therefore each of our thoughts can rise only when our previous thought has subsided.  However, since our thoughts rise & subside in rapid succession, we feel that we are thinking of several things simultaneously. That is, just as the speed at which the frames of a movie film are projected on a cinema screen is so rapid that we are unable to perceive the gap between 2 consecutive frames, & hence we see a continuous moving picture, so the speed at which our thoughts rise & subside is so rapid that we are unable to perceive the extremely brief gap between 2 consecutive thoughts, & hence we experience a continuous & unbroken flow of thoughts.

However, though our thoughts rise & subside so rapidly, there is nevertheless a limit to the number of thoughts that can rise in our Mind during each fraction of a second, because at any precise moment only one thought can be active.  Hence, in order to rise to the surface of our Mind, each of our many latent thoughts or dormant desires must await a suitable gap between the subsiding & rising of our other thoughts or desires.

Therefore, as soon as a relative quiet occurs in our mental activity due to the satisfaction of one of our desires, many of our other desires will clamor to rise in its place.  This process of some thought or other rising as soon as a relative quiescence occurs in our mental activity can be clearly perceived by us if we deliberately try to quiet the activity of our Mind by some form of meditation.  Whenever we try to avoid thinking of one thing, the thought of some other thing will rise in our Mind.  The more we try to quiet our mental activity, the more vigorously other thoughts will arise to take the place of the thoughts we are trying to avoid.

All such thoughts that arise in our relatively quiet Mind are impelled by our desire to obtain Happiness from things other than our own essential self.  So long as we mistake our self to be this limited form of Consciousness that we call our "Mind", we will experience desire to obtain those things other than our self that we believe will make us happy, & to avoid those things that we believe will make us unhappy, & so long as such desire persists, our Mind will continue to think one thought after another.

Whenever our Mind becomes tired of this restless activity of thinking innumerable thoughts, it subsides temporarily in Deep Dreamless Sleep.  But from such Deep Dreamless Sleep it will soon be roused once again by its dormant desires, & will thereby experience either a Dream or a State such as our present one, which we take to be a State of Waking. Therefore, until we put an end to our mistaken identification of our self with our Mind, which is the root of all our desires, we can never put an end to all our desires, & hence we can never remain without either thinking of things other than our essential self, or instead falling temporarily into the state of Deep Dreamless Sleep.

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"There is no Creation, no Destruction, no Bondage, no longing to be freed from Bondage, no striving for Liberation, nor anyone who has attained Liberation. Know that this to be Ultimate Truth."

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