Thoughts

[christine.P]

Our thoughts... Are they real entities?

They have determination and rationality; so, one could say: that they have life…


Could a 'feeling' - or even an imaginary thought - which is 'something'; come out of nothing: or be nothing?


Your considerations would be appreciated…


Bow…

[cavalier]

Not sure what I think about the first part.

As to the second, no, I don't believe it could. Though we often say of a thought or feeling, "Oh, it's nothing", though they can be wrong or mistaken, they can never truly be nothing. They must arise from something and of themselves be something. It seems I now know what I think about the first part, yes, I believe our thoughts are entities.

[Saltmeister]

Originally Posted by cavalier

Not sure what I think about the first part.

As to the second, no, I don't believe it could. Though we often say of a thought or feeling, "Oh, it's nothing", though they can be wrong or mistaken, they can never truly be nothing. They must arise from something and of themselves be something. It seems I now know what I think about the first part, yes, I believe our thoughts are entities.

I think thoughts do come out of nothing, but only initially. Thoughts are impulses generated at random in the background processes of our brain and are then filtered as they move into our foreground consciousness. The thoughts are "filtered" for "correctness" and "validity" as they reach our foreground consciousness. As a result, our thoughts will always appear "rational" because they've been filtered.

That's just a theory I came up with on the spot.

[wil]

My mother is very hard of hearing...her hearing aids assist but don't suffice. Often she sits in conversation and nods attempting to indicate she is hearing, she wishes not to ask people to repeat themselves all the time.

At the dinner table it is worse, with the clinking of silverware and plates and the hubub of conversation she gets nothing...but...often about 5 minutes after something is said or a conversation has ended she repeats almost word for word something that someone else said.

My theory is that her ears 'heard' it but she could not understand/translate in real time. That in a few minutes one part of her brain was able to decipher, seperate out the background noise and supplied the information in a clean form to another part of her brain.

This other part of the brain did not 'hear' the conversation, and determined it to be a new thought potentially of interest to those at the table, and Mom says it!

I think that is the same with all 'new' thought. (thought not derived by the result of 2+2) That this thought comes from the ethers, from spirit, from source...we are accessing the omniscient...and our brain percieves it as ours.

[taijasi]

Interestingly, I left my browser open last night on a webpage that defined vritti. Here's what it says:

Vritti: Thought-wave; mental modification; mental whirlpool; a ripple in the chitta. (from http://www.atmajyoti.org/sw_glossary.asp)

The neat part is, I just happened to scroll down to this section, although it was after reading your initial post, Christine. An additional definition, for chitta, might help for anyone not familiar with that word:

Chitta: The subtle energy that is the substance of the mind. (ibid)

These concepts are discussed at length, defined and explored in depth, in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. One great sage has said that three books should be in the hands of every sincere spiritual student: The New Testament, The Bhagavad Gita, and Patanjali's Yoga Sutras.

Anyway, if we can remember that what science has taught us about the physical world is that in reality there is no such thing as empty space ("Nature abhors a vacuum"), then it will be easier to understand the subtle worlds (emotion, mind, & the spiritual) - by applying this same Law.

Can we be certain that this same basic Law also applies to these other worlds? Yes, we can. There are additional dimensions to consider, true, and many factors (beings, processes, faculties of consciousness) which we do not yet understand. But I'm just talking about the basics - and this is how I interpret your initial post, Christine. It seems to be addressing the `ABC' of how thoughts & feelings come into being, then continue to exist, often finding expression on the physical plane - through us!!!

This reminds me of vipassana meditation, in which we imagine that thoughts arise in our mind like a leaf, flowing downstream on top of the water. We learn to watch as the leaf passes by, and see it keep right on flowing, downstream, out of sight ...

Most challenging of all is to avoid the temptation - quite automatic, of course - of getting drawn into every thought and emotion that comes floating along! This is like that leaf coming to rest against a rock in the stream, and until we can catch ourself getting sucked into the vritti, or mental whirlpool of our thoughts, that leaf will stick fast against the rock. But in time & with patient, regular practice, we learn to see the leaf go floating smoothly by, gentle as can be.

Namaskar,

taijasi

[I, Brian]

The idea that thoughts are a form of abstract entity in itself certainly gets interesting when you think of it as a meme.

