Thought and consciousness

Today I want to get into something which is probably a great deal simpler than we make it out to be - the differences between thought, thinking and consciousness. All these three things are different from one another. Thought is in itself just like mind, it is space. Thinking is action and activity, and is not space, but is based on energy. Consciousness is environmental, all around us, and can be taken to be awareness or that out of which energy manifests itself.

You see this is where we get to the enigma or riddle of consciousness. We have different words for what is actually consciousness - life, love, truth, beauty, awareness, empathy, connection, insight - yet you understand the difference between all these things, and yet they are all consciousness. As they are all consciousness, there is no way you can explain such things, rationalize them, understand them, or do anything other than accept them for what they are and appear to be for you as an individual.

What makes this so much of a riddle or an enigma is that we cannot tell the difference between what is space and what is consciousness. You see the mind is space, and thought is space. Space is what defines relationship, because everything is connected through space. Existence is based on relationship, as is life, as is the mind, as is thought. This becomes somewhat more complex when we understand that space not only defines relationship, it also defines reality. If something exists in space, and you can perceive it, then what you can perceive has to have some kind of reality, right?

So now, to understand the point I want to make in this post, we need to understand the difference between thought and thinking. Many people seem to think that thought and thinking are one and the same thing. What I want to suggest to you is that thought is the environment for thinking, which is an activity. Thinking is something that you do, and as such is no different from speaking, walking, breathing, or moving your body.

Thinking is the physical or energetic process and activity of your brain which may be described as organic, chemical, eletromagnetic or even mechanical. Thinking is something which is relative to senses and memory, and as such thinking results in either a sensation or a concept which - through imagination - can manifest as an image, a sound, such as a voice (your inner voice) or so on. A sensation can also be an emotion, a feeling, or give rise to a concept.

So if you can understand this so far, then perhaps you can understand thought to be the reality of your thinking and thought processes. Thought is simply the reality of your thinking activity, the activity of your brain, something which you do while you are conscious, consciously aware and awake. Consider that when you're asleep you are not consciously aware of your environment, there is no relationship through perception of your environment, because while you're asleep you're not consciously aware of your environment. You are relatively unconscious and all your brain activity is arising out of what we understand to be subconscious.

Therefore in order to experience thought and to be able to think you need to be conscious and consciously aware of your relationship to your environment. This cannot happen when you're asleep or unconscious.

So now we come to my next point. Please keep in mind that in place of comprehension I could have used understanding. What I'm referring to here is comprehension or an understanding of reality, of existence, of everything. Keep in mind here I'm also referring to cognition, recognition, assumption, preconceived notions, beliefs, and all the other actions or activities which make up understanding and comprehension of reality through thought and perception. I'm suggesting here that thought and perception go together to make up an understanding of reality as we directly experience it in our lives.

All we have accessible to us to be able to understand reality, and the reality we experience is memory, language and thinking which goes together to create thought. Thought is the reality of our physical memory, our ability to think, our ability to use language, and our abilities when it comes to cognition and recognition - the conscious processes of our brain relative to these tools we have available to us. This is something I would go as far as to define the limitations of our comprehension and understanding of reality.

But our only way of understanding reality and consciousness is through our experience of physicality and energy, i.e. physical form, direct life experience - the Felt Sense of Immediate Experience, concepts, and mythology or myths. We can only understand space through physical form, and when it comes to existence, which personally I take to arise out of consciousness, our ability to comprehend or understand both reality and existence is limited.

We do not have any understanding or comprehension of absolute reality or pure consciousness. We cannot ever understand truth as an absolute. Therefore we have no objective understanding of either reality or existence, space or consciousness, both of which from a human perspective are hyper-dimensional or multi-dimensional. What I'm saying here is hopefully quite clear to you, in that reality and existence are both many dimensions and our capacity to comprehend or understand reality is limited to just a few dimensions.

One of the biggest scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century, which coincided with the discovery of astro-physicists that reality cannot be objectively determined, is that consciousness is the basis of information and comes to us in the form of code. But see there is a difference between language, which is the central human reference point to existence, and code.

As an example of the difference between language and code, I offer the simple example of sending a text via a smartphone. You compose a text message from language and press 'SEND' and it gets transmitted to the recipient through code.

Obviously there is a difference between code of digital technology and any code we understand coming from the universe or through Nature, but hopefully this gives you some idea of the differences between language and code.

