Wait... Do thoughts even exist? Is there a mind?

[roopepa]

In direct experience, if you really look deeply and try to find "a thought" or "a mind", there is really nothing there, right?

I always thought that imagination would be like a mind-thing. But what if the mind is imaginary?

Holy shit guys. Get what I mean? The mind, or thoughts, are just an appearance. But it really is not "there". Imagination is not grounded in the mind. The mind is being imagined.

O_O

[roopepa]

Yep. This changes everything.

[RMQualtrough]

I am strongly considering that reality including mind is not real and that everything is LITERAL nothingness. Literal nothingness necessitates everythingness by way of the nonexistence of limit and its infinite nature.

Someone posted something here recently which I found paradigm shifting, in conjunction with a Spira and Leo video I saw.

[eputkonen]

@roopepa  Thoughts arise...and the stream of thought we call the mind, but the mind does not really exist.  When there is no thought...there is no mind.

[Batman]

Of course. Mind is only an abstraction. It has no real substance. It is a "mental object". An activity of representing some thing that it is not. It is like imposing a value on some physical object in order to asses its necessity to your survival. The assigned value is purely conceptual in nature and will never be the "real" value of the object at hand. Although, it has the immense power to direct the activities of survival. So even though the nature of the mind, in the relative experience, is completely conceptual, nevertheless it still is the dominant feature in the human experience.

Mind is complete fabrication, but it helps to create astonishing worlds of intellect and language. This communication could not exist without the activity of mind. Memories would not exist. Future planning would be impossible. Thinking wasn't possible. The enormity of the human mind is what allows us as a species to dominant the planet. 

But it is a double edged sword when used constantly. 

 

[roopepa]

26 minutes ago, RMQualtrough said:

I am strongly considering that reality including mind is not real and that everything is LITERAL nothingness.

Me too. Considering all thoughts and the mind are in actuality "not there", and imagination is groundless, there is really Nothing left.

Edited June 12, 2021 by roopepa

[roopepa]

21 minutes ago, eputkonen said:

@roopepa  Thoughts arise...and the stream of thought we call the mind, but the mind does not really exist.  When there is no thought...there is no mind.

I mean that there is literally no thoughts arising in actuality. It just seems like there is. Can't explain how it's possible. I kind of just sense/am it.

[roopepa]

@Mu_ We had a conversation in this thread right? It seems to have dissappeared. Am I going crazy?

[snowyowl]

@roopepa no I noticed the same thing too, there's a gap between Saturday morning about 1.45 and this morning (Tuesday). Not sure if it's on other subforums too. 

Hey my signature has reverted to my old one too, I changed it at the weekend! 

Edited June 15, 2021 by snowyowl

[Mu_]

@roopepa lol ya. I think the forum had to be rolled back due to some error. 

I had told ya that when you forget about what you realized (if you do), to return to this thread as a reminder to remember, thought, ego, mind, are just ‘seems’ to be happening, not fundamentally so. 

 

[Mason Riggle]

Does this forum even exist, or does it just seem like it does?

It makes 'no difference', you see? 

[Lilia]

I've come to think about the mind as the third-order phenomenon. It is a thought about a thought - and a thought is a conceptual representation of something that is not a something in its own right. It goes like this:

ZERO LEVEL. Consciousness. 
LEVEL ONE. Perception. 
LEVEL TWO. Conceptual representation of perception (thought).
LEVEL THREE. Conceptual representation of conceptual representation, or a thought about a thought (mind).

[Zigzag Idiot]

A quote from Maurice Nicoll- 

THINKING VERSUS THOUGHTS
“We are not responsible for our thoughts but responsible for our thinking...A thought enters the mind and seeks to attract you. If it does, you begin to ‘think it’—that is, think from it. You begin to enlarge this thought, by paying attention to it and thinking from it, until it grows in all directions and forms, as it were, a little tree of thought in you, that bears fruit, and seeds other similar thoughts.
. . . What is necessary to realize at present is that thoughts are of every possible kind and that they are not yours, but that you make them yours by identifying with them.” V. 1, pp.289-90

[Batman]

1 hour ago, Lilia said:

I've come to think about the mind as the third-order phenomenon. It is a thought about a thought - and a thought is a conceptual representation of something that is not a something in its own right. It goes like this:

ZERO LEVEL. Consciousness. 
LEVEL ONE. Perception. 
LEVEL TWO. Conceptual representation of perception (thought).
LEVEL THREE. Conceptual representation of conceptual representation, or a thought about a thought (mind).

Very nice. It is good to think about this way: when did you start to experience an "internal world", that is only privy to you, secret and hidden from other? How is it came to be that you are able to generate and experience internal thoughts, memories, emotions, imagination, ideas and so on? How this became possible from an experience of perceptions?

There is a possibility that in the process of learning the possibility to represent an object or any "thing" without the object itself or the thing itself, via means of words (by writing or by speaking) or other symbols, arose to possibility to create an internal representation of "objects" and "things". This is possibility of internal representation called Mind. But it is even possible that the activities of mind were there and we didn't even notice them, and only later on we learned to distinguish specific internal activities such as thinking, remembering, having emotions, and so on. So in order to experience the mind, we had to use a very basic mind ability - splitting experience to different 'things' or 'objects', from the total meaningless perceptive field. This ability might be called 'distinguishing' or 'isolating' perceptions so you could experience them as distinct from other perceptions. Setting specific boundaries to aspects of perceptions creates the experience of the conceptually 'confined' perception, which enables to experience it as separated from the totality of the perceptive field, or from other 'carved out' perceptual data.

[Lilia]

 

3 hours ago, Batman said:

There is a possibility that in the process of learning the possibility to represent an object or any "thing" without the object itself or the thing itself, via means of words (by writing or by speaking) or other symbols, arose to possibility to create an internal representation of "objects" and "things". This is possibility of internal representation called Mind.

 

@Batman Very interesting! Can we have a conversation about this "leap of consciousness" for a moment?

3 hours ago, Batman said:

So in order to experience the mind, we had to use a very basic mind ability - splitting experience to different 'things' or 'objects', from the total meaningless perceptive field.

It looks like we (Consciousness) do evolve in leaps. Conceptual representation looks like one such leap. Another would be an ability to identify ourself with a limited number of perceptions.

I think identification is language-based. Would it be possible to carve out perceptual data if there were no language in the first place?

I like to imagine what it would feel like to be the first and only human on Earth. Nobody pointing out "this is a bear", "this is daddy" or "this is you". Do not we conceptualise of ourself as an object simply because we are surrounded by "objects" that we are taught to call by their names?