What is a thought?

[Prathibha]

In my experience, the thoughts are always in words or images like stories or a short movie. If I was visually, audibly and speech impaired, who has never spoken, never heard sounds and never seen anything, how would I experience a thought? Please do not take these impairments literally, What I am basically trying to ask is what is there to an experience of thought underneath these complex, subjective layers of sounds, words and images.

I experience the "hologramy" nothingness of my surroundings including my body when I sit with my eyes open long enough in a place and get deep into myself (kind of visual meditation or I don't know what to call it, I just do it for the fun of it) but I cannot escape the labeling of the things, like I cant help recognizing a tree and calling it a tree for example. 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. It is so hard even to put my question in words, hope someone gets what I am trying to ask. 

Thanks in advance.

[justfortoday]

1. You’re an eternal mind independent of your body. You’re a system of eternal sinusoid waves existing everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. 

2. Your body is an avatar in this sort of VR game.

3. Thoughts are infinite interactions of these waves. They appear from nothing because YOU are nothingness itself, and you’re imagining all thoughts.

4. It is not that you are “having” thoughts, it’s ONE thought morphing all the time.

Edited October 14, 2020 by justfortoday

[Osaid]

Sounds are just as baffling as thoughts IMO. Throw out the story of soundwaves going into your ear and you're left with an experience that is completely intangible yet clearly there, similar to thoughts.

To answer your initial question, thoughts are exactly as they appear to you. When you look at a lamp there is no need to ask "what is a lamp?". The essence of a lamp is right in front of you! You won't get closer to what a lamp is than direct experience of a lamp. This goes for basically everything in your experience.

From a more relative position, thoughts are very intelligent and intuitive. What you think of is usually based on your surroundings and subconscious mind.

[Breakingthewall]

1 hour ago, Prathibha said:

What I am basically trying to ask is what is there to an experience of thought underneath these complex, subjective layers of sounds, words and images.

Meditating i  had the perception that there is one who is talking and talking, and another who is listening. Both are the same "you" but who is talking, and can't stop talking is the mind, that is creating your reality. Who is listening is you too, but it's limitated for the talker. The talker is shaping the listener. If you focus in the listener, and forget the talker for a while, you will realize that the limits are dissapear....infinity. the listener is all that exist, and the talker is going to talk until it dissapear. he is the shaper. Without him there is no shape, only substance

Edited October 15, 2020 by Breakingthewall

[Carl-Richard]

It's literally nothing.

[Breakingthewall]

17 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

It's literally nothing.

Yes maybe, but how it appears? Who create it? Observe your mind and you will realize (or at least me) that are 2 kinds of thoughts. One is like phrases. Like: yesterday the meeting was bored, Donald trump is wonderful, my father was a bitch, etc , non stop. If you observe the mind and the talk stops, there are another kind of thoughts. They appear without words, in a fraction of second, like a shape, that means for example: I remembering that night in the disco with my girlfriend, there was no really crowed and quite dark, after that we had a good time. Is happens in 0,1 sec. They could be translated in words or not. If you are meditating you could stop the words but the thought and all his meaning happened. And In the meditation you could realize: really that night with my girlfriend happened, or it's only a thought that comes idk where that is shaping that remembering?. After that realization the thougts loose part of his power. I hope that with time it's possible go totally further than the thoughts

Edited October 15, 2020 by Breakingthewall

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Breakingthewall said:

Yes maybe, but how it appears? Who create it?

You create it out of nothing.

[Breakingthewall]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

You create it out of nothing.

Yeah, from the nothingness. there is nothing and after the thought exist. But how do you do that? Why? How many levels of thoughts there are? Maybe all that you are perceiving is a thought, in deeper levels. Maybe a thought have the same nature that all reality that we are perceiving, create from the nothingness

Edited October 15, 2020 by Breakingthewall

[Carl-Richard]

10 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

But how do you do that?

How do you dance?

[Vittorio]

22 hours ago, justfortoday said:

1. You’re an eternal mind independent of your body. You’re a system of eternal sinusoid waves existing everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. 

2. Your body is an avatar in this sort of VR game.

3. Thoughts are infinite interactions of these waves. They appear from nothing because YOU are nothingness itself, and you’re imagining all thoughts.

4. It is not that you are “having” thoughts, it’s ONE thought morphing all the time.

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)?

[Breakingthewall]

11 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

How do you dance?

I dance if I want to dance, but I can't stop to create thoughts

[Carl-Richard]

5 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

I dance if I want to dance, but I can't stop to create thoughts

It's creativity and imagination.

[Breakingthewall]

2 minutes ago, Vittorio said:

Why are you feeling them inside your head as sounds?

This is the only question of all you did that I could answer from my direct experience. They are not sounds, there are like shapes that you esculpt from the nothingness, and after you translate like sounds. 

The other question about the avatar and the perceptor, I realized that it's one who talks and another who is talked. Who talks is shaping the other, who listen. Both are you. If you focus in the talker, you are the shape, if you can forget the talker and be the listener, you have no limits because is the talker who create the limits . The listener is infinite, no shape , the talker is creating the shape all time, non stop any second. 

