Alzheimer's/Dementia: Breaking the Inner Monologue

Cross-posted from the Alzheimers' forum.

Thinking is a deep-seated habit - very difficult to break.
With awareness, it can be done.

Not to talk with yourself is very difficult, so we will have to find out reasons why we talk with ourselves. Why do we go on talking with ourselves in the first place? If you observe, then you can find out the cause. The cause is that nothing is complete in our lives; everything is incomplete. You were eating, and then you were thinking about your office. So eating will not be satisfied; it willnot be fulfilled; you will not feel content. It remains incomplete.

Buddha has used the term ”right living”. He has shown an eight-fold path. In those eight principles, one is ”right living”. Right living means total living; wrong living means incomplete living.

If you are angry, then be really angry. Be authentically angry; make it complete. Suffer it! There is no harm in suffering because suffering brings much wisdom. There is no harm in suffering because only through suffering does one transcend it. Suffer it! But be authentically angry.

What are you doing? You are angry and you are smiling. Now the anger will follow you. You can deceive the whole world, but you cannot deceive yourself, you cannot deceive your mind. The mind knows very well that the smile was false. Now anger will continue inside; that will become a monologue. Then whatsoever you have not said you will have to say within. Whatsoever you have not done you will imagine as done. Now you will create a dream. You will fight with your enemy, with the object of your anger. The mind is helping you in completing a certain thing.

But that, too, is impossible because you are doing other things. Even this can be helpful: close your room – you were not angry; the situation was such that you could not be – close your room and now be angry, but do not continue the monologue. Act it out. There is no necessity to act it out on someone: a pillow will do. Fight with it, act your anger out, express it, but let it be authentic, real. Let it be real, and then you will feel a sudden relaxation inside. Then the monologue will drop, it will break. There will be an interval, a gap. That gap is silence.

So the first thing: break the monologue. And you can do it only if your living becomes a right, complete living. Never be incomplete. Release the inner madness. Not only one whole life: many whole lives that were incomplete is our situation.

When you love, you are doing a thousand things simultaneously. Then love becomes false. Now psychologists say that if you are loving someone and a thought crosses your mind, you have missed love. You are far away from your love object. There is a gap; the communion is broken. When two lovers are really in love, there is nothing else, simply love – nothing else! They are playing with each
other’s bodies, absolutely absorbed in it. The whole world has dropped out of their consciousness; nothing is there. Then love is complete. And then they will not become sex maniacs. Then their minds will not be perverted minds.

Psychologists say that Don Juans like Byron, or others who go on changing their love objects, are really incapable of love. It is reported that Byron loved sixty women in his life, and his life was very short. And these are known cases. No one knows how many really. He was expelled from society because everyone became afraid. And he was such a beautiful person – but why this madness?

One may think that he was a great lover. That was not the case. He was not a lover at all! Psychologists say he was not a lover at all. He was a maniac, just a perverted mind. He could not complete any love, and before any love could be consummated, completed, he had started another.

It is reported that he was forced to marry a girl. Of course, he was forced because he was not ready. How could he marry? The next day he would run after another woman. After he was forced, he was coming out of the church – the bells were ringing and the guests were still there – he was coming down the steps with his wife’s hand in his hand, and suddenly he stopped; he let go of-the hand. A woman was crossing the street. His eyes followed the woman. Being an honest man in a way, he said to his wife, ”Now you do not mean anything to me. That woman has become everything.”

He suffered, because love is a growth. Love is a long growth. It grows, and the more it grows, the deeper it goes. Butterfly minds cannot grow in love. That is impossible because the love never acquires roots. Before the love can acquire roots, they have moved. This type of mind will suffer, because it cannot love and it cannot get love. Nothing is ever completed; nothing ever becomes ripe. Then the whole life will just be lived in wound – incomplete wounds – and this happens in every field.

You have never loved, you have never been angry, you have never acted spontaneously. You have not really eaten, you have not slept totally, you have not done anything with your total being in it, with your total involvement in it. You have always been doing something else simultaneously.

Bokuju was asked, ”What is your SADHANA? (spiritual practice)? What are you doing here in this lonely forest? What are you doing?”

Bokuju said, ”I have no sadhana; I have no method. When I feel hungry I eat; when I do not feel hungry I fast. When I feel that the hut has become cold, I move out into the sun. When the sun is too much to bear, I move into the shadows of the trees. But wherever I am, I am total. When I feel sleepy, I drop down into sleep. This is all I am doing here.”

The man said, ”But this is nothing. Everyone is doing the same!”

Bokuju said, ”If everyone were doing the same, the world would be quite a different place – silent, peaceful, loving. Then there would be no need to ask for Liberation. This very world would be a MOKSHA.”

No one is doing it. Bokuju’s answer seems very simple, but it is not. It is very arduous. It is difficult just to sleep and not dream, because dreaming means there has been an incomplete day. It is now being completed in the dream. Whatsoever you have left incomplete in the day will be completed in the dream. So if you have been a good man, if you have tried to be a good man and the goodness was not natural to you, not something spontaneous but something forced, then in the dream you will move to the other extreme. If you have been honest with effort, then in the dream you will deceive someone. Then everything is complete.

Now psychologists say that if dreaming stops you will go mad, because dreaming releases much nonsense which you have left incomplete. And unless it is completed, it cannot evaporate: it cannot evaporate from your being. They say dreaming is the daily catharsis. So if you have not slept well, you will feel uneasy. It is not because you have not slept, it is because you could not dream.

Now they say sleep is not so essential. A man can live without sleep for many days, even for months and years. They say it is not so necessary. Dreaming is necessary, and you cannot dream without sleep; that is why sleep is needed. So sleep is needed only for dreaming.

But why is dreaming needed? You wanted to kill someone and you have not killed: you will kill him in your dream. That will relax your mind. In the morning you will be fresh: you have killed. I am not saying to go and kill so that you will not need any dream. But remember this: if you want to kill someone, close your room, meditate on the killing, and consciously kill him. When I say ”kill him”, I mean kill a pillow; make an effigy and kill it. That conscious effort, that conscious meditation, will give you much insight into yourself.

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