Can We Have an Original Thought?

I understand, I think, pretty well, the basic idea of leaving behind the conceptual thought and retreating, making a retreat to being in order to reposition and to cope and to start out with again in the conceptual world we must live in at some time with fresh thoughts and new ideas. But I'm asking you, and not necessarily expecting the answer just now, today, but hoping that this is a challenge and a invitation for you to help us to have the one thing that I think I've not been able to achieve in my own life and would like to, even at 76, I'm still striving to have one, just one really original thought. That's what I'm looking for. And of all people in this world that I've heard about and met, I think you're the guy that might help us with that. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. That's a lovely question. Thank you. Well, there's one success to be reported. You already had an original question, a very honest question, and a question that actually, surprisingly, nobody has asked before. So there you are. I don't know if that's the whole answer, but that's certainly the truth. Asking questions is a wonderful, wonderful thing. And it is, I would even say, more important to ask an original question than to expect an original thought or original answer. Because an original question is an original thought, a question is a thought. And so you'll find that the ability to ask questions when, in any situation, when you have to arrive at an answer, at a solution, to try to work something out, to ask questions and to ask the right questions is more important than expecting the right answer. And often the answer is. Is already hidden in the question. When you can ask the right question and say, oh, oh, and this already Socrates knew, because his entire teaching is questions and answers. It's called the Socratic dialogues. The Socratic dialogues, he continuously asked, he encouraged people to ask questions, and then he didn't immediately give answers. He asked more questions and gradually leading people to the truth realization of this or that, whatever it may be. So in many situations, often people present something to me, do you want to do this or do you want to do that? And then I said, have you asked this? Have you asked that? No. Well, ask this and ask that and ask that, and then we'll know. It's an art that you can develop, asking questions. You need an alertness. So I'm really talking about you already asked an original question and a very honest question. So this is certainly an original thought. And let's see what happens after that. The more you get in touch with the alert stillness that is presence, the more likely it is that you will perhaps more have more original questions and sometimes perhaps, well, original thoughts. An original question is an original thought. It is true that in most people, the thoughts that happen in your mental field, most of them are not even your thoughts. You say, these are my thoughts, but you have. They have come into you from the collective. Especially nowadays when everybody is connected with the collective through these weird devices. You just turn on the thing and you look and you're taking in collective thoughts. And then you start thinking, whatever, either you agree or you violently disagree. Yes, yes, yes. And then you. So what people don't realize is that the thoughts live in you and pretend to be you. You think they're yours, but they are thoughts that have floated into your mind, most of them collective thoughts. And so it's. It's almost like being. Carrying something in you that possesses you. You're in the grip of certain thoughts. If you read social media and all that kind of thing on the Internet, it's full of millions of people who are the grip of certain thought movements, and they are collective thought movements. For example, now there's a separation of this one huge collective thought movement that goes one way, and there's another huge collective thought movement that goes another way. And you belong either to one or to the other. You feel drawn to the one or to the other. And it's ultimately nothing to do with you or who you really are. You are at the mercy of these energy fields that move through you. And you say things, and you. The energy speaks through you. The thoughts live in you. You are inhabited by thoughts. So as I mentioned before, somewhere, maybe not here, the people say I think. But in most cases, thinking is not. You have no say in the matter unless there's some awareness. You have no say in the matter as to what you are thinking. So there's as little truth in the statement I think as there is in the statement I beat my heart because you are not doing it. It happens to you. Now, breathing is partly voluntary and partly involuntary. You say I breathe. Now, you have some control over your breathing. You can stop it for a while. You can deepen it. However, breathing also happens to you, because although you can stop it for a little while, I don't think you cannot commit suicide just by holding your breath. Something in you makes you breathe. So breathing happens to you. Well, you'd have to put some plastic over your head. Oh, let's not go there. But you cannot commit suicide. You cannot hold your breath for that long, so it's stronger than you, so breathing happens to you. The circulation of the countless, countless hundreds of functions that are being coordinated every second in your body, the temperature of the body, the circulation of the blood, every organization coordinating its functions with the other organs. There's a vast intelligence operating continuously throughout your body, and it's happening to you are not doing it. You are not. You have no idea how the digestion works. You are not digesting your food. It's being digested for you. You are not in control of the functions of your kidneys or your liver. Even now, the greatest scientists are still figuring out more and more about how these things work. It's just an amazing intelligence hiding there. But it's all happening for you and to you. So you are not doing it. But you think that as far as thoughts are concerned, that you think your thoughts. You don't. Unless there's an awareness in you where you become. This dimension has emerged where you become aware of what thoughts are going through your head. And you can even say, I'd rather not think that because it's totally pointless and futile. And then it dissolves. That is possible. Or to simply observe a thought takes away the momentum from a thought that is not pleasant. When you observe what a thought is doing to you, how a thought makes you unhappy, when you observe that there's an awareness there, when you see that this thought is making me unhappy and you see, then it begins to dissolve. But for most humans who are not aware, they are at the mercy of their thoughts, although they continuously think, this is what I think, as if there was a volition there. But what really is happening, this is the thinking that happens to me. So there's no. It's completely conditioned. So instead of saying, I think, it would be better to say, I am being thought.