Annamalai Swami’s Wise Words

Excerpt from Annamalai Swami Final Talks, pages 82, 83

Edited by David Godman

Your thoughts arise on a moment-to-moment basis because of your vasanas, but it is a mistake to think that you can do nothing about them. You can be interested in them, or you can ignore them. If you show interest in them, they will persist and you will get caught up in them. If you ignore them and keep your attention on the source, they will not develop. And when they don’t develop, they disappear.

In Who Am I? Bhagavan compared this process to laying siege to a fort. If you cut off, one by one, the heads of the thoughts as they come out of the fort of the mind, sooner or later, there will be none left. The way to do this is by self-enquiry. As each thought arises, you ask yourself, “To whom does this thought appear?” If you are vigilant in doing this, the forest of thoughts will lessen until there are none left. When the thoughts have gone, mind will sink into the source and experience that source.