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Where Are Thoughts?
I have a little exercise I have been working on lately that pulls together some of the subjects I have been studying and writing about. It goes like this.
Okay: point to your senses.
Take your time.
Make sure you get it right.
Where did you point?
If you are a certain kind of thinker, prone to concreteness, then chances are you probably pointed to (or at least thought of) your hands, nose, eyes, mouth and ears. Something like that, right? Because as kids, those are the things were are tought of as being associated with senses: our sense organs. And each one corresponds to a mode of sensing: touch, smell, sight, taste, hearing.
All very elementary stuff, of course. Except the point of this exercise is to drive a wedge between senses and sense organs. We can point to our sense organs, but we cannot point to our senses. While our sense organs are a verifiable part of our physical body, the same cannot necessarily be said about our senses. They don’t really have a location in space. I feel confident that I can make that assertion without tripping too many people up.
Okay, now the second part of the exercise: point to your thoughts.
And… where did you point to? Somewhere inside your head? Why did you do that? Because that’s where your brain is? Well, have you ever actually seen your own brain? Chances are you have not. It may seem silly to say, but for all you know, you don’t even have a brain. But I’m only saying that to set you up rhetorically for my next point, not to convince you don’t actually have a brain. The point I am making is that, just like you can’t point to your senses, neither can you point to your thoughts. They don’t have a physical location in space. But, as we are growing up, we’re taught that our brain controls our thoughts, and so we attach our thoughts to this physical location called “brain” and simply because our brain is inside of us, we believe our thoughts to be inside of us.
But can you unequivocally prove that your thoughts happen inside of you? I didn’t think so. In fact, from what I have personally experienced as a result of this exercise is that the only way to actually point to your senses is to engage them. You can’t use your finger to point to your sense of smell. But you can use an apple pie just pulled from the oven to point to your sense of smell. You can use your favorite album to point to your sense of hearing. And likewise, you can use a really intriguing concept or a memory from your life to “point to” your thoughts by actively engaging them.
In order to engage your senses, you need the help of your body. Same thing tends to happen with thoughts, but it is a little different. Memory especially is a useful illustration here. When you remember something, what do you remember? Sensory perceptions from the past? The way something looked, the way it felt? So your body is or was required for that as well. What about when you start thinking about a really strange big idea? Does your body play a part? Do you feel tense or overwhelmed or amazed? Do you consider the implications of this idea as it relates to you personally? Does it threaten you, does it uplift you?
But I am starting to feel that mind only believes itself to be in body (aside from cultural conditioning) because the body demands it. We call this demand “survival.” And through the demands of survival, body sends messages to mind that say, in effect, “Pay attention to this specific form so that it does not die.” Mind is fairly obliging and does its best, but at the same time, mind seems to have the ability to conceive of things which have, at times, very little to do with the body. It can travel to far off lands and engage itself in a variety of ways which transcend the physical limits of the body.
And so what we end up with are a variety of spiritual disciplines whose functions seem to deal extensively with how to use the mind to over-ride the demands of the body and shut them down: still the breath, slow down the heart, etc. We call this “yoga” but it goes by other names as well. What these disciplines then do is enable the mind to realize that, no, it is not limited to this body, and it’s not actually even inside this body at all.
And that’s as far as I’ve gotten with this so far… I feel like that’s a pretty solid foundation though to start with.
- Thoughts Don’t Define Us
- Wondering
- Pinchbeck on Steiner
- Dodging Thoughts Like Bullets
- Practice Not Failure
- Prev: Making It Happen
- Next: Narby on the Brain
December 8th, 2006 at 2:38 am
Maya/the Illusion of Reality requires a constant input of propaganda to sustain belief. Up/down etc. We are programmed to be our own jailers.
December 8th, 2006 at 11:56 am
Cognitive science and the philosophy of mind indicate that mind is an emergent property of the brain, or an epiphenomenon of neural activity.
December 8th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
Which means what exactly to one’s own life? Nothing, as far as I can tell
December 8th, 2006 at 6:06 pm
I don’t know if yoga is about overriding the demands of the body. It seems more about grounding yourself in the here-and-now, which can have the effect of transcending the perceived mind/body barrier.
An interesting phenomenon to check it out if you haven’t already is muscle testing, a technique used in Applied Kinesiology. Example: hold your left arm out straight, and say “My name is _insert real name_. Then have somebody push down on your wrist forcefully. Resist this with upward force in your arm. Then repeat this with the same amount of force, but before the arm-push say “My name is _insert random name of opposite sex_”. You can also do it in the reverse order. Just pay attention to what happens when your arm is pushed.
December 8th, 2006 at 6:14 pm
Mind yes, consciousness no. Mind is thought; consciousness is mental space, which is more likely non-local. Current scientific paradigm has excluded the ultimate objective truth of our existence from its rulebook: the subjectivity of experience. At the end of the day, everything exists within conciousness. You cannot find consciousness; you are in it.
December 8th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
Fair enough, that sounded kind of cold. It means that the mind-body problem goes away, the mind is physical. You asked if I could point to my sense of smell. Doctors have stimulated different areas of the brains of patients and they report smelling things as though they were there. Different lobes produce dreams, out of body experiences, even the presence of God. What it means is that we need a new way of thinking about metaphysics.
December 8th, 2006 at 6:30 pm
fuj, I totally agree that we are in it, but I don’t see the difference between mind and consciousness.
December 8th, 2006 at 6:52 pm
I don’t see how that’s different. Sounds like a different linguistic/conceptual costume on the same actor.
Why? We don’t even understand our old ways of thinking about metaphysics. And again, I don’t think what you’re describing about stimulating areas of the brain is any different from what yoga is meant to do - except it uses the technology of our bodies to do it.
