Thanks.
I see what you mean, yea there is sort of pure consciousness, like a light we shine on various people, places and things, and even ourselves introspectively, and this light is capable of generating all kinds of thought, some readily translatable into English or other languages, and some not.
When youâre thinking, itâs like the light of consciousness is imposing color, or a grid on whatever youâre perceiving, interpreting data, drawing connections between the objects of sensation and the self, memories, categories.
The light is always there, and I think itâs always thinking on some level, but sometimes itâs dim, sometimes bright, sometimes processing a lot, and sometimes not very much at all, just watching, aware.
The western mind is scarcely aware of this fundamental aspect of consciousness, it tends to equate all consciousness with thinking, processing what weâre aware of, but there is just being aware, with next to no processing.
This is a state of consciousness many eastern meditation practices strive to achieve, where one is simply aware.
I think thereâs a time for everything, a time to be aware and think, and a time just to be aware.
In thinking too much about what weâre aware of, we kind of miss out on them, in some respects, perhaps in a fundamental respect, we miss out on things as they are, and as theyâre affecting us and everything else around them, when we think about where theyâve been, where theyâre headed, what theyâre capable of, what theyâre like/unlike, labeling them, instead of just really, perceiving them, as they are, here, now.
Iâm usually thinking about things myself, and Iâd like to experiment more with meditation.
I mean in a sense the ultimate truth is thisâŚmoment.
Yes linguistic can be separated from linear.
All thinking heavily bound by language is fundamentally linear I think, some more than others, but not all linear thinking is linguistic, for example, 12 completes this pattern: 3, 6, 9âŚ
Thatâs an example of numerical linearity, and there are probably other forms of linearity that canât be so easily translated into words, or numbers, like whenever we have trouble explaining something we know or understand, even the most articulate among us.
Language is limited, and so are numbers, thereâs only so much phenomena and patterns they can encompass and encapsulate.
So what is holistic thinking, as opposed to linear?
It might be basically the same thing, drawing connections between things, this is like that, or that follows from this, or this is this, comparing a thing with an abstraction, an orange is like a spheroid, but itâs just holistic thinking is dealing with a lot more variables simultaneously as opposed to sequentially.
Like you have to process a lot of data to get to the position: government is bad, if youâre an anarchist, and as much data as you can account for, demonstrate how you got there, you canât fathom it all, itâs too much.
Or somebody might put you off, like thereâs just something about them you donât like, that makes you uneasy, but you donât know what or why.
Your mind is reacting to them on various instinctive and intuitive levels.
Subtle cues and hints he gave made you feel uneasy about him.
It might be the fact that heâs sweating, or the way he carries himself, or a look he gave you, itâs probably all of these things and dozens more, hundreds of data points you synthesized about him simultaneously in an instant, and you couldnât possibly account for them all, and it would be difficult to explain why any one of them is an indication of something nefarious or sinister.
Such could be called holistic thinking.
2 + 2 = 4, or all bats are mammals is not holistic, althou a ton of data and creativity originally whet into formulating the category bat or mammal, just regurgitating it is very formulaic, simple, straightforward, but the statement 9/11 was an inside job is, because it requires a seemingly endless stream of data points to affirm or refute.
In other words, linear thinking is simple, straightforward, more certain, holistic thinking is intricate, fuzzy, ambiguous thinking.
And yea itâs impossible to turn all of this stuff off, especially for an extended period of time, while still being conscious, but you can reduce them, or reduce some of them, like the verbal stuff, or whatever youâre focused on reducing.
Yes the human mind comes equipped with some categories and mechanisms for making sense of the world around it, definitely, and some of these categories and mechanisms are somewhat malleable, by the thinker of them themselves, independently of their culture and language, but also by culture and language.
And a lot of this stuff is translatable into language or numbers, but some of it is not so easy.
As language becomes more sophisticated, more thoughts can be articulated, but thereâs other ways of expressing things besides words, like song and dance, the arts, or facial expressions, gestures, mannerisms, evocation.
No two people share the exact same way of thinking about the world, the same pre-lingual categories and mechanisms, and nobody makes use of the same lingual categories and mechanism the same way either.
All of these things are evolving individually and collectively too, mutating.
And so too with animals, they all possess categories and mechanisms for making sense of the world, all the ones that have a central nervous system at the very least, a brain, and probably many or even all of the ones without a brain, to a lesser extent I would imagine.
We all process and information, not just reflexively act on it, especially those of us with more sophisticated nervous systems and brains.
Animals, particularly the social ones like birds and mammals, but even the more asocial, but still somewhat social ones, have means of expressing their thoughts, feelings, intentions and needs to other animals.
I think I meant like thinking in images and sounds, like the kind of thinking we do when weâre dreaming.
We use images, sounds and symbols to express connections between things, and uncover their essences, and by essences I donât mean anything spiritual, just like whatâs essential about a thing, like the shape of an orange is essentially a sphere, or relatively, thereâs no such thing as a perfect sphere in nature, itâs an essence, an idea.
Yea nonverbal, non-numerical thinking, like poetry, like a mountain might be used as a symbol for some great obstacle or challenge to overcome in your life, or a thing of awe, beauty, worship, or both.
The way we tend to think in dreams, dream language, in some cases might have something to do with the primordial, pre-linguistic language or languages we were speaking of.
This language thou is probably not absolute, or universal, thou thereâs some commonalities between us, because weâre all human, and certain things are just more easily symbolized by some things than others, but this language just like word language can be somewhat modified, improved upon, improvised.
Does a childâs brain come equipped with the mountain symbol for the aforementioned qualities?
Probably not, but upon seeing a mountain for the first time, his brain might be hardwired to make these connections.
And then some categories like roundness might exist in childâs brain prior to ever hearing the word round, or understanding the word it heard, and then there are many subtle categories and mechanisms we use to think we donât yet have words for, and may never have.
