What is a thought?

[Fran11]

On 14/10/2020 at 7:42 PM, Prathibha said:

How do I get underneath it where the experience is more raw, underneath the labeling and underneath the recognition of shapes and calling them by their names.

By stilling your mind through deep concentration.

[Vittorio]

53 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

If you go bit deep maybe you ll realize that it's not sure that it's a container or a identity. You are creating that remembers, tastes, every thing, right now, and it's not sure that all that remembers really happened. They are only thoughts that appeared of the nothingness, and for you are real. But where is the container? The time is being created right now for your mind. It's complicated because there is time, there was dinosaur, evolution , etc. But in other hand no. Only this exactly moment exist and all that you are perceiving and thinking come from the nothing right now, in this no time eternal. But I couldn't say that I understand that

So, I actually contemplated this and this is what I found.

Thoughts, memories, tastes and your own identity does not have a historical sense of existence, but is created in real time! This means that there is no container and that all these things are "scattered" and are assembled together and mixed with other perceptions (e.g. time) to create a sense of progression, coherence and then identity. But looking for an identity is an attempt to look for a form when it does not exist.

So where would this container be located? There is no physical place. This means that your identity does not exist as a container, but "happens" in real time in the sense that there are pieces of them (memories etc.) that are created and assembled and mixed in the present moment.

I understood that ALL reality (so not only external objects, but even memories, thoughts, sounds, smells etc) is ALWAYS is generated in real time. To be more specific: in the present moment. There is no past and no future.

[Vittorio]

2 hours ago, Vittorio said:

I am doing self inquiry and I have found these questions where I cannot clearly reply.

What can you tell me about them from your direct experience?

1) Where do thoughts happen? Why are you feeling them inside your head as sounds? Does it mean they are located in your head? If no, why am I hearing them inside my skull? Are thoughts created from within your identity, so after the perceiver percieve the avatar or are they coming directly from you (the perceiver)?

2) Who is then really thinking? The perceiver or the avatar?

3) What is the difference between perceiver, perception (awareness) and perceptions (sounds, smells etc.)?

4) Do perceptions (sounds, smells etc.) exist? If yes, where?

5) Do thoughts exist? If not, why?

6) Is there a conceptual difference between a thought and the content of a thought? If yes, which one(s)?

I did other progresses.

I have already replied the 1, 4 and 5. I still have to reply to 2, 3 and 6.

 I paste the replies as soon as I have them.

[kai0]

another form of perseption

[Vittorio]

16 hours ago, Vittorio said:

I am doing self inquiry and I have found these questions where I cannot clearly reply.

What can you tell me about them from your direct experience?

1) Where do thoughts happen? Why are you feeling them inside your head as sounds? Does it mean they are located in your head? If no, why am I hearing them inside my skull? Are thoughts created from within your identity, so after the perceiver percieve the avatar or are they coming directly from you (the perceiver)?

2) Who is then really thinking? The perceiver or the avatar?

3) What is the difference between perceiver, perception (awareness) and perceptions (sounds, smells etc.)?

4) Do perceptions (sounds, smells etc.) exist? If yes, where?

5) Do thoughts exist? If not, why?

6) Is there a conceptual difference between a thought and the content of a thought? If yes, which one(s)?

So, I actually contemplated these too in a super nonduality rampage.

Here are my replies

1) Where do thoughts happen? Why are you feeling them inside your head as sounds? Does it mean they are located in your head? If no, why am I hearing them inside my skull? Are thoughts created from within your identity, so after the perceiver percieve the avatar or are they coming directly from you (the perceiver)?

First of all you have to define what a thought is (in a human comprensible way).

A thought is a "container" that includes an energetic charge and a content.

The content of the thought is added as soon as the energy is perceived and then processed in the form of perception inside of the ego.

Each thought therefore contains not only a verbal content, but also a specific energy charge. The energy is exactly the energy coming from consciousness.

That is why there are "positive" and "negative" thoughts. By positive and negative we mean the energy charge coming directly from the substrate under the forms (the consciousness).

Memories and thoughts SEEM to be separated from the external word.

It seems to you they are part of a container called identity (together with the image of your body and many other things).

There is an identification with your identity, which has a specific form and specific boundaries. That's why you perceive yourself as separated from the rest of reality.

Thoughts are connected to your identity, because for a specific thought to happen, there must be some kind of perceiver who percieves and then transforms the energy as a thought.

Because you identify yourself to your identity, thentime  you feel that they are "your" thoughts, but they are in reality are just thoughts floating in the void.

Therefore, you perceive that sounds are generated by forms, in which you DO NOT identify yourself, because you identify yourself with your "human" ego.

If you focus on perceiving from where sounds are coming from (just tip your finger on something), you will notice that those sounds are not really coming from the contact between forms.

It SEEMS to you that touching a form with another form causes the sound to happen and that you perceive it, but if you are aware enough, you'll see that what it really happens is that a form is touching another form and then you hear a sound.

You as ego add the meaning that touching a form with another form causes the sound to happen.

In reality, you'll see that those sounds are perceived out of nothing.

They are found in some underground texture layer which lies behind the reality of the forms: the nothingness/consciousness.

This means that nothingness is practically creating energy within nothingness which in turn is perceived by identity and channeled under the form of a specific perception inside your ego and perceived in different ways (in the form of sound, smell, thoughts etc.).

The thoughts come therefore in the same nothingness where the energy that is perceived as sound, movement, shape etc. is located.