The biggest mystery in life is what is going on in the subconscious. Is the subconscious environmental? But see most of the activity of our brains is subconscious. From this we understand that energy and physical form arises out of consciousness and unless there is an issue going on with our bodies we are usually not consciously aware of what is going on in our bodies.

You never have to consciously think about how to breathe. You never have to think about how to walk and take every step. You just take the decision to move from one location to another which starts off the entire process or sequence of walking. You only need to think about how you walk if you have a problem with walking, or your senses, such as you have a sprained ankle or you have experienced a loss of balance and fear you might fall over or lose consciousness. Other than this you never have to think about the actual mechanics or ability to walk.

What is subconscious and actually real contrasts sharply with what is only relatively real, i.e. what is real only in terms of human thought and human thinking. The entire field of human experience, both past and present, is completely contained within human thought and human thinking. The difference between what is really real and what is relatively real is vast. In fact it is so vast that we cannot even imagine it, let alone conceive it.

Which leads us now to the major points I wish to make in this post.

What defines human thought is human thinking, human language, and human conception. Relative to what is actually going on in the universe, and in Nature, the field of human thought is actually very narrow and limited. That saying human beings as a species are highly intelligent for the fact that we have large forebrains and are able to create concepts and myths from our direct experience of life and what is known as the Felt Sense of Immediate Experience.

The whole issue with human beings is that while we have the ability to create myths and concepts through thought and extrapolating from direct human experience, we're not very good at it. We do not identify strongly enough with our natural environment, nor wirh the animal kingdom (of which we are part) because we collectively believe in separateness between self and environment and self and other. We've lost touch with our relationship with the environment and Nature, and within this widespread belief in separateness there's a certain gnosticism that has creeped into human thought and human culture.

From this separateness and gnosticism we have created further illusory and mythological beliefs. We believe in such notions as free will - that we can somehow make choices and changes independent of our environmental reality and circumstances. We believe in such other notions such as cause and effect, permanence, continuity, and objective moral reasoning.

The issue at stake here is the widespread belief in separateness between self and environment and also self and other. What makes this issue even more of an issue is the equally widespread belief in what can be described as domination culture, or external authority, which partly comes from religious authority, and partly what can be described as psychological and intellectual authority. While religion no longer has the absolute authority as the moral arbiters of what is acceptable in society and what isn't, we now have the concept of mental health and psychologists and psychiatrists, many who base their theories on Freud and Freudian psychology - particularly in the West - determining what is sane and rational and what is insane and irrational.

My point here is that there is no separateness whatsoever in existence. This means that there is no human consciousness. There is only consciousness, something which determines energy and all physicality. There is no separateness in mind, no my mind, your mind, his mind, or her mind. There is only mind and the field of human thought and human thinking which we all participate in. We start out as babies with no conscious awareness or life experience and we are taught through authority how to live and how to think, from our parents, from education, from media, and from so many other influences. You see it's a human habit to constantly tell other people who and what they are, what to think, what to believe, and how to behave.

This results in a life being lived in a human society where to varying degrees we are traumatized, we are hurt, we are often bullied, coerced, lied to, manipulated, cheated, deceived, fooled, and exploited for the convenience, advantage and profit of others. This cycle of human trauma, misery and suffering arises out of a vast myriad of different beliefs, belief systems, ideologies, concepts, and values and all of these arise out of various illusory beliefs in permanence, continuity, cause and effect and free will, which in turn arise out of a widespread belief in gnosticism and separateness.

So what we end up with, within the context of reincarnation, karma and existence on the basis of a cycle, is a constant cycle of human life experiences into a society and human environment which manifests as individual human life experiences which are similar within the context of human thought and direct human experience with little or no human evolution. Sure we can talk about love, happiness and joy all we like, but the primary human experience is probably best defined by loneliness, despair and a sense of alienation.

Fundamentally as human beings we are all living organisms who collectively are part of a much bigger ecosystem or biosphere known as Nature. Just as an apple is not separate from the apple tree, and the apple tree is not separate from the earth and the dry surfaces of this planet, we are not separate from the rest of the human species nor are we separate from the rest of Nature and our natural environment.

