In the thoughtless silence of meditation thoughts can be observed to come and go.
But when these observations are examined closely something becomes more and more obvious: something about the comings and goings of thoughts is fundamentally flawed.

The coming and going of thoughts is fundamentally flawed because there is no comings and goings. This is because the mind is always the thought that it is trying to observe.
In the thoughtless Silence of meditation thoughts only appear to come and then they appear to go.
In fact what is happening: In the thoughtless silence of meditation the mind is a thought and then it is another thought, or a memory of a thought… and then another thought/memory.
This flaw of coming and going of thoughts tells us that the mind is the thought and then it is the memory of the thought/s OR: The mind is what it thinks it thinks be it memories or thoughts.
This flaw of coming and going next tells us that between thoughts/memories there is a universe-vanishing gap. Physics calls this universe-vanishing gap its quantum-gap.
In the thoughtless silence of meditation these UV-gaps between thoughts/memories become obvious; and what also becomes very obvious is that these UV-gaps make it impossible for one thought to be connected to another.

In the same way the appearance of coming and going is an illusion so is the connection of thoughts. Thoughts can no more be connected than these words here can be connected – the connection of words in a story is pure illusion.
To compliment this illusion that thoughts/words are connected: anyone that tries to observe thoughts (especially in meditation) will universally realize that there is absolutely no way that someone can predict the next thought the mind appears to get/IS.
So: the control of thoughts is an illusion, just like the coming and going of thoughts is an illusion, and just as is the connection of thoughts is an illusion.

What all this adds up to: the mind does not work. The mind is the thoughts that it thinks it thinks when there is no thinking. Thinking is the same illusion as is the coming and going of thoughts, as is the connection of thoughts and also the control of thoughts.

This study of thoughts has been called the Supreme Science. The Supreme Science dates back over 5000 years to the Indus River where/when sages used meditation to study their thoughts. They would give us the non-duality or the “there is no doer” of Advaita.

If there is no such thing as the control of thoughts then why be concerned with the subject at hand? The answer to this question gives us the Supreme Comedy that we call “life.”
If there is no such thing as thinking then the whole subject of studying anything is meaningless and absurd… because everything to do with the mind, thoughts, is just the Entertainment that is this Supreme Comedy called life. The Hindus called this Entertainment their Maya or illusion and/or Lila, a divine-play.

So if one argues that if there is no thinking, and no control of thoughts, then the Supreme Science is utterly absurd – BUT SO IS EVERYTHING ELSE THAT HAS TO DO WITH thoughts, the MIND, like LIFE. And this is Realization itself.

And so if we are not going to waste our time trying to understand how thoughts work/don’t-work then why waste our time trying to understand anything else that needs thoughts to understand…. again the same Supreme COMEDY, life. In fact this Supreme Comedy called life goes even more supreme when we somehow understand that if there is no thinking then there can be no understanding … it is all an illusion as is the coming and going of thoughts….

This whole study of thoughts is the supreme absurdity of the Supreme Comedy called life until Modern Physics comes along to give us the exact same story.
All these words about thoughts, the mind, have nothing to do with thoughts but what makes thoughts possible: Reality.
The UV-gap between thoughts is Reality and the Hindus called it Brahman, Atman, Self, Samadhi and its dilutions Kundalini. Thoughts somehow dilute the Unfathomable Ocean of BLISS called Samadhi with different dilutions and dynamics called Kundalini, which some call their Holy Spirit.

When this Kundalini somehow explodes from between thoughts it makes the whole universe vanish in the Ocean of BLISS that it is … and then the mind and its life is universe-vanishingly pure illusion, fiction: the Supreme Comedy.
It was this explosion of Kundalini that killed/terminated the mind of the Indian Prince Siddhartha to give us Buddha. It was this same Kundalini that made Krishna, Jesus, Mohammad and Ramana be/radiate the universal-love/JOY/Bliss that they were/are.
PHYSICS
For those who want to understand how their thoughts cannot work we have a modern messenger that the Indus River sages of old did not have: Physics.
It is no coincidence that physics tells/gives-us the exact same story as did/does the Supreme Science.
Physics tells us from every possible direction that time is pure illusion. From itws most obvious direction physics tells us that light, energy, has no time and so it cannot travel and yet it travels so fast that it makes everything with time stationary. I.E. THERE IS NO TIME.

The whole illusion of time is based on the minds ability to create-it/switch-it between thoughts and memories- of- thoughts.
In the thoughtless-silence of meditation the mind appears to go from/being thoughts to memories-of-thoughts. It is this fundamental fiction that memories are not thoughts that creates the illusion called life, and its outside universe that appears to have a past and future.
Memories have to be thoughts because the mind is the same and it cannot change from being thoughts and then memories of thoughts… and yet it, the mind, is the illusion that memories are not just thoughts, the mind.
If it is difficult to understand how memories and thoughts have to be the same then Physics tells us the exact same story with its particles that are always waves.
Physics tells us that particles are always waves even though they cannot be two different things at the same time. And yet, according to Physics, they are always two different things, particles and waves, until an “observer” or ego comes along to determine that they are either particles or waves… or something else, like probability-clouds.

