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Thought is Not Consciousness



Proponents of “positive thinking” think that thought can lead to higher consciousness. Proponents of "rational thought" equate "reason" with consciousness. Neither is correct. Thought is a function of language, which is a conditioned intellectual structure. Thought, whether “positive” or “negative” (it can never exist without dualism) is associative mental reaction. By nature of what it is…it is mechanical, confined, and pre-conscious, even in its most esteemed levels. Thought is never free. There can be no new or original thoughts, only combinations of established ones within the context of language and cultural conditioning. There can be consciousness beyond thought only for those who realize the limitations of thought and find a means to access real conscious experience. This does not automatically happen...yet it is possible because of the inherent human capacity for it. It is the next possible step in human evolution, and it can be achieved by intentional effort on the part of an individual who seeks for real knowledge, finds it, and is able to profit from it. It is not a "gift" but it can be earned. Conscious evolution does not just happen but it must be the result of individual effort made under the guidance of those who themselves have found the method and have themselves activated consciousness.



The projection of “positive thought affirmations” can be an entertaining pastime...can be self-soothing and self-calming, such as whistling-in-the-dark to ease fear. It shuts out the small degree of reality that exists in ordinary thinking (deemed negative) and replaces it with a pleasant dream...a dream that is dependent on millennia of conditioned mental and emotional culture. Many people become satisfied with pleasant imagination rather than being receptive to real experience. That is admissible if one wants to sleep one's life away in peaceful and fanciful dreams. However, if one wants to awaken to one’s potential ---to real experience --- to real life ---one must put away the habits of fancy and fantasy, even if they are pretty, pleasant, and supportive of one’s conditioned sense-of-self ( which is itself false and was created to keep one locked in to "consensus consciousness"). To awaken, one has to leave one's dreams.



A prerequisite to awakening to higher function is a break with conditioned "knowledge". This break must be accomplished by an objective method that prevents the intrusion of the imagination or of the addictive thought patterns of the mind. It is a process that takes time and effort. Thought is not consciousness. Consciousness is not merely a cerebral function. Consciousness is a higher level of function than the intellectual process of thought. While the potential for higher conscious experience exists within each relatively normal person, it is almost completely blocked by the predetermined, mechanical, habitual functions that maintain the ego and its false sense-of-self.



Thought generates belief --- opinion, attitude, tribal collective identity, and often individual pathological perversity of mind. Even so-called "rational" thought is a limited structure of conditioned intellectual reaction. Thought is only one component of consciousness.



Once a belief is adopted, the mind seeks for and finds confirmation of that belief, whether in the configuration of the stars, in scripture, in the liver of a sheep, in the entrails of a chicken, in stones or tea leaves, in science, or in some symbolic system. The human imagination can find support for any possible or impossible projection.



People can and do believe in anything and everything. Imagination and belief systems may be satisfying to the ego-mind, but they do not lead to any real movement in the direction of consciousness. Yet, disbelief is no solution either. The next possible step in human evolution is a conscious one --- not one of imagination, dreams, “positive visualization,” traditional habit, limited science, "rational skepticism", or pseudo-spiritual games and canned new-age-psycho-babble romance. The next step requires an awakening conscience and consciousness by those few who are able to take it.

DAR
If you are going to cut and paste material like this you might want to raise everyone's consciousness a little and provide a link and the name of the author so people don't mistakenly think it is something you wrote.

The above material can be found here and appears to have been written by a Gurdjieff devotee named Dwight Ott. The above material can roughly be considered doctrinal assertions known as "The Fourth Way."

James Randi has the following blurb on Gurdjieff in his An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural

***
Gurdjieff, George Ivanovitch (1877?-1949) Still a major cult figure today, this enigmatic, colorful Russian guru was, for a while, a close friend of Peter Demianovich Ouspensky (1878-1947), another but rather less picturesque mystic.

Gurdjieff organized the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at Fontainebleau, near Paris, where he managed to talk his followers——artists, writers, rich widows, aristocrats and common folk who could afford it——into laboring freely for him in exchange for his convoluted wisdom on every imaginable subject.

He was a charismatic, unpredictable character who praised and damned with impunity; constantly declared obscure, indefensible opinions on science and on mankind; and left behind him a bizarre philosophy that charms perhaps because it seems at first to be thoughtful but upon close examination looks more like a colossal joke.

