Eugene, I think I understand your dilemma.
As long as we experience the thoughts as floating leaves, blown by the currents of our inner life, I can perfectly resonate with your suspicion if these thoughts can ever tell something about reality.
Eugene I wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 8:30 pm
This is not to limit the unlimited realm of thinking and imagination, but just to say that when thinking starts making beliefs about the nature of reality itself, it's better to ground such beliefs and check their validity against the direct experience.
That's what we are trying to do. I perfectly agree that when thinking begins to build upon itself, it is already losing the soil under its feet. Thinking attaches concepts to perceptions. If I see two colors, red and green, I can attach the appropriate concepts to them - the words themselves do not matter, they are only handles, so that we can experience the concepts in pure verbal thought (word) even in absence of the visual perceptions themselves. I assume you would agree that in this elementary act of cognition we can't speak of thinking overstepping any boundaries?
We can't hope to penetrate into the intimate nature of thinking if we are unable to distinguish
thinking from
language or in other words
concept from
thought-perception. Probably the easiest way to make this distinction is by thinking about a concept in
different languages. Let's take the word "red" - rojo (Spanish), rouge (French), rot (German), okubomvu (Zulu). We can turn this into a meditative exercise. We can pronounce in our mind these words and observe the meaning, the concept that we experience. We can only claim to make the distinction between the concept and the word (the thought-perception), if
nothing changes in the meaning that we experience while switching the words. The words should be carrying the same concept, the same meaning. This may look like a childish exercise but it is tremendously effective. We can never advance in our comprehension of thinking if we can't clearly distinguish concept from percept.
The next step is to observe that the original concept of red was discovered by us (probably in childhood) by experiencing it in relation to the
visual perception of red. Only when we have experienced the concept, we can incarnate it in different words, symbols, etc. Then we can say that we have
abstracted out the concept. We can now think about the concept of red
even in absence of the actual color perception.
What I tried to show in the previous post was that the word "I" emerges in the very same way - thinking attaches a word to
direct experience. We must be perfectly clear that the "I", as far as it is something that we
think about, is a
concept. But this concept originally emerges in relation to a
real experience, just as the concept of red emerges in relation to the color experience. Then, just as the word "red" is only a though-perception of the concept, so is the word "I". We can doubt the usage of the word "I" only when we
lose sight of the experience which motivated the use of the word
in the first place.
For example, when I say "red" I'm thinking about the living, direct experience but someone else might be experiencing the idea of photons with certain frequency. Exactly as your example with the particles, now we are straying into uncertain waters. There are so many layers of abstraction between the concept of photon and the experience of red, that we simply have no justification to speak of any "reality". It is the same with the pronoun "I". In the moment we begin to presuppose different things, like neurons, "I" as some metaphysical thing in itself, we are really entering speculation. We can speak of reality only when thinking connects concepts to actual, direct experiences.
In this sense, it is perfectly possible to trace the direct experience to which thinking attaches the word "I". Then, as long as any mention of "I" summons the actual experience, and not some abstract idea, we are on firm ground. For example, if I know only black and white, and someone speaks to me about red, this is only a floating concept for me. I have nothing to connect it to. I'll feel similarly if I understand the pronoun "I" as something floating, that has no corresponding experience - which, it looks to me, is your concern.
But the experience is there - for anyone who wants to point his attention to it. And this is the
key moment - this something belongs to the most intimate area of experience. No foreign being can trespass there. These things can only be observed in complete freedom. And we shouldn't think that people don't have their reasons to avoid such observations.
Let's see how this observation can be made with another simple exercise. We can form a thought, for example - a fiery ball. It's not about visualization, it's not needed to have any inner imagery. The most important thing is to have the clear concept, the understanding that we're holding a fireball in our focus, even if we don't see anything visually. And that's all. We simply concentrate our activity on this single thought for as long as possible. We are doing it
willfully - that is, we do not dissociate from the thought and say "this fiery ball is there on its own, there's no one imagining it". On the contrary, we aim to experience as clearly as possible how we, through our own effort, make the ball shine. To make the exercise even more intense, we can try to make the ball brighter and brighter, as if by willing more and more strongly.