So the study of thoughts leads us to understand what cannot be understood, because there is no thinking, because in fiction, thoughts, there is nothing to understand: that there is no thinking and so life is the Supreme Comedy.

And what makes life the Supreme Comedy is all the aliases of the Self, Consciousness, called egos, that go around thinking they can think about all the theories and formulas, truths and lies, that connect the past and future that cannot exist any more than can the thinking that seems to connect what cannot exist …
And all (these) words are not about the nothings called fiction, thoughts, minds, but about the Reality without which there would be no thoughts, minds, egos … the Reality that gives us its fiction that is the Supreme Comedy called life whose universe-vanishing laughter is Kundalini.

-- Kundalini

Genep:

Eastern Philosophy. Take it there.

Science is science.

Philosophy is philosophy.

This is the science department.

Science, to a philosopher or a religeous believer, is a game. The game is: suppose for a while that matter is left to its own devices to do things without divine intervention: what is logical and mathematical in our way of describing things we see to be facts?

How does your, or, any philosophy, help play the science game?

WHY WAS THIS PHILOSOPHY THREAD MOVED INTO SCIENCE?

Science is science.

Philosophy is philosophy.

This is the science department.


And in science everything is so certain that a particle can never be a wave, let alone a probability-cloud. It has to be rock solid. JUST LIKE SCIENCE is --- and philosophy and theology will never be.

dream on ...

I suggest moving this to PseudoScience

Genep,
Possibly I have a way that may help you clarify what you are attempting to say regards thought or the act of thinking. I shall not comment on the science and leave that to others.

What is thought?

Something that philosophers have been attempting to answer since they recognised that they were capable of it [ thinking]

What you seem to be saying is that a thought is non-existant and in a way I can see some justification for that position.

The way I see it is that thinking is an act of reflecting that which we are aware of. It is how we animate our mirror that determines what we reflect. Thus thinking is the self inspired animation of our inner mirror and not the thought itself persee.

In other words our thoughts are but mere reflections of our reality. Thus thought itself does not exist and only our manipulation of our thinking mirror does. How we feel about what we reflect is our sense of experience.

I trust that possibly the above might help you work out the connundrum you are suggesting.
I am not saying that I am correct in what I have said, just simply suggesting another way of exploring your contention.

And in science everything is so certain that a particle can never be a wave, let alone a probability-cloud. It has to be rock solid. JUST LIKE SCIENCE is --- and philosophy and theology will never be.

dream on ...
EXACTLY:
it is all MY dream
and so I can kick your ass
so you can make me laugh
or kill me and Wake me up.
So make me laugh: tell me you are awake.

Genep,
Possibly I have a way that may help you clarify what you are attempting to say regards thought or the act of thinking. I shall not comment on the science and leave that to others.

What is thought?....

.....
First: this might be funny but only because it is the Supreme Comedy:
I don’t think
and I don’t write
I am the Laughter
that hands think
and egos write:


There is Reality and then there is its fictions, nothings, thoughts.
We have all sorts of fictions, like words in a book.
All fictions have to work the same to be the same.

There is no thinking but the Joke is that the mind does not know it.
So sit back and enjoy the Show, Maya, the mind puts on as it thinks it can think.

“Learn” how letters, words, sentences do not work in a book (they are totally passive) and the mind does NOT work exactly the same way.
(echo: letters, words, sentences;neutrons, atoms, molecules; thoughts, sleep-dreams, living)
The mind can no more think than a book can write itself to read itself. The mind cannot think because thinking is a thought that by definition is Reality’s fiction, nothing.

Physics is the best fiction but only because everything in physics points to the quantum-gap without which there would be no periodic-table, no metals and non-metals the universe needs for all its chaos and order.
Forget about the particles -- they are all the same decoys we call thoughts, nothing, fiction. The quantum-gap works like a filter, lens, and thus does nothing with these nothings, thoughts, particles. It is all illusion, Maya – the exact same illusion we get on the movie-screen.

Other than this Reality everything, all particles = thoughts, are just Reality's fiction. And all fictions work the same to be the same: Reality’s nothing, thoughts.
IN the East there is nothing subtle about this quantum-gap because it can explode with such unfathomable BLISS that it makes the universe LITERALLY vanish. In the East they call this same quantum-gap of physics Reality, Atman, Samadhi, Nirvana, Kundalini.
In the West there is no word for this Kundalini because doctors call it every mental-disease in their books. I speak as a dead MD.
When you can accept that the mind, life, is YOUR dream, fiction, then you are the JOY of dreaming, Kundalini. You are SELF-realized. Then you are not like Buddha and Jesus because they are just part of YOUR fiction, the dream the mind is, life.