The fact that our understanding and comprehension of our environmental reality is limited to the field of human thought which also defines the limitations of our human conscious awareness is also not an issue. You see fundamentally we are - in physical terms - a living organism with a biological memory living through a finite life cycle, not any different from a tree, an insect, or even the leaf on the tree. Sure there is a difference in terms of time and how long it takes for a particular life cycle to complete. But see time is also a notion or concept which exists within the field of human thought and which doesn't exist anywhere else outside that field.

The reality of our lives and life experience comes out of space and as such the reality can be defined in two ways, either as actual reality, i.e. that coming from the universe, this planet, Nature and this is a reality we cannot objectively or easily understand, or human conceptual reality which is the reality which exists only in the field of human thought.

The issue of whether or not there is such a thing as God in existence in actual reality is beside the point. If the primary forces coming from the environment which determine your life are environmental it makes no difference whatsoever whether you choose to collectively call these forces God, Jah, Jahweh, Allah, Jehovah, Brahma, or whatever does not make any difference to the fact that these are still the forces which determine your life. Nor does it make any difference if you don't believe there is such a thing as God.

It also doesn't make any difference if you identify as a follower or believer in any given religious belief, faith or philosophy or not. Some of the most deeply spiritual people I have met did not give any indication whatsoever that they followed a religion or spiritual path nor did they give any indication of any awareness of anything outside of what can be described as normal everyday consciousness.

The real issue I find with people in general (and on this point I am also including myself) is how much of our life experience and thought we are basing on past memories and preconceived notions of reality, and also how well we can connect to our environment and others in that environment and find ways of understanding and relating to that what we do not identify as us or 'self'. Just how much do we expect everything that is going on around us to fit our preexisting models and explanations of reality? Just how many of the other people and other species are we allowing to coexist with us in our individual vision of existence, this planet and the universe? Just how many of these other people and 'other' are we dismissing, excluding and rejecting from our individual notion of existence?

Just exactly on what levels or planes of consciousness are you functioning on? Just how easy is it for others to connect to you and to be able to relate to you? Just how well can you connect to your environment?

Okay so now I come to the conclusion of this post and I'm fully conscious of the fact that I'm leaving myself wide open to criticism and perhaps even scorn and ridicule. Okay. Not for the first time. If you are following a religion and are rock solid in your convictions and beliefs then you are missing the point. Similarly if you are following any sort of spiritual path in the hope of one day reaching some kind of enlightened state of being, then once again you are missing the point. Likewise if you are adamant that there is no such thing as a soul, as spirituality, or any kind of meta-physical existence beyond the material, the physical and the concrete and tangible, you are missing the point.

If there was any certainty about anything meta-physical then it would be a hard science. Not only that but neurology would also have been figured out, and yet centuries of studying the brain and the mind is still enshrouded in clouds of uncertainty, mystery and general hypothesis. Yet most of us are walking round believing we've all got our environmental reality and human behaviour all figured out, when in reality none of us really understand jack shit about either our environment or human behaviour or thinking.

Nobody has all the answers to the meta-physical and divine. There is no one true way or one true path, there is no singularly true narrative and anyone who is telling you that there is, and that they have studied the right path and have special insight, powers, knowledge or awareness is bullshitting you. They're talking nonsense and selling you nothing more than a fairy story.

There are potentially infinite ways to connect to the universe and the divine, to seek and find community, many of which are undiscovered and not even thought about. My statement here is based on the premise that the realm of possibility is always far greater than the much narrower realm of reality defined by human thought.

Therefore what I'm telling you here is that developing a meta-physic or some existential dimension to your life experience is much simpler and straightforward than many of those in supposed authority make it out to be. Developing a meta-physic or existential dimension is learning how to challenge your own preconceived notions and beliefs without bringing harm or causing further trauma to either yourself or others. There are many different ways of connecting to the divine and most if not all are based on opening your mind and finding ways of connecting to others and your environment. It's a simple case of exploration, experimentation, learning and discovery. How and when you choose to expand and open your mind and pay more attention to what's going on around you is really only down to you and when you're ready to let go of the past and your preconceived notions of reality.

On that note I will end my first post of 2024, wish you all a Happy New Year, and hopefully leave you with something to think about.

Thought and consciousness

Thought versus thinking

Comprehension = memory + perception + language

The difference between language and code

Thought is what defines conscious human experience

Permanence, continuity, and separateness are all human illusions

Whether or not God exists is not the issue

There is no such thing as a meta-physical certainty