The Three Brothers: Part 3 Thinking

The Three Brothers - Part 3 Thinking

Today, we’re going to talk about “thinking”, the third lamb in the pen, something that makes us especially human. In fact this smart little thinking lamb has even got his nose through the mesh of the sheep fence, reaching out to the world with his thoughts… In historical times, we have passed from gods and heroes being central, to God being the centre of the world, to Man being the centre of the universe, and to human thinking as the epitome of “evolution” on the planet. We see problems in ourselves, in our families, in our communities, in the world. And since we are human, we say we have to sit down and think about them. But is our thinking really that effective? Haven’t humans been thinking for millennia? Are we 2016-people really that different from people in 2016 BC? Don’t we all think things through and come to some kind of conclusion? But, whatever history may say, let’s come back to today, right now. Who does the thinking in you? Do you do the thinking? Or does the thinking make you who you are? Does thinking work? What are the limits to thinking? We have to look at all this.

In our first article describing “Self-Awareness”, we had various “states of awareness”. When we wake up and go through our regular day, we have what we call “thinking in Self-Awareness State 1”. To see how this works, all we have to do is try to stop thinking. Exercise: Take out your phone and go to your “Clock” function. Take three breaths and compose yourself. Decide to “stop thinking”. No thought should come to your mind – not even the thought that you should not be thinking! Switch on your Stopwatch or your Timer. Switch off as soon as the first thought or image comes into your mind. Record the length of time. Two or five seconds? Ten? Twenty? A minute? That’s how free you are from your thinking process, how free you are to detain a process that is supposed to be under “your” control. Did it work? For how long? Your comments please.

How long can you stop thinking?

You might protest and say, “wait a minute, thinking is me, so why should I stop being me?” The response could be: Well, if you see your thoughts and images coming and going… which one is “you”: your thoughts? or the “you” being aware of your thoughts? Just as we have already said in previous articles that you are not simply your body, because you can do things with or to your body (exercise it, train it, feel it and sense it) and you can also observe your feelings as they arise (either allowing them to continue, or telling yourself that you shouldn’t be feel that anger!), so too, you can experience yourself as being something other than your thinking process.

Of yes, we can all think about things and acquire knowledge of how to do things and find solutions to problems of a material or mechanical nature, even undertake great engineering and building feats. We are good at manipulating the world of material things, and modern civilisation has done much in this respect, both good and bad, we might say. But human thinking about man-made problems is not often the solution to anything. Look at the Mutts comic-strip and see if it sounds familiar...

The thesis of this blog is that you are Awareness, Consciousness, Attention and Alertness, and this is a particular kind of awareness that can be aware of itself. So this is how we successfully deal with 1) the body, 2) your feelings and 3) your thinking process. None of these are YOU. They are parts of the total you. So now what do we do?

We look at it again. We have the sense of touch and when we are touched or we touch something, our body sends a message to our brain. We have a sense of taste and when something comes to our mouth, the same happens. Or when we smell an aroma. And with sounds and hearing, and sights and seeing. In all five cases our mind receives a sensory input. Look up all the exact scientific descriptions of how this happens, but at a certain point, no description is of any use. A few examples.

As regards “seeing” or vision, sciences says:

“…Upon striking the retina, the physiological occurs: photochemical reactions occur within the cones to produce electrical impulses which are sent along nerves to the brain. The cones respond to the incident light by sending a message forward to brain, saying "light is hitting me." Upon reaching the brain, the psychological occurs: the brain detects the electrical messages being sent by the cones and interprets the meaning of the messages. The brain responds by saying "it is white."“ (and this is only in relation to a ray of light, imagine the interpretation of someone else’s action, emotion or thought …)

As regards “hearing” or audition, the same happens again:

“The inner ear consists of a cochlea, the semicircular canals, and the auditory nerve. The cochlea and the semicircular canals are filled with a water-like fluid. The fluid and nerve cells of the semicircular canals provide no role in the task of hearing; they merely serve as accelerometers for detecting accelerated movements and assisting in the task of maintaining balance. … Each hair cell has a natural sensitivity to a particular frequency of vibration. When the frequency of the compressional wave matches the natural frequency of the nerve cell, that nerve cell will resonate with a larger amplitude of vibration. This increased vibrational amplitude induces the cell to release an electrical impulse which passes along the auditory nerve towards the brain. In a process which is not clearly understood, the brain is capable of interpreting the qualities of the sound upon reception of these electric nerve impulses.”

And this means that the way our mind “interprets” a sensory input is normally below our level of Self-Awareness. It happens instantaneously. It’s too fast for us to be aware of. And so it happens automatically due to our conditioning, because we grow up in a world that teaches us to interpret signs or messages in a certain way, due to race, religion, creed, society, habits, customs and our past learning process. But all this occurs without our intentional consciousness, without our Awareness. Sorry for destroying the “Master of the Universe” viewpoint, but if the functioning of the human mind in its interpretations of so-called “reality” is below the level of our Self-Awareness State 1 (our normal waking consciousness), we are in fact living in a dream world. And for human evolution to continue, jointly and personally, we have to wake up and see this and do something about it. Viz, Carl Jung, who said: “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

In ancient times, some cultures counted six senses, not the five inputs of touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight that we are taught today. The sixth sense is none other than the mind itself which is doing the interpretation. This interpretation is done by a subtle “thought” process which we humans have developed to the extreme. The only problem is that it is a partial, fragmentary process which today’s computers have reduced to the binaries 1 and 0, which is no surprise, because computers are programmed by people’s thinking processes which also do exactly the same: 0 = me, and 1 equals you, and never the twain shall meet. In our Self-Awareness State 1, we live in a self-interpreted universe of separation and isolation. But at least when we talk about “Oneness”, it’s a hopeful sign that we shall one day… actually be that.

Now apart from the thinking exercise about “not thinking” given above, some useful thinking would be to think over the above information and ponder on who is doing the thinking, so we can continue with our study of Self-Awareness and become more aware of ourselves. So far we have:

Body – producing sensations and sending messages to the Mind.

Emotions – producing feelings and reacting in the Mind.

Thoughts – continuously flowing in often uncontrolled, unconscious patterns in the Mind.

Mind – the total process of interpretation of worlds both “outside” and “inside”.

Awareness – “Our” consciousness of the operation of Mind, thoughts, feeling and body.

Any questions about this so far? We’ll be glad to hear from you. In any case, we’ll be continuing from here in a few days.