An Exercise in Stopping Thought

It is necessary to sometimes stop thinking, or quieten the mind. I find there are parallels of this in Taoism, Zen, Jiddu Krishnamurti and in some forms of prayers.
Krishnamurti was once asked by a scientist:
"How can I be a scientist," I asked him, and still follow your advice of stopping thought and attaining freedom from the known? ... He answered: "First you are an human being, then you are a scientist. First you have to become free, and this freedom cannot be achieved through thought. It is achieved through meditation - the understanding of the totality of life, in which every form of fragmentation has ceased. Once I had reached the understanding of life as a whole, he told me, I would be able to specialize and work as a scientist without any problems."
In this connection, I find the passage from Theo Fischer's book "Laß dich vom Tao leben" very interesting.
Attention, which excludes nothing, correcting nothing, embellishing nothing, ist the key to all transformations

True attention excludes nothing. In this attention, there is no concentration on particular objects, no filtering of what to perceive or what not to perceive. It means, that without special efforts, I am conscious of all happenings, external as well as internal.

You can easily feel the interconnectedness of man and cosmos if you do a small exercise:

Stop thinking for a couple of seconds. Like holding your breath. And during this thinking pause, pay attention to the surrounding. You will notice right away, that when thinking stops, the separating process also stops. There is a direct relation to the outer world.

You suddenly feel the bond to your possessions disappearing, even to your bank account, house and partner, for a few moments, the rigid and clinging relations are not there. You will no longer feel the chasm between oneself and the surrounding.

Your personality disappears for a few seconds into the background, and for a brief moment, there is no feeling of separation from the outer world. There is no difference between inner and outer during the exercise. And if you try this often, your brain will anticipate, that it is so much easier to live – and even to think.

This is not the usual kind meditation. There is no concentration, no reflection, no labeling, no insight, instead we try to absorb all at once. I am not sure it can be called meditation.

The above is an example that religions, if their metaphysics, beliefs, organizations and rituals are stripped off, then the core has much in common with one another.