From Ramana Maharshi:
The above are statements from a man who spent his whole life at looking at his mind. For him, it was a practical approach. Done it and this is what I found kind of mystic.
Buddha would have done the same thing. Others too but when put simply across it looks like there is nothing to it at first glance.
My first impression at reading this is that meditation is really for beginners. What!. Meditation is everything? Ramana having been through the whole spectrum of the mind perhaps found that meditation is a very good initial tool to find one’s mind spaces and having found them and defined them and experienced them – now one had to move on from the calibration of the mind through meditation and find the best mind space that one wanted to work from.
Using that mind space one works from it and remain “cool in solitude” while his hands are in society.
“Get rid of your thoughts” is to access the silent space in your mind. Part of the answer to this comes from cross-legged meditation. You see the mantra was introduced in meditation to distract the mind from thinking. What this does is takes you to the silent zone in the mind with intuitive thinking and pictorial thinking. Remaining in this zone long enough even intuitive thinking can disappear and also all the images passing through the mind. What remains: no-mind but it is an active state of being with a sense of knowing connected to a kind of “intelligence” that is still connected to the mind and body. This can disappear too but when it does there is no memory of where one has been but it is not sleep. One can be standing and in observation and the self in mind can disappear. Ramana Maharshi devotees, I gather, had at times finding him in a stupor in mind had to bring him back to make sure he had his meals.
So those are the possible mind spaces so pull back from the end and find a sweet spot to work from. But no personality-based local thinking or silent self-talk psychological thinking.
Why would you want “this and that” from verbal-thinking when you can tune yourself to a silent space in mind with a kind of sense of knowing connected to an “intelligence” in the Cosmos that is giving you all the answers. The brain with this and that only comes from the past in you and your experiences and is very limited. Limitations of the frontline-self-talking thinking mind.
Rethinking and Calibration of the thinking mind.
And when his mind was quiet with no thoughts he would have connected to the “intelligence” in the universe via a silent mind and worked from this mind space. I think this is what Ramana Maharshi is trying to tell us:
A picture to show what this means:
Jiddu Krishnamurti in a conversation with David Bohm, a Phycist’s, also discussed this: I made a picture of this conversation too: When one is at the no-mind state conscious awareness can “see” the action of Truth. All that comes out of the repository of the Truth of things which is a fact and true, a trusted observation that can be used. It is not what comes out of verbal thinking (or “speak thinking”) which are spinners of facts of the Truth which turn them into a lie in you or an illusion in you. The facts of Truth can only show themselves when the mind is quiet and not when the mind is rattling away with verbal thinking.
Krishnamurti: ……….when thought is still, something new can be.