[Vittorio]

11 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

This is the only question of all you did that I could answer from my direct experience. They are not sounds, there are like shapes that you esculpt from the nothingness, and after you translate like sounds. 

The other question about the avatar and the perceptor, I realized that it's one who talks and another who is talked. Who talks is shaping the other, who listen. Both are you. If you focus in the talker, you are the shape, if you can forget the talker and be the listener, you have no limits because is the talker who create the limits . The listener is infinite, no shape , the talker is creating the shape all time, non stop any second. 

Thank you for your reply.

About the first part (translation as sounds etc) are the sounds in another nothingness external from the nothingness from where you hear the sounds? I ask this, because I still feel sounds, smells etc as something external to me that are "somewhere" and that I perceive as external perceptions through my avatar.

About the second part (avatar and perceptor), I don't understand your reply. I am confused about that.

If I focus on the origins of the thoughts, I see they come from nothingness (perceiver). What I don't understand is if the thoughts are directly coming from the perceiver or the perceiver create them after he perceives the avatar. Perceiver and avatar are so deeply interconnected that's difficult to differentiate between them.

If I am both, then there is no difference between avatar and perceiver. Than what's enlightenment about? There should be a difference, otherwise how can you realize your "true" self?

Edited October 15, 2020 by Vittorio

[Vittorio]

Here there is a similar topic that makes me confused too. What's enlightenment then, if there is no difference? How can I detach myself from my identity and stop identifying myself as my identity, if I feel that I am both?

[Breakingthewall]

@Vittorio i realized About the creation from the nothingness. The thoughts were like shapes, like a wave, without any meaning, and after you translate them to words....I think. the avatar , like you named, is the thinker. He is shaping the nothingness, creating a shape, the shape is you, your egoic identity, the nothingness shaped, and he is who is Creating the thoughts , that are putting limits to the nothing. Creating the thing that is you, or me. We are only a shape of the substance of the infinity, that have no shape. The difference is that the "avatar" have not substance, is only shape, and the perceptor is substance, or at least I perceived the nothingness like a substance...but it's direct experience of a shorts sigths and could be wrong 

[Vittorio]

3 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

@Vittorio i realized About the creation from the nothingness. The thoughts were like shapes, like a wave, without any meaning, and after you translate them to words....I think. the avatar , like you named, is the thinker. He is shaping the nothingness, creating a shape, the shape is you, your egoic identity, the nothingness shaped, and he is who is Creating the thoughts , that are putting limits to the nothing. Creating the thing that is you, or me. We are only a shape of the substance of the infinity, that have no shape. The difference is that the "avatar" have not substance, is only shape, and the perceptor is substance, or at least I perceived the nothingness like a substance...but it's direct experience of a shorts sigths and could be wrong 

To clarify what I am saying: the avatar is your identity. The perceiver is the one behind your identity perceiving your identity.

I am asking this too: are thoughts, memories etc external from "external" sounds, smells etc. or are in the same place?

I am trying to imagine thoughts, memories, personal tastes, believes etc. as "things that are inside of a cointaner, aka your identity".

But are they? Or are they "free"?

If they are in this container, then in which container are located the "external" sounds, shapes etc.? Are there in a different nothingness than the nothingness from where you feel your thoughts come from?

[Breakingthewall]

25 minutes ago, Vittorio said:

am trying to imagine thoughts, memories, personal tastes, believes etc. as "things that are inside of a cointaner, aka your identity".

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

Edited October 15, 2020 by Breakingthewall

[ArchangelG]

23 hours ago, Prathibha said:

In my experience, the thoughts are always in words or images like stories or a short movie. If I was visually, audibly and speech impaired, who has never spoken, never heard sounds and never seen anything, how would I experience a thought? Please do not take these impairments literally, What I am basically trying to ask is what is there to an experience of thought underneath these complex, subjective layers of sounds, words and images.

I experience the "hologramy" nothingness of my surroundings including my body when I sit with my eyes open long enough in a place and get deep into myself (kind of visual meditation or I don't know what to call it, I just do it for the fun of it) but I cannot escape the labeling of the things, like I cant help recognizing a tree and calling it a tree for example. 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. It is so hard even to put my question in words, hope someone gets what I am trying to ask. 

Thanks in advance.

When contemplating you not looking for some kind of intellectual matter, you're looking for an experience. 

Radical openess/willingness to experience whatever lies underneath would probably be useful.

Focus - if you loose yourself in concept bring your attention back to experience. 

Be clear on what it is you want to experience, the truth of what?

[Fran11]

What is a thought? What is a sound? What is a color? What is a smell? What is an emotion?

Etc etc etc.

All distinctions that consciousness makes up, that's how the play is created.

There are gross/concrete/low vibration distinctions on one side of the spectrum ("physical" objects), and subtle/amorphous/higher vibration distinctions on the other pole (like thoughts).

Edited October 15, 2020 by Fran11