Also, pointing to the part of the brain that lights up when you smell something is NOT equivalent to pointing to your sense of smell. It’s no different from pointing to your nose and saying that’s your sense of smell. Your sense of smell is your *experience* of smell and it can only be pointed to be its activation, its engagement. And it has no location.
December 8th, 2006 at 7:55 pm
My experience of smell at least has a location inside my head, and it is intimately connected to those synaptic firings. I’m not only arguing that it has a location, but that location is not outside the body.
December 8th, 2006 at 7:56 pm
This is what I mean about a new metaphysics.
December 8th, 2006 at 8:26 pm
No it doesn’t. That’s not your experience. That is a synaptic firing which can be traced as occuring simultaneously to what you are describing as your experience.
If you join that with this quote I posted today:
That leaves us with an even greater impression of there being a disconnect. You could just as easily say that the neurons being fired during your experience of smell are actually your brain performing editing tricks associated with the physical mechanisms of smelling. Or you could say that your brain functions to protect you against the experience of smelling by altering it
December 8th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
OK, but we agree that the brain appears to construct conscious awareness, and I agree there seems to be a disconnect, but why non-locality? I can’t have an awareness of your sense experience nor you mine. I can’t meditate long enough to reach a place where I can come into contact with someone else’s experience. Doesn’t that lead to a personal location?
December 8th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
No, I don’t agree to that. There’s no proof that “conscious awareness” even exists.
That I agree with.
Because it is a conceptual wedge designed (perhaps poorly) to help open up a crack between worlds…
You don’t have any proof of that beyond that you don’t think you’ve experienced it yet. Have you ever been to the moon? That doesn’t mean you can’t go there.
Part of my point is too that I don’t think we *need* to meditate to experience other people’s experiences - because there’s no such thing. It’s all the same experience. And I don’t mean that in an abstract mystical idealist way. I mean it very concretely. There is no fundamental difference between any of us.
I don’t know. Why is it so important that we have a physical location at all?
December 8th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
and if the synaptic events happen simultaneously or with a lag for the brain functions to do some editing, doesn’t that help the argument that mind is brain?
December 8th, 2006 at 9:21 pm
Well you have given me some things to think about. Thanks and I enjoy reading your blog.
December 8th, 2006 at 9:31 pm
No, not at all. Especially if there is a lag. If there is a lag then it diminishes the argument that mind is brain
December 9th, 2006 at 7:01 am
Really interesting discussion, guys!
In my experience, mind and body occur [i]within[/i] consciousness. There is nothing outside of consciousness, whereas there is obviously something outside mind, and something outside the body (relatively speaking). The fish is the last to know water. The dreamer is the dream.
Non-local does not mean outside the body. Space is non-local; it is everywhere and nowhere. On one level it’s in between bodies; on another it’s in between particles; on a baser scale, space is actually indistinguishable from energy (string theory). The only things we can say for sure about “stuff” is that it always appears to us as information, and it always appears to us [i]within[/i] consciousness.
Btw, space as consciousness does not entail awareness. Awareness arises from perspective, which is lacking in non-locality. Furthermore, non-local consciousness allows for paranormal phenomena. Materialist reductionism does not, or it has to resort to silly etheric connections and what not.
December 9th, 2006 at 11:27 am
non-local. holographic.
in sessions i help my clients evaluate thier reality by finding out where the store thier experiences. for instance if i ask someone to point to cetainty, they will invariably point to an area outside of thier head somewhere, generally a point in front slightly above the horizon varying distances away.
we all locate our experiences in slightly different locations, but with similarities given personality types.
i can predict, for instance, if someone is prone to headaches or stiff necks by how they locate thier past experiences and how thier timelines move in relation to thier head, and also how they keep appointments.
fuj, is there really anything outside consciousness?
December 9th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
Totally loving where you are going with these comments
December 10th, 2006 at 9:11 am
Hehe, I thought my previous post made it clear that such a question would be meaningless if consciousness (which might as well mean “the stuff dreams are made of”) is synonymous with space.
Totally loving where you’re going with that! I’m trying to find this essay online by a female author who explains how there is actually only one being, existing in quantum superposition as all beings. Awareness as an individual is a result of the perspective provided by differentiation, which is enhanced through biological complexity (skin, senses, brains, etc…).
Apparently Christ also said there is but one body, but Christians seem to interpret “body” as meaning the Church. I wonder if the original text refers to the body as a Temple, which would make more sense as the temple is a metaphor for the Cosmos as well as the Body.
December 11th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
christians want it all to be bricks and mortar……..it`s all about materialism, consumerism and money.
the belief that we are all part of one witness is a tantalising one. alan watts tells a story about a race of super-beings who want to forget what it`s like to be all-knowing for a while and forget to go back to being super-beings again.
maybe that`s what happened to us………..
December 12th, 2006 at 2:59 am
Brahman and atman…
Aha! Very good lead. I will try and track this down during the daylight hours: references to the body in the Bible. Seeing as Jesus was essentially a grain-god transposed, it would only make sense to look at the creation myths of cultures where the father god is dismembered and his body used to create the universe - which certainly is echoed in the whole Adam’s rib scenario - nevermind is blatant in the movie, “The Fountain.”
I have heard this lecture as well. Its a great one. Maybe what he means by “Race” could be better thought of in terms of running a race, instead of ethnic-race - that is, engaging into the practice of time, passing the baton from one form to the next….
December 13th, 2006 at 9:46 pm
[…] My obsessions seem to run in weekly cycles. This one is about a week old and is one of the pieces of the greater puzzle I have been trying to wrap my mind around lately. […]