One doesn’t control dreams, One wakes up

Acharya Prashant
4 min readNov 2, 2019

Don’t say, “How to control thoughts?” Don’t say, “How to control dreams?” One doesn’t control dreams. One wakes up.

But we’re not interested in waking up. We’re interested in changing the dreams. Now if you have one dream and then you have another dream, has your position changed for better? I am asking you, you’re dreaming of fire and you’re afraid, now you’re dreaming of fountains and waterfalls and you’re happy, has anything really changed?

Don’t say, “How to control thoughts?” Because even the controller is fast asleep. Ask me, “How do I understand thoughts?” That is waking up. When there are so many thoughts going on in the mind, don’t hold onto them. This much you realize that I’m thinking, right? When you’re thinking you know that you’re thinking. If you can know this much that you’re thinking, you can also remember that every thought is just an external influence, not really important.

Alright, it is there. It is the natural tendency of mind to think. Let the mind be involved in its own preoccupations. Can I stand a little distance from the mind and look at the mind? That will happen only when you don’t take your thoughts too seriously. Don’t become attached or identified with them. Are you getting it?

You see when you want to control thoughts what you mean is, there are two types of thoughts, Good and Bad. Bad thoughts need to be controlled, and the good thought needs to be promoted. Is that not so? That is what you want. You don’t want to control all thoughts. Do you want to control all thoughts? No. You say, “I want positive thinking. Let me control the negative thoughts and let me have more and more positive thoughts,” right?

You want to control thoughts of happiness but you never want to control thoughts of… the other way round rather. Sad thoughts you want to control, but happy thoughts you want to promote. You do not realize that sad or happy, thoughts are thoughts.

And there are so many people who’ve told you that positive thinking is a very good thing. They are idiots. They do not know what the etymology of thoughts is. Where it comes from. They think that by thinking good something good happens. As if by dreaming well something good…