The Power Of Now: The Book and Kolya's thoughts

I read "The Power Of Now" last year, while preparing for CAT. It is an amazing book to say the least. If applied to life, it can solve most of our problems, if not all. Just a few pages into the book, I read something which I have known for quite a bit of time - that the problem of the mind - the chief source of all problems - is that it does not cease to work. It goes on thinking and analyzing and resolving and remembering, causing unnecessary wastage of mental energy. Paradoxical but true. If nothing else, a song continuously goes on in the mind, creating unnecessary noise and confusion, especially while doing some work which requires concentration. Which means that to concentrate or rather, to think properly, we need to stop thinking! Amazing are the ways of life.

Thinking more about this matter, I feel that the difference between those who concentrate better and those who can't must be the noise in the mind. Which means people who can't concentrate are thinking much more than those who do. The difference is that the former are thinking more in the background rather than in the zone that requires focus while the latter try to think the maximum in the focus zone. It reminds me of the chapter I learnt (or left unlearned) during my engineering - NOISE. When two people talk on the phone, it is the background sound which determines the actual noise. If there is more background noise, the concentration of the listener is disturbed, leading to confusion. On the contrary, if there is no noise in the background, then the voice is clearly audible and there is no confusion.

Now compare the phone conversation with the thinking process. The talker is the mind making a conscious effort for the solution of some problem. The listener is the entity which requires that concentration - in our case, we take it to be the problem which requires a solution. The noise is the unnecessary thoughts that keep coming to the mind. As the conversation continues (as a problem is being solved), the listener (the problem) gets disturbed [:)] or is not able to hear the talker (the solver or the solution) because of background noise (unnecessary thoughts). So if we can keep these thoughts away from the mind, peace exists. It can really be experienced with some struggle with the sub-conscious mind.

THE NOISE

Control my mind, there is no peace;

The way is inside you, they say,

The babbling creates the chaos,

Peace is where there is no extreme,

Status quo maintained! But how?

When this mind, like an atom bomb,

Keeps emitting nuclear thoughts,

Each moment at work, no rest for it,

And one day like an overspent force,

Loses its focus, and that is when,

Senility sets in, the zeal is lost,

So control it now, the way is here,

If flawless systems you create outside,

Look inside you, a flawless system,

A gift given to you! Don't spoil it.

And when you achieve perfection,

The level of conscious, an extreme,

The concentration and the creativity,

Ah! That is an extreme; I desire.