Quote:
Originally Posted by moviestar  Where is the line between thoughts and no-thoughts? How do you know what is no-thought? |
That is a great question.
What is a thought anyhow? A word? A song? A Chevy Camaro?
Where do we draw the line between things like thoughts, desires, and emotions? Are these different types of thought or different things altogether? It seems the closer we get to mind, the more fuzzy our definitions necessarily get.
To me, a thought is an arbitrarily designated division in what is, in reality, a seemless stream of consciousness. One might argue that there are breaks in the stream, such as in sleep, unconsciousness, deep meditation, etc., but I would contend that there are no such breaks.
Ordinarily, we have conscious awareness of self, and because of that, we can maintain a somewhat objective grasp of the fact that we are thinking while awake, but during episodes of sleep, you oftentimes lose awareness of self. This creates the
illusion of escape into thoughtless oblivion. You don't stop being aware when you enter the "sleep state", but your boundary of awareness changes to not necessarily include "self".
From my perspective, everything is consciousness -- all energy, all matter, all space. The consciousness of most things does not have awareness of self, only awareness of it's state of action. Or, in other words, the state of action of our consciousness
is our awareness of self (or at least one of them). When you lose yourself in deep meditation, you can temporarily achieve a similar state where you are completely absorbed in whatever focus your mediation involves. This could restrict or focus your awareness to states of action such as love, peace, the concept of emptiness (which, ironically, is still a state of action in terms of consciousness). This oftentimes leads people to believe they have achieved a "thoughtless" state. But as I mentioned before, thoughts are not "things", they are false divisions in what is actually a fluid stream. When we compare a part of the stream from now to a part that was there 5 minutes ago, we notice a difference. This just illustrates the fluid nature of the stream. Just because we figure that we were thinking "truck" one moment and "duck" another, doesn't mean that there is no transitioning thought state between thoughts where the concept of "truck" attenuated to the concept of "duck".
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark Lapierre
Yes there is something like that. It is like the final state (can anyone go beyond that?).
Because there are no "normal" thoughts we cannot see how time passes. We observe time by observing the continuity of our thoughts. If there are no thoughts to track it seems as if this moment is infinity. But there is always the awareness, the one-thought, yeah.
|
Time is measured by continuity of thought, yes. But it is the continuity of thoughts constantly changing coupled with the awareness of previous states of thought (memory). Time is measured by change. If there was no change, then there would be no frame of reference for time and you would have achieved a state of seeming eternity. Having no capacity of memory would give a similar effect as well, as it would rob you of your ability to measure change even if it was happening.