[flowperson]

Hmmm...I wouldn't be at all surprised if our brains are in part quantum tuning devices able to pick up these things from the space-time milieu depending upon our focus and attitude. This might help explain why we were advised 2,000 years ago, to regard the goings on of the world as children might, and not to trouble ourselves with the traumas of conflict. Frame of mind definitely afects this ability IMHO.

flow....

[Saltmeister]

Originally Posted by flowperson

Hmmm...I wouldn't be at all surprised if our brains are in part quantum tuning devices able to pick up these things from the space-time milieu depending upon our focus and attitude. This might help explain why we were advised 2,000 years ago, to regard the goings on of the world as children might, and not to trouble ourselves with the traumas of conflict. Frame of mind definitely afects this ability IMHO.

flow....

Off topic.

A quick question I've been wanting to ask for a long time: what does "IMHO" mean? People are using that a lot.

Thanks.

[I, Brian]

IMHO - In My Humble Opinion
IMO - In My Opinion

[Eudaimonist]

Originally Posted by christine.P

Our thoughts... Are they real entities?

What would an unreal entity be like? The term "real entity" sounds redundant. Anything that exists is an entity, and therefore real.

Yes, thoughts are entities, however, they are not separate from our nature and existence as human individuals. We think, and therefore we create thoughts.

They have determination and rationality; so, one could say: that they have life…

I would not say this. We have determination and rationality -- thoughts do not. Thoughts are the result of our faculties of reason and determination, just as the experience of colors is the result of our faculty of sight.

Could a 'feeling' - or even an imaginary thought - which is 'something'; come out of nothing: or be nothing?

No, they "come out of" our nature as rational, emotional, and imaginative beings. They are not nothing except in the unusual sense in which the word "nothing" can refer to impermance and flux.


eudaimonia,

Mark

[Thomas]

Hi Christine -

Our thoughts... Are they real entities?

They can become such, although this would entail a discussion about what we mean by 'real' ... but in antiquity the term, within a psychodynamic or magical context, is 'egregore', and to the Church fathers of Christianity it is 'logismoi'.

For them to become entities requires an investment of energy, which comes from the will, not the psyche.

They have determination and rationality; so, one could say: that they have life…

The determination or rationality belongs to the thinker, or to the school of thought, not to the thought itself... and there are irrational thoughts, and ill-determined thoughts.

Could a 'feeling' - or even an imaginary thought - which is 'something'; come out of nothing: or be nothing?

No. Thoughts come from a process of subject-object, they don't happen 'in a void' as it were - something has to trigger a thought, otherwise we'd think of everything that could ever be thought all at once.

The source of a thought, however, might be obscure, it might not even be you...

Thomas

[taijasi]

Originally Posted by Thomas

The source of a thought, however, might be obscure, it might not even be you...

This, of course, can lead to some interesting discussion, and can proceed more along the lines of social inquiry & commentary, rather than metaphysics. In this case, the former would seem to be of much greater usefulness, at least, imho.

Nevertheless, anyone who has practiced contemplative meditation long enough, will surely have realized (or at least considered) that a great many thoughts don't actually originate with "us" at all! They simply drift through, sort of like dandelion fluff on a gentle breeze. Those thought-forms with which we `resonate,' will form a good part of the stream of consciousness of a given afternoon!

In light of some of your discussion on another thread, Thomas, consider the familiar expression, "an idle mind is the devil's playground." Certainly a busy morning at the office, or an evening spent writing an essay, will not lend itself to this expression nearly as much as a lazy afternoon in front of the TV can tend to do.

My own experience is that the vast majority of thoughtforms are actually quite innocuous, so I'm not sure if I'd agree with what I've gathered thus far about `logosmoi.' There certainly does seem to be a challenge, however, in choosing which thoughts will occupy our awareness ... and I tend to believe that say, 95% or more of our thoughts are not original. And perhaps this is just the point - that we tend to drift from thoughtform to thoughtform, often without any real awareness of this fact, or why.

As a bit of commentary, based on my own understanding of modern Discipleship, it is precisely the conscious control of our thought-process, the ability to stay the otherwise "ceaseless modifications of the thinking principle," as Patanjali puts it ... aka, vritti ... toward which we are all striving (with more or less realization of this fact, and effort toward that goal). There is a short segment called `Three Arhats' from the Teachings of Living Ethics ("Agni Yoga"), concerning an experiment between the Buddha and three of His advanced students (the arhats), worth looking at along these lines. It can be found online, here.

