I Think, therefore...

In a discussion that ensued following my ‘To Be or Try to Be’ post, my chechi (that’s elder sister, for you non Mallus) stated that she didn’t believe that the mind was just a blank screen on which thoughts were projected, that it had to be something more. She then suggested that I think on this and post something. This was a few days ago. What kept me from writing anything about this topic is the sheer vastness and depth of it. I literally, didn’t know how to approach it or where to begin. You could write a hundred books and still would have just scratched the surface of the answer to the age old question “Who am I?”

What changed then – Did I find enlightenment this afternoon? Hardly L.. I, instead, decided to go the other way and just roll with my ignorance. I’m going to attempt to take an intellectual leap of faith and hope to land somewhere around the subject matter... and not break my neck in the process.

I’m going to be borrowing heavily and badly from existing philosophers, so bear with me and feel free to correct me.

The mind as a single thought existing in the moment. This means that no two thoughts can coexist at the same time and that at any given moment, if who we are are our thoughts, we are just the one single fleeting thought which changes completely or its form or depth in the fraction of a second. Therefore, according to this, we are reborn every moment. I’m talking about the ‘self’. The ‘I’.

But, how much of the nature and construction of that fleeting thought that, at least for an instant, is the self, is caused by the accumulation of any and all previous thoughts? The thoughts, which since the very first one of our individual existence, have occurred as a result of memory, reaction to stimulus or complex cognition. We shall call this the ‘accumulated self’ as opposed to the aforementioned ‘fleeting/instant self’. If this accumulated self or identity is causal to the single momentary ‘I’, is that then also to be considered the real ‘I’? Is it a whole identity or a complex configuration of randomness that wholly or just partly causes the single thought.

What about when there is no thought? Still with me?  This is hard to grasp even as an abstraction let alone as a reality, because can any of us be aware of a thoughtless moment? By its nature, we would never know it if it existed, as to be ‘aware’ is to have a thought.

Now, I don’t know biologically when thought begins; does it start at the moment of birth or do we have thoughts even while in the womb? (No, I’m not going to look it up..I’m struggling to keep my head above the water as is) Given either scenario, is there a moment or moments before the first thought? When we are alive and breathing, with some form of consciousness streaming through us - existing simply as a complex organic entity. If so, what are we then?  Before the ‘self’ forms out of the first stimulus received.

I’m going to stop here and let you fine folks keep running with it. We are not going to get anywhere that Buddha or Krishnamurthy or Nietzsche or others haven’t gone before. And certainly not further or farther, not as a post in my blog J...

Happy thinking, guys...