Wondering what qualities of Gurdjieff enabled him to so captivate and control his disciples, U.K. psychologist Christopher Evans remarked:

Was it the long black moustaches, curled fiercely upward or the vast, dome-like shaven head? Perhaps it was the short, squat, gorilla-like figure? Or the one eye strikingly, but indescribably different from the other? . . . Most likely it was a combination of Gurdjieff's weird physical presence plus the special talent he displayed of uttering just about every remark he made, however commonplace, as though it was pregnant with great meaning and significance.

The guru published All and Everything, more than a thousand pages of his rambling philosophy, and required his followers to read it and live by it. He still has a large following internationally, and the man who was known as “G” to his devoted disciples has managed to command their continued respect well after one of his frequent automobile crashes led to his premature demise in 1949.
***

D.

I am Dwight Ott, Le Penseur.

You have shown your agility at using the internet but you did not respond to the ideas presented. You are a "devotee" of James Randi...I am a devotee of Mr. Gurdjieff. Doctrinal assertions? Have you pigeonholed them in order to dismiss them" Tell me...what do you think?

Le Penseur

Le Penseur wrote:I am Dwight Ott, Le Penseur.

DAR
Oh I see, "The Thinker" is your other name.

OTT
You have shown your agility at using the internet but you did not respond to the ideas presented. You are a "devotee" of James Randi...I am a devotee of Mr. Gurdjieff.

DAR
I am not a devotee of anyone. You mustn't confuse your position of devotee to Gurdjieff with my happening to quote a little blurb from an encyclopedia written by James Randi. A blurb I found by following a link from the Gurdjieff page on wiki. But someone who calls them self "The Thinker" would know this right?

OTT
Doctrinal assertions? Have you pigeonholed them in order to dismiss them"

DAR
No. Doctrinal assertions is not accurate? Call them what you will. There is nothing wrong with doctrinal assertions. I don't see the above going anywhere beyond assertions.

OTT
Tell me...what do you think?

DAR
Starts out a little pseudo-intellectual to me and then progresses to a tease about what might be attained through some meditative process. That's not so bad so maybe l'm too harsh. First paragraph: word games, definitional sloppiness, lots of assumptions (some of which may be true). I asked my wife. She says she has read some of the Gurdjieff material years ago (as have I). She calls it "mental masturbation." Hmmm, I really don't remember.

Example from above:

"There can be no new or original thoughts, only combinations of established ones within the context of language and cultural conditioning."

That's a rather bold and declarative statement, if you are using normative definitions of these words. I guess you have defined "thought" in some special way so as to make the possibility of a "new or original thought" completely impossible. Not sure how useful that is.

I used to read lots of this kind of material and spent months on my behind meditating (not in a row!). You have some good points I would agree with but I'm just not into it anymore.

Skeptic's Dictionary has an interesting blurb on Gurdjieff. Sounds about right.

Excerpt: "To those on a quest for spiritual evolution or transformation, guides like Gurdjieff and Ouspesky promise entry into an esoteric world of ancient mystical wisdom. Such a world may seem attractive to those who are drifting at sea and rudderless."

This really looks like a lot of foo foo. See: Gurdjieff and Work

Short version: "[Gurdjieff's psychology] can best be described as a blend of operating Theosophist and the protagonist of Neopythagorean/Rosicrucian-Hermetic doctrines in vogue these times (turn of the 19/20th century.)"

Oops, he said "doctrines."

D.

D,

Thank you for your thoughts ( are they really "yours"?).

>> I don't see the above going anywhere beyond assertions. >>

Of course you don't and they won't unless there can be a movement past the rigid structure of thinking that doesn't allow for more "sight".

>>...a tease about what might be attained through some meditative process.>>

Where do you get that "tease"? The Fourth Way method is not meditation but is about waking up to a state of consciousness above the ordinary consensus consciousness in which people do what they do such as kill each other, foul their nest, write books, debate thoughts, etc.

>>"mental masturbation">> is what "free-thinkers" do.

>>You have some good points I would agree with but I'm just not into it anymore. >>

That's OK, D, I presented these ideas not to convince you or your wife that there is another possibility beyond ordinary thought, but merely because there is another view about "thought", even another experience, than is presented by the tribe here.