They are all generated in real time (in the present moment) and are just floating in the void.

This means that there is no difference and separation between your thoughts and external sounds but they are only perceived different due to the degree of separation caused by identifiying yourself in a human ego.

2) Who is then really thinking? The perceiver or the avatar?

Thoughts are then NOT created from within your identity, but rather channeled from consciousness INSIDE the ego.

The ego interpretes then the energy and percieve it as a thought.

So, who is really thinking is the perceiver and NOT the ego.

This means you basically have no free will, because the one who is thinking it's not what you believe you are, but rather the perceiver (consciousness).

3) What is the difference between perceiver, perception (awareness) and perceptions (sounds, smells etc.)?

1. Perceiver: the "true" self, the "true" I, the quantum field, consciousness, infinity. It is infinitely full of energy and empty at the same time
2. Perception: Perceiving=being aware. Perception is infinite being. Being = Being aware of itself as a being without forms. Perception can be at the same time finite too, if there is a finite perspective from which is possible to perceive a reality
3. Perceptions (sounds and smells etc): Perceptions are interpretations that take place under finite form (inside the ego) of consciousness energy. They all have precise channels (tactile, visual, auditory, etc.)

Perception is something that happens not only in a infinite way, but in a finite form too.

If there were no perspective (a form), there could be no perception of reality, because there would be nothing finite through which the infinite can perceive itself in another finite form.

So perception is connected to a perspective.

You are "the eye" behind your identity (your perspective) and see reality through the lens of your identity (a perspective). There must therefore exist a perspective for perceptions to occur inside a finite reality.

Perception itself exist outside the ego and not inside, because it can perceive itself infinitely without limiting itself in a form.

This means that perception is an infinite mechanism, but also finite at the same time, because as soon as it percieves reality through an identity, it becomes finite and cannot experience ALL reality, because it's constraining itself under a specific ego and finite form.

That's why to experience ALL reality you must die. Because you don't have any finite form anymore.

In fact you as a human being, being finite, cannot perceive ALL the infinite but only the finite in an infinite way (plus nondual insights, that are parts of infinity). This means that finite and infinite exist only conceptually and not really.

Another thing I discovered is that infinite is infinite not only outside of finite, but inside of finite too.

That's why reality is a fractal.

A fractal is a finite picture with specific forms where you can zoom in infinitely and obtain the exact same forms from where you started zooming in.

4) Do perceptions (sounds, smells etc.) exist? If yes, where?

Yes, they exist in a specific form as soon as they are channeled from Consciousness inside a ego and interpreted (see question 2).

5) Do thoughts exist? If not, why?

Same as question 4.

6) Is there a conceptual difference between a thought and the content of a thought? If yes, which one(s)?

Nope. The division is only done by you.

 

Another important thing I discovered is that there is a misconception about what forms are.

Forms are NOT ONLY things you can see.

A form is something finite that's material or not material that can be percieved in ANY way.

This means that a sound is a form, a thought is a form, a book is a form, a smell is a form, a picture is a form.

They are all forms, because they are finite.

 

Mind is then both the container of finite forms and the mechanism used by consciousness to create a finite reality.

So all what's happening is happening within the realms of the mind.

 

On a personale note: I feel I am reaching a breakthrough. Either I am suggesting myself and I made out all these insights or something is happening.

Edited October 16, 2020 by Vittorio

[Breakingthewall]

9 hours ago, Vittorio said:

I feel I am reaching a breakthrough

I agree, you wrote deep perceptions, mind open to direct experience

Edited October 16, 2020 by Breakingthewall

[Prathibha]

@Breakingthewall who is "you"? Isnt it an another thought or should i say a combination of thoughts so to speak? I see that fellow actualizers have said a thought is nothing, emerges from nothing. I do have had the experience of nothing. I see from my direct experience that it has no palpable, tangible material, but it is still percievable "something". When I dont give any meaning to it like i said in my example, do not call a shape of a tree by the name tree, then what is it or what that experience would be? That was my true question. I see many friends have addressed the question in the subject line. I tried to explain what my actual question in the details box. I am still where i was. How do i not label things and experience the reality as raw. It is almost impossible for me not to label things. Even not to call a thought, a thought. That is where i am stuck. ?

[Breakingthewall]

@Prathibha you are a wave vibrating at a frequency. When you read this phrase, you, what you are, is for a moment becoming this phrase, you are oscillating and adapting your form to what you translate as the meaning of everything you interpret. Each thought is a form that you adopt, but the thing goes further. reality is real because you, with your concert of vibrations, are creating it every second. in fact your vibration creates time. space and time are you, a wave that temporarily shapes the void. About labeling...you first should perceive how, and why are you labeling all things, realize that it's absolutely useless, without any meaning, after that you will stop. 

Edited October 18, 2020 by Breakingthewall

[Prathibha]

Thanks everyone for replying. I see some very interesting Q&A and feedback.

I started 'I am a strange loop' by Douglas Hofstadter. That kind of put my question to rest. I dont know what took me so long to read it especially after watching 'strange loops' episode more than a year ago and being very intrigued by it. Anyways, better late than never.

The book is taking me so deep inside that i have had so many piffanies while reading it and going into trans with it that, now i feel 'what is thought' question and expecting to get it answered in words itself was futile and naive. I really appreciate everyone who took a stab at it and helped me.

Thank you,

Prathibha