Unwanted Thoughts

Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha

[This is an extract from a correspondence that appeared in the 
August 1991 issue of the monthly journal ‘Vicharasetu – The Path of Introspection’]

Q.      Why do unwanted thoughts arise in the mind while meditating? I tried to avoid them, but could not. Even linking them up was not possible. What is the reason? What is the solution?

A.      What you call ‘unwanted thoughts’, are not unacquired or unowned. When you travel, though your aim is to reach the destination, the eyes will be seeing many things on the way. There is no justification for the sights except that they are part of the journey, and in a way, indispensable.

Once an object is seen, it cannot be taken out from the brain. Similarly, once some thoughts come to the mind, their place and memory cannot be ruled out. Normally, the brain has only provision to take in, not to leave out anything deliberately. Don’t you now understand why so many thoughts which you do not want, are there in you. Generally they will come out when you sit in a place restfully, not interacting actively with anything. Blood goes on circulating; air moves in and out; similarly the mind also wanders from one thought to another.

Such thoughts are generally of two kinds. They will either be an upsurge from the past or a conscious involvement with the future. For the second to surface, you must have the deliberateness behind. If you sit in a place and start thinking, “What shall I do if I get a child? If my daughter proves to be more intelligent than myself and confronts me every time…  If I grow as a seeker, in how many years shall I have fulfillment? …” then the thoughts to follow will be deliberate.

If such deliberateness is not there, then the thoughts will not normally follow any pattern. Some ideas or memories will flash forth, and from your present standpoint or evaluation, they will appear ‘unwanted’.

Unless one gains a counter-process by which these avoidable thoughts can be eliminated or kept away, the unwanted intrusions will continue. People take to reading scriptures or chanting God’s name or a mantra as a help for this. I shall now leave the subject for your thought.

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