Many passing thoughts

George G Clark, 14 February 2008

Many thoughts pass through your mind each day. But how many, what kinds, and what good does it do to think about them?

How many thoughts do you have each day?

Dharma teachers toy with the figure of 65,000 thoughts per day. On average this would be 45 each minute or one every 1.3 seconds. It is a rough estimate which accepts that it is often difficult to tell when one thought stops and a next one begins.

If that seems excessive we can work it out for ourselves from the bottom up. If we allow for an average of one thought each minute during 16 waking hours there would be 960 of them. Note that some would be short and fleeting while others might hang around for several minutes.

So, either way, whether the figure is 1000 or 60,000, there are a lot of thoughts passing through your mind each day.  This begs the next question:

What kinds of thoughts do you have?

Different people will have different kinds of thoughts but it is perhaps useful to think in terms of categories.

Are they about people, events or ideas; are they rooted in the past, the present or the future; do the same thoughts keep repeating or do new ones turn up?

Are the thoughts about your work or your hobbies; are they about practical affairs or more abstract issues?

And, at a deeper level, are they rooted in personal experiences or on stories from the media; and can you tell if they are rooted in things happening inside your head, on things that are happening in 'the outside world', or on some mix of the two?

What good does it do to think about your thoughts?

If you make the time to sit still for a few minutes you will notice how busy your brain is. 'You' can take the position of 'witness' to the channel hopping movie show which is your mind. This will lead to many insights about your 'self'.

One of the main insights will be that 'you' are not in control of what goes on in your mind. As Blaise Pascal once noted, "The heart has its reasons that reason  knows nothing about".

Another insight will be that you do not have to act like a programmed robot all the time. You are free to choose how you think, speak and act. And the deep 'you' will choose wisely and with compassion. As Eckhart Tolle has noted, "The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realise that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence."

So it is good to notice what you notice. The ancient Greeks reckoned that, "The unexamined life is not worth living". So why not opt for a worthy life, think about thinking, and be mindful of your passing thoughts?

 

Unthought

George G Clark, 13 February 2008

 Logic suggests that there can be no thought without a thinker. But experience suggests otherwise. When I sit quietly, even if only for a few moments, it is blindingly obvious that 'I' am not in control of what goes on in 'my' mind. Thoughts and feelings arrive as if from nowhere, hang around for a while, and then disappear again. They do not feel like 'my' thoughts:  they seem to have a life of their own. So what is their source? What energy drives them?

The thoughts and feelings will have their causes and conditions which are rooted in my nature (instincts) and nurture (enculturation). So there is most likely a logic behind the appearance of a particular thought or feeling at a particular time: but the logic is buried in unconscious parts of the mind where an ongoing, dynamic churn seems to be the common state.

So it is cute that 'I' should be able to act as 'witness' to the thoughts and feelings that are churned out by 'my' mind. This means that 'I' can be less captured by the thoughts and feelings than I might otherwise be. This means that I am less of a programmed robot than I might otherwise be. This means that I can be more free than I might otherwise be.

So the witness is the cool observer of the thoughts rather than the hot thinker of them. So, if 'I' as witness am not the thinker of the thoughts then is there a conscious thinker at all? Logic suggests one thing experience another. 'I' presently 'witness' a favouring of experience! 

 

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 "In (mindfulness) practice, attention is developed such that thoughts, feelings, images, sensations and even consciousness itself can be observed as an endless fluctuation characterising the human mind and body process. A series of insights into the temporary, unstable and impersonal nature of the personality are said to occur as the path of insight is traversed, culminating in the experience of enlightenment." (p28)

"… mindfulness is not a means of forgetting the ego; it is a method of using the ego to observe its own manifestations. (p52)

Mark Epstein (2007) "psychotherapy without the self: a Buddhist perspective" ISBN 9780300123418

pre-trans fallacy

Getting to grips with the non-rational(s)

Since the Age of Reason we in the West have put rationality at the high point of human evolution - this is unnecessarily limiting.

Rational = good; non-rational = bad?

But there are two levels of non-rationality - before (pre) and after (trans).

non-rational	rational	non-rational
pre-rational	rational	trans-rational
infantile	mature	spiritual/ mystical
dependent	independent	inter-dependent
body	mind	soul
instinct	intellect	intuition

Ken Wilber has noted a pre-trans fallacy which involves using a simple two point system where the infantile state is assumed to be the same as the mystical state (Freud) OR vice versa (Jung). The three point system, as drawn out in the above table, sees the high point of human evolution as being the trans-rational. This embraces rationality and carries it forward. Note that there is need to steer clear of fuzzy fallacious thinking that promotes non rationality as an indiscriminatingly good thing. This can so easily lead to the "the black tide of the mud of occultism!" (Freud).

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For a short intro to the idea see - http://www.integralworld.net/index.html?fallacy.html

Hear Wilber himself on the theme - http://www.praetrans.com/en/ptf.html