You can find enough "foo-foo" about Gurdjieff or anything else on the web. Much of what you "blurb" here is not at all accurate, even down to Mr. Randi's stating that Gurdjieff died as a result of an auto accident...he did not. It is no wonder that there is great misunderstanding. And beside all that...my post was my own writing, not that of Gurdjieff or anyone else.

Thanks again...

Le Penseur wrote: There can be no new or original thoughts, only combinations of established ones within the context of language and cultural conditioning.

DOUG
OK, and how is combining established thought within the context of language and cultural conditioning NOT original?

Einstein's theory of relativity was new in a very important sense. So are other breakthroughs in science. New styles of art have great originality. You seem dismissive of anything that isn't 100% new, but if a thought had NO connection to our language or culture, we wouldn't be able to understand it. What you see as a liability is really a necessity.

Le Penseur wrote: There can be consciousness beyond thought only for those who realize the limitations of thought and find a means to access real conscious experience.

I'd like to see the evidence for this claim that there can be consciousness "beyond thought." It is not clear what is meant, but if you are not thinking, what is the advantage of having this sort of consciousness?

Doug,

>>OK, and how is combining established thought within the context of language and cultural conditioning NOT original? >>

When you mix, say, Christianity and Buddhism, for example, what you get is not something original but only a rehashed soup.

>>...but if a thought had NO connection to our language or culture, we wouldn't be able to understand it. >>

Exactly right... "understanding" is dependent on these things...so it is limited. Thought as we know it cannot exist free from language and culture. So my "doctrinal assertion" is that consciousness is not thought, but an awareness beyond ordinary thought that can never "just happen" as long as a person's highest value is thought (including "logic" and "reason" and other thought structures).

Some "assertions by Einstein...



“A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.” - Albert Einstein



“I didn’t arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe through my rational mind.” - Albert Einstein

>>...what is the advantage of having this sort of consciousness?>>

What advantage is evolution?

Le Penseur wrote:Doug,

>>OK, and how is combining established thought within the context of language and cultural conditioning NOT original? >>

When you mix, say, Christianity and Buddhism, for example, what you get is not something original but only a rehashed soup.

DOUG
OK, but if no one has combined the two systems in that way before, in what way is that not original? You have not answered the question.

Le Penseur wrote:>>...but if a thought had NO connection to our language or culture, we wouldn't be able to understand it. >>

Exactly right... "understanding" is dependent on these things...so it is limited. Thought as we know it cannot exist free from language and culture. So my "doctrinal assertion" is that consciousness is not thought, but an awareness beyond ordinary thought that can never "just happen" as long as a person's highest value is thought (including "logic" and "reason" and other thought structures).

DOUG
No one is holding "thought" as a value. It is an assertion of fact. We have thoughts, and these occur as events and objects in our consciousness. To say that thought is not conscious is like saying that matter is not physical. It makes no sense.

Le Penseur wrote: Some "assertions by Einstein...
“A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.” - Albert Einstein
“I didn’t arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe through my rational mind.” - Albert Einstein

DOUG
I think you are importing your own view onto Einstein's statements. The "new way of thinking," for example, was a reference to peace and not war more than anything else, hence the comment about survival.

Le Penseur wrote: Doug wrote: >>...what is the advantage of having this sort of consciousness?>>

What advantage is evolution?

DOUG
Evolution is a fact. Whether it has advantages has nothing to do with whether it takes place.

However, the evolution of species confers advantages upon species with respect to their survival.

Doug,

Combining or mixing two sets of thoughts may result in an infinite number of "offspring", but they are still unoriginal in themselves...they did not generate themselves, but were generated from substances over which they had no control and never can have choice nor control.

>>No one is holding "thought" as a value. It is an assertion of fact. We have thoughts, and these occur as events and objects in our consciousness. To say that thought is not conscious is like saying that matter is not physical. It makes no sense.>>

Thoughts "occur", as you say...they come from somewhere. But merely that they happen does not make them conscious. Consciousness implies an act of reponsibility of being, not a reaction. Thoughts occur as reactions requiring no intention, no actions. They are mental excretion when they "happen". Certainly it is factual that thoughts occur...but that does not make them conscious, only a reactionary biological function.

>>The "new way of thinking," for example,.."

You misquote. He did not say "a new way of thinking" but a new type of thinking, meaning a new category. I imported nothing. What about the other quote?

