Source of the picture: https://www.facebook.com/RamanaMaharshiFoundationUK/
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What Bhagavan meant by the term ‘thought’ is mental phenomena of any kind
[...] when Bhagavan used any terms in Tamil that mean ‘thought’ or ‘idea’, what he meant by such terms is mental phenomena of any kind whatsoever, and since according to him all phenomena that seem to be physical are actually only mental, just like all the seemingly physical phenomena that we see in a dream, all phenomena are just thoughts. This is why he said in the fourth paragraph of Nāṉ Yār?, ‘Excluding thoughts, there is not separately any such thing as the world’, and in the fourteenth paragraph, ‘What is called the world is only thought’. It is important for us to understand this, because many people believe that if they can stop all mental chatter when meditating they are thereby stopping all thoughts, which is not the case, because whatever phenomena we may be aware of are just thoughts, and even our ego, which is what is aware of them, is also a thought — our primal thought called ‘I’, which is the root and foundation of all other thoughts. Therefore if we try to stop all thoughts, that would be a case of one thought (this ego) trying to stop other thoughts, and even its desire and effort to stop other thoughts would themselves be thoughts, so we cannot actually stop all thoughts unless we avoid rising as this ego, the one who wants to stop them. So long as we seem to be this ego, we will be aware of thoughts of one kind or another, because this ego seems to exist only when is it aware of things other than itself, and everything other than itself is just a thought. Therefore all thoughts can cease only when this ego ceases to exist, as it does temporarily in sleep or in any other state of manōlaya (temporary subsidence of mind), and as it will do permanently only in the state of manōnāśa (annihilation of the mind along with its root, this ego). Therefore the only effective way to free ourself permanently from all thoughts is to annihilate our ego, which we can do only by being attentively aware of ourself alone and thereby experiencing ourself as we actually are. If we manage to free ourself from thoughts by any other means, what will result will only be a temporary state of manōlaya, from which our ego and its thoughts will sooner or later rise again.
Source: Happiness of Being - The Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi - We can separate ourself permanently from whatever is not ourself only by attending to ourself alone: http://happinessofbeing.blogspot.com/2016/05/we-can-separate-ourself-permanently.html#thought