lorenzop wrote: ↑Sun Dec 10, 2023 7:10 pm
AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Dec 10, 2023 5:52 pm
Cleric wrote:For example, how do you feel about thinking very clearly the words “I think these words”, where ‘these words’ self-refers to the real time perception of your inner voice as you utter the thoughts. For the time being you can ignore the “I think” part (in the sense of what is the “I”). The important thing is to feel creatively active in the thinking voice. You can try different intonations, you can sing the words. How does this make you feel?
What is your take on that?
I would tend to agree with Jon that Cleric's question is not that important (at least in this forum).
We don't need a spiritual guide to help us find our inner voice - our kindergarten teacher, piano teacher, etc., many people can help with this.
"inner voice" is an expression - not necessarily a thing.
And the thought “I think these words” is like any other thought. It's a thought with a content of a thinker, but it's not the same as a thinker, or does it even mean there is a thinker . . . it's just another thought with the content of being a thinker.
Lorenzo,
We know you agree it is unimportant and it has been tried to point out to you why in the most various ways. You are instinctively resisting the experience of your own creative activity. That's why you also ignored Cleric's analogy on the other thread, which simply asked you to choose a letter. Even that minimal amount of introspection into the experience of your own thinking, and what possibly structures it, was resisted. The dream metaphor is used precisely to make clear we are not talking about more content of thinking that is tried on like jeans and socks, but a higher vantage point on the
same content we were previously flowing through.
Here's yet another way to approach it. The abstract thoughts we produce and use to build models of reality are like triangle forms - acute, obtuse, equilateral. Each person thinks their own triangle form - such as physicalism, idealism, Advaita, etc. - and says, 'this form gives the most insight into the essential questions of existence, and once I have drawn it, the other triangle forms cannot also be drawn - they are mutually exclusive."
So people draw their forms and then join the forum and start threads about their favorite triangle form, saying "this is the most important philosophical topic to address". Meanwhile, the drawing
activity remains in the blind spot. Instead of that approach, we can take the triangle form in our imagination and let each side move in any direction, and move with varying speeds, so that the next moment the sides take, for ex., these positions:
Now we say, "I will not only draw a triangle and let it stay as it is, but I will make certain demands on my imagination. I will think to myself that the sides of the triangle are in continual motion. When they are in motion, then out of the form of the movements there can arise simultaneously a right-angled, or an obtuse-angled triangle, or any other triangle."
So there are two quite different approaches. (1) we draw a triangle and are done with it. We know how it looks and we can rest comfortably in our thoughts, for we have gotten what we want. Now we just start threads so others can see our pretty triangle forms and agree, disagree, share their own triangles, etc. In this approach, the triangle form is basically the
ending point of our thinking.
(2) we can also take the triangle form as a
starting point and allow each side to move in various directions and at different speeds. In this case, it is not quite so easy; we have to carry out movements in our thought. But in this way, we begin to lay hold of the triangle in its ideal,
archetypal form. We keep the thought in continual movement and make it versatile.
Already by making this analogy and exercising our imagination, we have found a starting point that is more
intimately real than all the philosophical models over the last 500 years (at least). We have a firm point from which to observe the activity of drawing itself. If one cannot sit still for a few quiet moments and try the exercise above in their imagination, contemplating its meaning, then it should at least be clear that something intimate is being fiercely resisted and one has no idea why.