If you want to read about how all fiction works the same to be the same, thoughts, Reality’s nothing, then do a google blog search “Supreme Comedy”, “ UV-gap “

Yes the "Supreme Comedy" is that this mind and its body, called me, is no more real than is Mickey Mouse in the TV set.
LOVE

WHY WAS THIS PHILOSOPHY THREAD MOVED INTO SCIENCE?

THE QUESTION IS: Does PHYSICS' quantum-gap belong to the philosophy department or the theology department?

I suggest moving this to PseudoScience

I suggest we ban this idiot, ME, from this forum before I remove all the GAPS in the binary-code of your computers to make them self-destruct.

I disagree.
Two things to take into consideration here.
The mind, and consciousness or observer.
The mind is a tool.
It is an actual physical biological piece of mushy matter in your head.

I believe you have come to a place where you have reckognized that you are indeed not the "thinker" or more specifically, not your thoughts.
However, coming this close to your source, you have exploded into a "new" set of thinking/seeing.

Most people never understand that the mind is a tool, it has a function, to think.
Unfortunately most peoples minds have taken over, or more specifically, been left on auto pilot.
Growing up, information is crammed down our throats. Having this process overload, we begin to become attached to our thoughts, beleiving we are the thoughts, rather than the one having them.

Let me use an analogy.
It is like the carpenter, who after using a hammer for sooo long, begins to assume the identity of the hammer.
Forgetting he is actually the "carpenter" in control of the tool/thinking process.

Focusing on your thoughts and where they come from is a good practice initially to seperate your self from your thoughts.
However, now I would suggest fucusing on living in the NOW.
This moment, continually, now now now now now now now.
Once you start "thinking", you have left the present/reality and entered time, or this illusion that you are alluding to.
Once your skill to live in the NOW increases, you will be able to see the reality that is there/here.

Living in the NOW, takng control of your focus and thinking on purpose, your level of durable happiness, success, and freedom begin to expand exponentially.

I understand what you are getting at by saying words are not attached, and that no thoughts can be attached.
I disagree with you here as well.

The world is full of innumerable entities. Without the ability to generalize -- (join thoughts) forced to approach the world as if every entity were entirely unique and different -- you would waste all of your time grasping fundamentals over and over again. Life would be impossible.

A concept is a mental abstraction which allows generalization and the extension of knowledge from some known objects to others unknown. It integrates two or more particulars into a common mental unit. For example, the concept "book" subsumes all particular books. It does so based on the essential characteristics of multiple pieces of paper or pages combined into a bound stack.

A concept is formed by taking a number of similar entities and deciding what makes them similar in an important way. The differences and the unessential similarities are not important and are abstracted away from the newly created mental entity. Each concept serves a particular purpose and is created to allow higher-level thinking. People do not waste their time forming arbitrary concepts.

While concepts integrate particulars, concepts can also act as particulars. In this way, it is possible to form higher levels of abstraction, combining concepts into more complex concepts, and furthering one's understanding and knowledge by increasing the amount that can be integrated. Higher level concepts can also allow more complicated combinations that are not possible by trying to integrate lower level particulars. The concept wife is not possible without the concept marriage, the concept relationship, and so on down a long tree of complex concepts.

Although a concept is built from particular entities, it is not tied to those specific entities. If those entities were changed or destroyed, the concept would still be intact, but would no longer include those particulars. The concept combines any entities with those particular characteristics. It encompasses any entity with those particular characteristics, past, present, or future.

There are two essential tools to complete the concept formation. The first is a definition. This is the method of specifying the essential characteristics of the concept, or what is the basis of the integration. It also specifies the method of differentiation, which distinguishes it from everything not encompassed by the concept.

The second tool is a word. A word is a cognitive trigger for the concept. It is the method by which the concept is stored away and referenced later. Without such a trigger, the act of integrating each concept would have to be redone every time it was used. It would be difficult to form higher level concepts, and the level of integration of one's knowledge would be severely limited in scope.
(taken from "The Importance of Philosophy")


Not finished but gotta go...

The mind is a tool.
It is an actual physical biological piece of mushy matter in your head.

No, that's the brain, not the mind. Consciousness can't be explained to come from something unconscious. Mind is not inside matter, neurons etc. the matter and neurons are inside the mind. They're sensations.

How could matter become a mind? Mind can easily become "matter".

When I say the mind, I mean the intellect.
The right brain, the "thinking" part of the brain.

Bottom line is, if what your doing is working for ya, keep at er.