So what is this ‘consciousness’? And from where we look ‘beyond consciousness’?.
See, if I try to look beyond consciousness from the place of ‘consciousness’ - then it will also be fragmented/conditioned.
I can show a metaphor - which can describe more about what my question is.
This consciousness is like earth and what you say to ‘look beyond consciousness’ - is nothing but looking beyond earth. But from where we look? We look from earth - and so it will be only limited. We cannot see the unlimited by limited.
But I can look - what is there as limited - which is ‘consciousness’. If I am aware of that ‘consciousness’ by looking, in this very ‘seeing/awareness’ - the consciousness dissolves/disappears.
Then there is no earth at all now. We are not ‘consciousness/limited’ anymore. We don’t know - what we are - but only the feelings - and nothing is present to compare with that feeling.
Likewise - this intentions grows - but if we are aware - it dies. Then “what’s present we don’t know” and we don’t have to look again - as it cannot look itself - as it is not limited.
No, the ‘me’ exists now, in this moment, as an expression of the past. If there is no expression of the past as a belief, an opinion, an image, a principle, there is no ‘me’ in our meeting.
See, I use K word - where ‘now’ is different from ‘present’.
Yes, the ‘me’ (which is past) - may be in present. But if we fail to see it’s whole form - it will hold us and drag us unconsciously to future too - and there will be no ‘now’ at all.
We can meet without ‘images’/‘me’ - only if we are aware of ‘me’.
I am my senses. And just like everything do smell, taste and sound different. Could thought be one of those experiences?
As I learned to not interpret thought: The same applies to sound, taste, smell and touch. Not to interpret them psychologically. Not to make an experience out of a happening… ?
Yes, that’s it. Is it possible not to make an experience out of a happening? An experience is always put together with words that explain and describe what is happening to me; and so every experience must bring with it an experiencer, a ‘me’ to whom all of this is happening. It is a self-protective mechanism, whereby thought is fulfilling its protective role. So it all happens very quickly, this translation of what is new and challenging, into what is old and familiar.
There is something in the floor in darkness. We get frightened and run away from it or throw it away - because of the image of ‘snake’. I can be aware of the image of ‘snake’ - only if I look at it (that is lighting on it). In that light, the ‘snake’/‘image’/‘me’ disappears. Then what remains is the ‘now’.
No, you have to show me. That’s the only way you learn any of this by showing it to other people. Only then do you find out if what you have learned has any validity or truth to it, or if it’s just a lot of words. Do you have an image now of me? Show me what you know about images.
Not at all Paul. The only thing I ask is - if you run away from ‘me’/‘Paul’ - then you are doomed - and may become under control of ‘me’/‘Paul’ - as you may not aware of ‘me’/‘Paul’.
If you had looked at whole - aware of every form of ‘consciousness’/‘me’ - then when every time darkness comes - you aware to light it up.
I don’t know - if you looked the whole already - and if you did - it’s fine.
I have nothing to show you about you. Only you can see yourself.
Resisting thought has always been the result of the attempts towards not making it a problem. Accept/ reject, go with or against, etc. Having thought looked at as a sense of things, one of the senses as we have it today, as we have it now.
Thought as another of the senses is an interesting way to consider it. It works in tandem with the other senses. It ‘informs’ them and becomes inseperable from them. For example the visual information/field presented by the eyes of say a landscape presents the objects as being of different sizes. Thought corrects the scene by showing (knowing) that to be an illusion created by the distance the eye is from the objects; the farther away the object, the smaller it appears but is in actuality the same size as the the larger objects that are closer. Similarly when a person approaches us from a distance, they are not growing in size as it appears to the eye but it is the third dimension of depth that makes it seem so. (P.D. Ouspensky in his book Tertium Organum gives great examples of this and explains animals’ reactions to its environment lacking this corrective gift of thought / thinking.)
So did thought as has been suggested, go beyond being a ‘sense’ and make itself into , not just an adjunct to the other senses for survival reasons, but create an image of itself as a ‘thing’ that stands alone and apart? (above?)
I would still highlight the danger of this attempt.
The examples mentioned demonstrate the advancements humanity have reached in the material world. Thought which is also a material process, as noted by K and Bohm, goes with that.
However, psychologically thought has a place as it is for the conditioned. A great deal of energy is spent on placing it rightly. Where would it be necessary or crucial to be placed. Does it help or hinder. Does it take or give. Treating thought as a mere fragmentation of what actually is creates resistance in most of us.
Whats suggested is looking at thought, not intellectually, but actually as a sense of the past, psychologically, presents the book of me, the book of humanity. Together with the physical as one whole.
I think thought as suggested does not take fundamental priority, as no other sense does. No thing is.
Because if any do, then that priority is me, fundamentally.
The mind uses thought to protect the body when the senses detect a signal about something new within its field of sensation; thought interprets that signal, using its memory, to determine its risk of harm. So here thought is working in conjunction with the senses to protect the body, identifying this new signal in terms of an old knowledge. Thought is working in harmony with the senses to protect the body.
At what point does thought move into another role where it starts to protect the psychological mind, where it starts to protect the experiencer with his sense of a past? In effect, thought is now protecting only itself.
(I am not sure I am meeting your question. We may need to rephrase it.)