This subject of the possible objectivity of thought (a certainly, I long ago decided), has always interested me along the lines of what Plato called the `Forms' - by which he meant Ideals, or archetypal thoughts (not unrelated to Jungian archetyes, either - or the subject of the collective unconscious). It may be radical to some, even a bit daunting, to consider the notion that not only does there exist a collective unconscious, but also a collective conscious, as well as a collective Super-Conscious ... verily, a `Collective Conscience.' But I would argue, from my own experiences and convictions - that such is precisely the case!!!

Of course, only the former two really have anything to do with an `astral plane,' save for the extent to which our conscience impresses itself upon us via our emotions ... although this, certainly, is not its primary or native mode of communication. Condiser the Daemon of Socrates ... (Mark!)

Cheers, and Namaskara!

taijasi

[christine.P]

An answer that someone gave on another group to this question is very good...so I am posting it here for you all to read...


My take on thoughts is that they are the product of the principle of intelligence. Thoughts deal with life in the form and enable us to say "I am not my body, I am not my feeling apparatus. I am not that which has developed through the interplay between myself and my environment. I am something other than all this. I Am."

"I think, therefore I Am" is a partial understanding, but we go much, much further than that. As human beings, we're composed of several "natures" or "vehicles", the physical, emotional and mental. Thought might be said to be the interface between all three, but especially between the emotional and the mental.

Thoughts are not concretized feelings. In fact, thoughts don't arise out of feelings but when the mind begins to be active, our feelings stand revealed and the result of that revelation we call emotion. It's at this point in the process where we can begin to move beyond the emotional nature, into the Soul/Mind connection.

Presently, most human beings can't distinguish accurately beteen mind, emotion, feeling and the thoughtforms which memory guards, but this is due only to the stage of evolution of the human race. Eventually we'll all achieve the ability to to differentiate and to live, awake on the higher levels of the mental plane, and the lower levels of the Buddhic.

Christine (Bow)...

[cavalier]

Originally Posted by christine.P

Presently, most human beings can't distinguish accurately beteen mind, emotion, feeling and the thoughtforms which memory guards, but this is due only to the stage of evolution of the human race. Eventually we'll all achieve the ability to to differentiate and to live, awake on the higher levels of the mental plane, and the lower levels of the Buddhic.

Christine (Bow)...

I'm curious, what makes you so sure that we'll achieve this ability?

[Thomas]

"I think, therefore I Am" is a partial understanding, but we go much, much further than that. As human beings, we're composed of several "natures" or "vehicles", the physical, emotional and mental.

I am always wary of this, as it introduces plurality where there should be one-ness.

Consider the Chariot of the Tarot - or 'Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance' and the whole notion of becoming 'one with the machine'.

Thought might be said to be the interface between all three, but especially between the emotional and the mental.

I'm not sure this is accurate, or rather if it is useful. I would rather say the mental is what is thought, the emotional is the power with which it is thought, and the physical is the ability to do something about it.

Can someone come in with Ohm's Law? Voltage and amperage?

Recent scientific discovery has located a neural complex in the heart - 'the little brain in the heart' - and has discovered that as well as being considerably stronger in impulse than the output from the 'big brain in the head' - it is the heart-brain that controls the emotional content of thought - so our thoughts are abstracts which have no content unless we invest them with such.

If history demonstrates anything, is that thought alone is powerless. Like the intellect, it can shed light, but can do nothing more until the will gets into the game, and then we start to invest certain thoughts with energy or power.

... There are millions dying of starvation ... we all think it's a terrible thing ... one day we will do something about it ...

The trouble with people today is that they rarely think for themselves (culture is structured otherwise), and they rarely think long enough on any single topic to make any reasonable headway.

Meditation is synonymous with concentration. Logismoi, in this aspect, are the inconsequential distractions that prevent concentration ... the little imps!

Presently, most human beings can't distinguish accurately beteen mind, emotion, feeling and the thoughtforms ...

I am with Cavalier on this one. I don't think it's a case of evolution, especially not in this culture, which invents more distractions every day, not less.

If one person can think it, it is within the capacity of all, unless we are saying that the one person is a different species from the rest of the human race.

I would say that humans can distinguish, but can't be bothered, and this is demonstrated by the fact that those who can who have gone before universally agree that detachment and concentration are the keys.

It's called ascesis.

It means self-denial - a dirty word in the modern world.

Thomas