My take: We sense (the process of sensing) in the present, and we think (process of thinking) in the present. We can’t do anything mentally/physically that’s not in the present. Likewise objects we sense are in the present (redness of apple), and objects we think are in the present (recalled memory). Thus far everything lives in the present moment. The only part of either process that may be seen as living in the past is the encoded stored memories.
Summary: Both thinking and sensing processes occur in the present moment and involve objects that exist in the present moment. The only difference between the two vis-a-vis time is in the information they deal with.
Thinking takes place in the present; but the objects of thought (i.e. the content of a specific thought) belong to the past.
So while the encoding of a memory is present, the content of that encoded memory is past.
To put it differently:
The encoded memory of an apple exists as an actuality in the present.
But the content of that memory - which is the apple I ate yesterday - is the past. It only has reality as a content of memory, not as an actual apple that I eat in the present.
Rick, if I can ask this question: why is it, even after two years of having the same or similar conversations, do you seem to want to defend the significance of the psychological past, the past as memory?
Any ordinary rational person, after discussing this issue for so long, would probably have accepted by now the simple fact that the content of an encoded memory of an apple - as distinct from an apple that I presently hold in my hand - is not actual.
I feel you always dodge this fact, evade it, hedge it with provisions. I can only assume that there is something about the psychological past as memory, that you wish to hold onto. Which is why you do not cleanly accept its fictional nature.
Indeed, rather than accept its fictional nature, you seem to be prepared to turn the whole world into a fiction - a story - just to maintain the fictitious validity of a mental past that is dead. Why?
Sorry, I was away from my computer. (Hard to imagine, right?) But I’m baaaaaaaaaaaaaack!
Say you see a memorable tree, the image of it gets stored in long-term memory in encoded form. Say you remember the tree at some point, the stored image gets retrieved and reconstructed in the brain’s present-moment RAM-like workspace. Say you use this reconstructed image in your thinking process, the image is in the present, not the past. It references an image from the past, but in the reconstruction process it becomes an image in the present, an object in its own right.
Should you be thinking: Rick is fooling around again, being contrarian for the sheer thrill of it. Honestly, I am not. I am trying to fathom what’s really going on, and I’m using language as skillfully as I can to communicate my (attempt) at fathoming.
Fair question. Truth is, I’ve been having these conversations for 20+ years, maybe longer! Both with other people and alone by myself. I feel the psychological past is significant, because a significant amount what I feel-experience and what people I know seem to feel-experience demonstrates it. But being powerful doesn’t mean it (psychological memory) is a good, intelligent, skillful way to use the brain. For that reason I remain open to and interested in Krishnamurti’s work in this realm. It requires entertaining two opposite-ish views at the same time, but that’s kind of my thing: Dialektik Mann!
I was just saying to Inquiry that I find his sentences over-complicated sometimes. So I will say it here too. I feel I have to reconstruct this sentence to make it clear:
You see a tree, the image of it gets stored in memory. When you remember the tree, the stored image is recollected in the present-moment. It references an image from the past, but in the process of being recollected it becomes a mental image appearing in the present moment, which is a neurological phenomenon in its own right.
To put it differently:
The memory as a memory - i.e. as a neurological phenomenon taking place in the brain’s neurochemistry - is an actuality. But the content of the memory itself belongs to the past.
The image as an image - i.e. as a mental picture of a tree, which I can see in my imagination (even though there is no actual tree standing there) - is an actuality. But the content of that image of a tree belongs to the past.
The imagination has its place. Memory has its place. But the content of the image I have of a tree is not an actual tree. The memory of a tree is not an actual tree.
So if one is wanting to find the meaning and depth and significance of life in mental images, memories, the psychological past, one must be clear that one is investing in things whose contents have no actuality.
For a sane person this is a wake up call, or at least something to take into account.
All I read you saying here is that the psychological past is significant because you and other people feel it is significant. But isn’t this what Christians say about God or Jesus? Feeling that God exists and that he loves you does not mean that God exists and that he loves you. Similarly, feeling that there is deep meaning in the psychological past may be an illusion.
This doesn’t mean that the past has no meaning at all - obviously it has, or one wouldn’t cling to it the way we do. But it means that the content of the past is not actual: The life I once had, the people I once knew, are only memories. Only mental pictures stored in the brain. Is life, living, memory?
To me it has to do whith what’s been clearly explained in the ending of time. In my own words:
If memory is in charge in the actuality it’s the course of trouble but intelligence can use memory without troublemaking. One can only see that intelligence/love is still not in charge.
So if one is wanting to find the meaning and depth and significance of life in mental images, memories, the psychological past, one must be clear that one is investing in things whose contents have no actuality.
The memory-apple is not the actual apple the memory points to, yes. Nor is it any real apple. But the memory is, when retrieved, an actual mental object.
For a sane person this is a wake up call, or at least something to take into account.
Should definitely be taken into account, yes, it’s part of the picture of what’s really going on. Ditto for the retrieved memory being an actual mental object. I think we have quite different senses of the nature and power of thoughtforms. (Topic for another thread some day?)
Agreed and agreed. When billions of human beings care deeply about X, X is significant to them, but that doesn’t mean X is real (true, accurate, actual, usw).