I can see that you are talking about Darwinian evolution. Conscious Evolution doesn't "just happen". Human Beings have the potential to evolve consciously unlike other life forms in the organic layer of life on earth. But it is not guaranteed, only a possibility. And I am not talking about science or technology as evolution (they operate as cause and effect, automatically, with no conscious entity in charge. Cancer of this type, techno-culture, is not evolution).

Le Penseur wrote:Doug,

Combining or mixing two sets of thoughts may result in an infinite number of "offspring", but they are still unoriginal in themselves...they did not generate themselves, but were generated from substances over which they had no control and never can have choice nor control.

How does not having complete control mean that something is not original? I didn't invent the alphabet or the English language, but I can write an original novel. If you are using the word "original" in such a way as to imply 100% new content, one wonders what your point is. Why is not having 100% original content a problem? It would be a liability, not an advantage, since something with NO connection to previous ideas would not fit in a context such that it could be understood.

Le Penseur wrote: Thoughts "occur", as you say...they come from somewhere. But merely that they happen does not make them conscious. Consciousness implies an act of reponsibility of being, not a reaction. Thoughts occur as reactions requiring no intention, no actions. They are mental excretion when they "happen". Certainly it is factual that thoughts occur...but that does not make them conscious, only a reactionary biological function.

DOUG
It is not clear at all why you would suppose that thoughts do not imply responsibility. You seem to equate thoughts with involuntary reactions, yet the data suggests otherwise. Someone can deliberate about an issue and reach a conscious decision that is carefully reasoned and for all intents and purposes quite responsible. Since your view would see this as a contradiction in terms, which is absurd, I suggest that there is something wrong with your definitions.

Doug,

When you beat a dead horse repeatedly, it begins to smell.

So I will simply state that the prevailing definition of humanity and its highly esteemed capacities needs re-examination. If you hold that as it now exists, with its grandiose free will, conscience, science, and power of thought, it is a finished product...the apex of creation...with full consciousness and legitimate self-direction, you are seeing a very different creature than I see.

My view is that a human has great inherent potential but as it now "thinks", "feels" and "acts", it is a dangerous creature just crawling out of the cave with enough simple awareness to make it superstitious, tribal, violent, and destructive of itself and its environment. It is an unfinished creature...one that reacts but has not acquired the ability to act from any conscious presence of itself.

That is also what Mr. Einstein said in the quote, in my view.

Now, please feel free to beat further in my absence...

Sounds vaguely like what I remember of Teilhard de Chardin writings - that humanity's next stage would be reached through conscious change rather than "mindless" evolution. I believe he called that future human home spiritualis.

Der Thinker:
There can be no new or original thoughts, only combinations of established ones within the context of language and cultural conditioning.

DAR
Boy, The Thinker didn't last very long. I think he is used to giving answers and not having them questioned. It's a thing that guru's and guru wannabes like to do. Devotee's of guru's like to emulate their leaders/teachers and the information is to come from the top down.

Now, imagine if someone were to come along and say:

"There can be no new or original songs, only combinations of established ones within the context of music and cultural conditioning."

So I sit down at the piano and say hey, listen to this new song I just wrote. A couple notes into the piece (it wouldn't matter what I played) Der Penseur stops me and points out that the notes and chords I just played have been played before so therefore there can be nothing new or original here. Since there can "no new or original" songs (and of course you can't even give an example of what one would sound like since there can be none) it must all be a rehash. Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata? Nothing new or original. A hundred and seventy eight hours worth of music composed by Bach? Nothing new or original there.

What's the point of defining "new and original" so narrowly? What does it accomplish? Nothing. It's a word game. Boring.

D.

Darrel wrote:It's a word game.

Along the same lines, and speaking of word games...

tzmblzlgudimiwseuztcwegncqyeldhxeckhiadbrodxjctkho

This is a randomly generated string of fifty letters. Because its components have been selected from the same standard alphabet as the rest of these words, the above string makes this paragraph superfluous -- or at least it is if Penseur is correct.

Raise your hand if you understood the information in the paragraph just by reading the string. Nobody? I'm shocked.

Consciousness implies an act of reponsibility of being, not a reaction.

Seems reactions can be measured. As for "an act of responsibility" being measurable I wonder. Somehow I'm reminded of the grey squirrel who feeds under my window each afternoon. It reacts but also takes actions I see as curiosity. Does it think? So if "an act of responsibility" is not measurable does it ever happen?