‘Mind has become habitual and it plays tricks with itself. It wants to remain in that imagination world which is not true, which is not giving you any real happiness, but yet it wants to keep fooling itself because it has become habitual. This is what you have to understand, then in meditation you just watch’. ~Shiva Rudra Balayogi.
Here is an ancient story from India that Babaji gives to demonstrate this.
Vikram and the ghost
Once there was a king Vikramaditya who was asked to bring a ghost to his master. Every night he used to bring the ghost. The ghost used to tell a story and at the end of the story it used to ask the king, ‘You have listened to the story, now if you know the answer you must tell me. If you speak I will run away. If you know the answer and don’t say anything, your head will break into a thousand pieces’.
So every night, Vikramaditya used to listen to the story. He always knew the answer so he had to speak, but then the ghost used to run away. Then finally after hundreds of days of doing the same thing, Vikram realised, ‘If I listen to the story of the ghost, then I will always know the answer because of my wisdom, and I will be forced to answer. Tonight I am going to ignore the ghost, I won’t pay attention to the story at all. If I don’t listen to the story, I won’t have to answer’. So that’s what he does. He had practised meditation so was able to do this. The ghost goes on telling the story but Vikram’s attention is on himself and he doesn’t listen to the story at all.
When finally the ghost asks him, he thinks, ‘I didn’t listen to your story, so I don’t know anything’ – he doesn’t open his mouth at all and just keeps quiet. Then the ghost has nothing to do and surrenders to him.
So like that, if we don’t listen to the story of our mind which is our ghost then we don’t have to answer, we don’t have to make a judgement, we don’t have to analyze – we are quiet. Then we have peace.
Click here to watch the Q+A with Babaji where he recounts this story