Robert Adams

 It has come to my attention that many of you are trying to stop your thoughts, control your thoughts. You cannot really do this. Trying to stop your thoughts, as Ramana Maharshi says, is like a thief becoming a policeman to catch the thief. In other words, the thief that becomes the policeman will not catch the thief, because he's a thief himself. And so it is with our minds. When we use the mind to stop the thoughts, the mind will not stop the thoughts at all, because the mind wants to go on living. Stopping the thoughts is annihilating the mind, and the mind does not wish to be annihilated. The mind wants to live on, to fill you full of nonsense, superstitions. Therefore we do not try to stop thoughts. What do we really do? We do absolutely nothing. By doing absolutely nothing, the mind will begin to slow down.