Try an Experiment in Your Self

2003

September 8 1999

Make an experiment. Spend some time each day with your mind in a state of non-conclusion, a state of stillness—and see what happens. Just observe what happens. Don't draw any conclusions ahead of time. Just make this experiment and observe the results.

There are not many people in the world who can immediately sit in watchful stillness, so here is a suggestion of how to approach the state of a still mind:

By "a still mind" I do not mean that no thoughts should arise in the mind. So please do not entertain that expectation. Undoubtedly, it may sometimes happen that the mind does rest in a state free from all thoughts, a state in which the Knower Self alone shines as knowingness, and indeed that is a still mind.

But by "still mind" I mean that whether thoughts and feelings arise or not, you are established in Self Knowingness. Thoughts appear, are replaced by other thoughts, and you are watching, established in your center of watching, for you have decided to watch, to observe. You watch the space into which thoughts appear, a space which appears to become the thought—except that you are watching, knowing, so the becoming is not total. The cultivation of watchfulness maintains the free space of knowing. Without this watchfulness you would entirely become the thought, an assumed identity which is the state of identification with the mind.

But by sitting in stillness, in the watchfulness you are, the force of identification with thought is neutralized. It happens just by watching! It is not that you have to neutralize your thought or that you have to neutralize identification with thought. No, you just have to watch and know that you are eternally free.