I don’t know what significance you are giving to this? We have already said that
So my sense is that you are attributing some extra dimensional meaning or significance to mental images.
When you use the word/phrase ‘thought-form’ I wonder if this is a clue?
You have talked before about ‘tulpas’ - an esoteric Tibetan Buddhist notion that attributes magical properties to thought-forms (a notion which was adopted by Theosophists, whose understanding of colour thought-forms influenced modernist abstract painters like Kandinsky). I wonder if this more esoteric significance lies behind the meaning you give to thought-forms?
In orthodox Pali Buddhism thought-forms are merely mental formations, mental constructions, forms of psychological conditioning (to use Krishnamurti’s phrase). There is nothing esoteric about them.
But in Vajrayana Buddhism thought-forms are sometimes considered to be aspects of the Buddha’s emanating mind-stream, which can be accessed through meditation.
Thought-forms are thought by spiritualists and occultists to have a life of their own - they are the result of highly concentrated thoughts or emotions that can remain in existence even after a person passes away.
In new age literature thought-forms are associated with astral projection; while in some internet subcultures tulpas are associated with the creation or projection of ‘imaginary friends’ (deemed to be “real or somewhat real” by people invested in these things).
It is interesting in this context that Annie Besant and Leadbeater - both of whom were formative influences on Krishnamurti - wrote a book about thought-forms which gave them an esoteric, spiritual significance.
But when Krishnamurti grew up, he said that all thought is matter, it is not spiritual. This doesn’t mean that he denied occult phenomena. But he negated the spiritual significance that such phenomena have for people.
Where does your understanding of thought-forms fit into this brief outline that I have given here?
This is the important point. We ought not assume we have intelligence, or that we know what intelligence is - because what we call intelligence may still be the activity of memory.
But we can be aware of memory and thought acting in the present, modifying in the present, and carrying on. This awareness of the activity of the past acting in (and through) the present may have great significance.
I am interested in thoughtforms, how they arise, how they exist, how they affect us.
My interest for thoughtforms aligns more with the esoteric/occult interpretations, less with the Buddhist. I have a background in the occult which I don’t talk about here, I studied for many years with Marge Hopkins, a student of Jane Roberts, well-known channeler of Seth. I pretty much abandoned my occult work after Marge, but I’ve gotten a bit more open to it recently. I’m profoundly skeptical about it, but there are things that resonate, thoughtforms for example.
Let us be careful to avoid derailing the thread with our musings, ja?
I think Wim is simply saying that memory and thought distort our perceptions, but that if intelligence exists then intelligence can act through thought and memory, so that they do not interfere with perception.
Wim is making an assumption that intelligence exists, which may be problematic. But this is how I understand his sentence.
I think you will have to clearly explain what you mean by thought-forms Rick, as the nature of thought is central to everything we discuss on Kinfonet. The way most of us are using the word ‘thought’ on Kinfonet implies that thought is time, thought is the past, the present and the future. Thought is memory, thought is matter, thought is limited, bound to the past, etc. So all these ways of understanding the nature of thought necessarily impact on what we mean by the present moment, as well as what we regard as actual, true (the topics of this thread).
So if you are using the words memory, image, imagination, mental image, thought, emotion, etc, in a certain specific way that is tinged by some occult meaning, then I feel it is your responsibility to make this meaning clear and lucid for others to discuss and comprehend. Otherwise we will perpetually misunderstand each other and dialogue will not be possible.
Could you please explain in a comprehensive way what you mean by thought-form?
Turns out the explanation of what I mean by thoughtform fits nicely here.
I’m using the term thoughtform as a synonym for mental object: any mental entity/event that arises within the mind, i.e. anything perceived or experienced. I’ve said thoughtform because it suggests the aliveness of a kind of organism, which is how certain thoughts feel to me.
That’s it, short 'n sweet. I didn’t mean anything more esoteric/occult than that in this thread. No tulpas, though I’d love to explore them if there’s interest.
I’m all for using personal, evocative terms in the forum to lessen the risk of falling into a kind of parroting. But when non-standard terms are used, their meaning should be clear to readers, or they should be explained. (I’m fond of obliqueness. Mea culpa!)
Are you now saying that a mental image is equivalent to, or synonymous with, a sense-percept? I don’t see their equivalence at all.
This is the challenge of discussing with each other when the words we are using are not being used in the same way.
There have been several recent threads - among them ‘Krishnamurti among the neuroscientists’ - where painstaking efforts have been made to distinguish between
concepts
percepts
Must we go back to that discussion? You were not taking part in that discussion. It was Douglas. But there I was saying - as I have said many times before - that I feel there is a total distinction or category difference between:
percepts
and
mental concepts or mental images
(by mental I mean having to do with the software of thought, rather than with the hardware of neurobiological sense perception).
Do you wish to conflate, or make equivalent and synonymous, mental concepts and sensory percepts?
Both. Any arising that is perceived by a subject-mind. I’m not coining a term, that’s how ‘object’ is often used in Advaita teachings. They divide into gross objects (an elephant) and subtle objects (thoughts, feelings, emotions).
that I eat in the present.