Thoughts about thoughts

[astralspinner]

Some recent observations I've made about how we think, based on meditation experiences.

Firstly: The ability to think in words is one of the most important cornerstones of rational thought, and one of the major differences between humans and animals.

Secondly: Thinking in words is profoundly unnatural and is a cornerstone of some of the difficulties I've had with meditation.

My reasoning:

The brain evolved (or was created, whatever you prefer ) with the ability to think. Thoughts, however, pre-date speech. Brains were not designed to think in words. They were designed to think with what they had: "Pure" thought, thought expressed in images. This is why at the fundamental level, brains work with imagery. We dream in pictures, not words. The subconscious works with imagery.

This is why, when you meditate, you have to silence the mind. The surface level of the mind thinks in words. The rest, however, works in pictures. In order to reach a deeper level of thought, we have to stop thinking in words. You can't pick up TV signals with a radio, you can't reach deeper states of mind while thinking in words.

This is also why we can watch trance imagery for quite some time before suddenly realising it's happening: images don't suddenly start appearing, with a "Ta-da!" type surprise that makes us instantly notice them. We are ALWAYS thinking in imagery, every moment of the day. Meditation just lets us gradually sink down to a level where we can become aware of that imagery. Trance images never start happening, we just slowly become aware of something that never stops happening.

It's this division that words create in our mind that makes for the great separation between our surface, conscious mind, and the deeper levels of the subconscious. By thinking in words, we wall ourselves off from the rest of the mind, drastically reducing the amount of 'input' the deeper levels of the mind can supply.

Perhaps this is why dreams are both so important, and so confusing. In dreams, the 'literal' consciousness is given direct access to the 'visual' subconscious, re-establishing a link that we have accidentally spent a lifetime eroding. But because we don't use imagery to think consciously any more, we don't understand the communication that's taking place. The literal consciousness sees only the image, with no way to 'translate' it into meaningful information. It's like our eyes see a DVD as a shiny silver disc, while a DVD player 'sees' the same disc as a wealth of information capable of generating hours of audio and visual information. Same object, but vastly more meaning when you can 'interpret' the information held within that object.

I tried an experiment earlier. Ordinarily, when daydreaming, I do it in words. I'm not very good at holding mental images in my mind's eye, but writing is a hobby of mine. I fantasize in words. Mental images arise in response, but they're incidental and not too noticeable.

So this time, I tried daydreaming WITHOUT any words. I tried to do it all with 'pure' thought and imagery. The difference was very noticeable: There was a far greater emotional response to the wordless fantasy than I would expect from thinking about the same scenario with words. Why? Because I was thinking in a 'language' that my entire mind could understand, instead of using a layer of abstraction by thinking literally.

So, in conclusion: To be able to communicate with levels of our own mind deeper than surface thoughts, we need to do it in the universal language of imagery. Words only get in the way.

Discuss!

[Selski]

What a fascinating and thought-provoking post.

Oops, I mean what an image-provoking post!  

Thanks for sharing this astralspinner - I agree with everything you say.

Sarah

[Smilodon29A]

I agree with you fully, this is something that I have been thinking about in the last few weeks.

Excellent post.

[astralspinner]

And as a follow-up, I'd just like to mention that, the night after I posted this, I had the most intense lucid dream I've ever experienced: I had genuine full waking consciousness in the dream.

In fact, I felt so awake that I made a genuine effort to wake up from the dream, and couldn't, because I was already fully awake IN the dream. It lasted for a good five minutes, too - longer than any other lucid dream I've ever had.

It could be just coincidence that this happened right after I started making efforts to think in pure imagery. But I'm not convinced.

So if nothing else, thinking in imagery would appear to strengthen the links between waking and dreaming consciousness. Anybody trying for lucid dreams should probably bear this in mind.