Note that, even though we speak above as "we will", there's absolutely no need to form any picture of an "I" whatsoever. It is a pure experience, there's only one thought - the fiery ball, we don't think about ourselves, we think the fireball.
Gradually we can distinguish, even without thinking about it, the experience of the
will and the experience of the
thought-perception. We experience how we are willing the thought. These are two things. It's not something that we fantasize, they are clearly distinguishable qualities of the experience.
Let's now meta-observe what we are doing. If expressed as a thought it can sound as "I think the fireball". And here's the most crucial observation that we can make.
Only in the above way it is possible to experience the meaning "I think the fireball" and
at the same time keep willing the firewall . It is very important that one gets a living experience of this. If we are able to experience it the right way, we can feel that our meta meaning in no way
interferes with the willing experience of the fireball. It only adds denser meaning to it. In a similar way, when I observe red color and think "red", this in no way diminishes or deviates me from the perceptual experience - it only makes it meaningful, without degrading it in anyway.
Contrast this with a meta-meaning like "the fireball thinks itself" or "the Great Mysteriousness thinks the fireball". If we are really able to experience in meditative calmness this, we'll feel the unmistakable perception of "switching places". The experience changes! When we try to see the experience in this way, we are no longer able to feel as if we're willing the fireball thought. We have quickly become dissociated from the experience. The fireball now seems external to us. Now we will the thought "the Great Mysteriousness thinks the fireball" but this is rarely consciously registered. This switch of places is very sneaky and we have to be very vigilant if we are not to be fooled by ourselves. In somewhat humorous way, we can compare this to the following: a child plays with a toy that it is not supposed to. Then someone enters the room, the child drops the toy and exclaims "the toy was playing with itself!"
This exercise can be further extended by replacing the word "I" with its corresponding in different languages: Ich, je, yo, and so on. In this way we can further purify the concept of "I" from its verbal vessel. In all cases we should feel the "I think the fireball" as somethin
transparent. It should in no way modify the experience of the self-willed fireball thought. This could be used as a test if we really experience the concept of "I" in the correct way. If we feel that by saying "I think" we're presupposing something in the word "I", this simply means that we avoid to take the concept of "I" from the experience itself and instead we're putting something abstract, that we have ourselves created. In this elementary exercise, nothing is presupposed, postulated, axiomatized, in the word "I". We
don't know what "I" is. But it signifies a direct experience.
We can do another exercise. We can name the objects in front of us - display, keyboard, desk - and then we suddenly add the word "I". If "I" is clear of any preconceived notions, we feel unmistakable reversal of attention. While we were naming the objects, our attention is directed towards their perceptions. In the moment we say "I", attention is reversed and instantly we become conscious of our willful activity. In this way we can see that the concept of "I" truly corresponds to a real experience.
The reasons that such elementary observations are avoided, actually go
very deep. Way deeper than the surface of consciousness. We should be under no illusion about this. One of the greatest secrets of evolution is concealed in the fierce avoidance of these simple observations.
It is very interesting to contrast this experience with the Buddhist-type meditation. Before posting my previous post I did quite some time of it (haven't done it for a long time). One can learn a lot if alternates between the two. For example, when we reach a tranquil state, we experience the contents of our consciousness, gently sparkling, moving as if on their own - there's no doer. Then if we summon the thought, we feel how our will gathers from all corners of our consciousness and focuses on the thought. We find out that the will is always there but it is somehow spread out and merged quietly in the background. Or in other words - we are merged with the background. Note that the will experience is direct experience. It is not an illusion. No experience is an illusion. The idea that something is an illusion can only come when we
think that it is an illusion. There's no such direct experience that in itself says "by the way, I'm not real". We can come to such conclusions
only consequently, through thinking. We gain nothing if we declare something to be an illusion, if we can't explain its existence in any other way.
Meditation where will and thought are experienced clearly, lead to very different results compared to that of putting the will to sleep. I'm planning to write something about the nature of these results, some of the following days.
