What is a thought?
First, before we look into the qualities and dynamics of thought, let us establish what is aware that a thought is showing up. What is that? Check now, what is aware?
Evidently the presence of Awareness, our Self, is aware of the beginning, and ending, of thought. But in Awareness' knowing of the thought, does Awareness label the 'thought' as such?
No. Awareness is, in its intrinsic nature, purely aware. That is all that it is; pure, ever-still, changeless Awareness, not an ever-changing thinking and labelling activity. Awareness does not comment on the appearance of thought. What then claims that a 'thought' has arisen? It is thought that is making such a claim.
A thought is only a thought from the imaginary point of view of thought. It is thought that says, 'look now a thought is appearing', 'here is a discrete thing called a thought or a thing.'
Thought defines its definitions. It conceptualises its concepts. Nothing else is doing the defining or conceptualising of thought. The sole arbiter of definitions and concepts is thought.
Check out the structure of a dictionary and notice that it is basically a book of definitions defining definitions, concepts conceptualising concepts. It is a materialisation of the mind's primary activity.
A thing is only a thing when it is defined as such by a thought. Without the appearance of thought, there is no experience of anything thought defines, for the experience thought defines has an existence only within its own imagination.
Prior to thought, there is just the pre-verbal, ineffable reality of experience. And nothing more can be said about that reality, other than it is. This reality precedes the birth of language, and is, as such, absolutely independent of language.
Without reference to thought, what is the nature of this present experience?
Silence.
Exactly. Prior to thought, there is no thought in the reality of experience. There is just the reality of experience. And that is, as we have seen, perfectly undefined.
Thought appears, changes and disappears. Therefore, thought is not a fundamental attribute of the always-here reality of experience.
Thought does appear temporarily within the reality of experience, and so when we explore what a thought is, we notice that there is something undeniably substantial to the experience of thought. It is not nothing. There is a substance present there. What, then, gives thought the experience of being substantial, made of something?
What is the actual experience of thought? What is really there?
What is really there is the essential substance out of which thoughts are made. Just as all that is really there in the movie is the screen, Consciousness is that substance out of which thoughts are made, for all thoughts appear within Consciousness, and whatever appears within Consciousness is made of it.
So, the question becomes, is Consciousness a thought or mental phenomenon? Is the substance of thought, a thought? Check now in your direct experience.
Is the substance of a movie, a movie? Or the screen?
To use a metaphor from physics, is the substance of an object, an object? Or is it empty space?
A physicist would tell us that the only substance present in physical objects is empty space. The energy of the space vibrates at a particular frequency and appears as a solid object.
It is the same here. When we explore our experience with the same rigour as a true scientist, we inevitably notice that Consciousness is essentially empty, that is, devoid of objective qualities. Furthermore, we notice that from within this emptiness a vibration of this emptiness occurs, rendering the experience of apparent objects, such as thoughts and perceptions.
The essential substance of all objects of thought is this objectless, empty space of Consciousness.
The substance of definitions cannot be defined. The substance of thought is not a thought.
What is the experience of thought, without reference to thought?
Comentários