Source of Thought

Three years ago, I kept a blog on MySpace. I don't remember my exact reasoning behind wanting a blog, but I felt that I had information to share with the world. Well, I'm starting to feel that way again. Regrettably, I deleted my entire blog when I trashed my MySpace account (best choice I've made in years). Some of my posts, in my opinion, were very fascinating, and might have been even more fascinating to me now.

But...I'm beginning to remember some of them. I want to share one of these insights right now.

...

What is the source of thought? We could also ask...where is the source of thought?

We are brought up to believe that we have a brain in our heads (of course, this is true) and that we create our thoughts with our brains. Is this true?

From a reductionist/dualistic point of view, this is not true. In reductionism, there must exist some sort of special arrangement and interaction of small pieces of matter in order for thought to exist. From a nondualistic point of view, this is not true either. Nondualism demands that we take consciousness into account without separating it from matter, chemical reactions, etc. So, in this view, it is not possible to say that we alone create our thoughts, since the I does not exist in the first place.

If the two large schools of thought say that we do not create our thoughts, then, from a subjective point of view, why do we believe that it's true?

I claim that thoughts appear and that we observe and remember them. The problem is that we often believe them and label them as reality. But really, thoughts are ephemeral things that shouldn't be taken for granted.

For example, the only reason you say your name is "Bla" is because you were told this when you were young, repeated it over and over in your mind so that you could never forget it, and then took this "fact" as reality without ever questioning it.

But the fact that you can observe your thoughts implies that you are not your thoughts. Think about that one for a moment.

So, do we actually think? No, we observe and remember thought. New thoughts appear from thin air, just as old thoughts do. By "thin air", I mean consciousness of a universal order.

How can we question thoughts then, if we don't think? Well, we can use the existing thought constructs of logic and reason.

Is this a contradiction? Certainly, but if we understand the true nature of reality, we don't need to worry about it.

The source of thought, then? Not from within. From everywhere.

Insight into previous post

So, I've been thinking quite a bit about the question raised in my previous post, and I want to touch on something I learned a couple of years ago but only remembered recently.

Q: Is it possible to open a book and not see the words?

A: Certainly. To do so, you must either look through the book or use your peripheral vision.

Both of these actions relax the eyes and prevent you from reading the words. Are you familiar with those 4-D Magic Eye Puzzle books (or whatever they're called)? You use the same technique here as you do to see the pictures. People usually suggest to cross your eyes, but this is not the best way, since it has the potential to strain your eyes. Relaxing the eyes is the better technique.

Is this useful?

IMO, it is incredibly useful to be able to relax the eyes. In fact, this state should be the natural one. For some people, myself included, it is not. Maybe that's why I wear glasses...

We all know what peripheral vision is, but how can this come in handy? One way to think of it is to hold more than one object is your field of vision at once. I'm choosing not to say the word `focus' here, because this act is really the opposite of concentration. One technique is to imagine a line connecting the two objects and observe the entire line at once. For three objects, you can imagine a triangle instead (or still a line if the objects are colinear). Another technique is to not look directly at something before you pick it up.

After all, what would a blind person do?