do people REALLY stop thinking, or do they just become oblivious to their thought processes, a change in awareness.... a waking sleep if you will?

I just cannot under any circumstances comprehend complete silence of the mind... the very nature of such a thing would almost seem to imply being dead..... what I see it as (from an outside view, having never totally experienced it) is just a shift in awareness.... to something else... a shift of awareness out of your brain/head if you will.... so that you really are thinking, you can't ever stop... you are just no longer connected to your thought processes...

if this makes sense?

I see it as simply a change in perception... not a change in thought... tuning into something else.

When people say they can stop thinking at all... I tend not to believe them... I tend to think either

a) they aren't listening hard enough

b) they aren't remembering the details of the state they were in

c) they just shifted awareness away from their thoughts onto... "something" else.

Becuase I can understand how you can *think* (hah) that you weren't thinking for a few seconds.... but in fact most all such circumstances I have been in... if I just dig a little bit back into the experience, I realize I not only was thinking, I was very mentally active... I just wasn't very connected to it.

Like being half asleep.....

Hence I right now believe in the conscious/unconscious minds.

What I think happens... is that you sort of flip a switch... it's much more gradual than that but it can sometimes be perceived to be very rapid due to poor memory whilst in that state..... but you flip a switch and the conscious mind shuts off, and the unconscious turns on.

Effectively this happens every night while falling asleep, but is counteracted while dreaming, as dreaming proves to be an interface between the conscious/unconscious... though non lucid dreams tend to largely be UNconscious, and very very lucid dreams can have the effect of directly communicating and interfacing with the unconscious.

So.. what I think happens is people just stay in a borderline state of awake/asleep.... and they are dissociated from their bodies.... they perceive it as a state of no thought.... but in fact if they were to listen closer, or reflect deeply back upon the experience, they would hear the unconscious mind rambling away....

I don't know how to describe what the unconscious sounds like... I'm usually 5% conscious and 95% unconscious while trying to do my meditations before falling halfway asleep...

I guess I'll just jump on the stream analogy.... you think... that thought progresses into another thought which progresses into another thought... it is like mental feedback... the longer it goes on, the deeper you go... the more serene you feel... but the more detached you become and the harder it remains to remember the experience upon leaving it.

When this chain of unconscious dripping... and waterfalling, sometimes, is abruptly aborted, usually by your still very tiny sense of SELF and being..... the quiet "hey.. i'm here observing this" it causes a chaotic transition back into normalness.... known as a myoclonic jerk..... depending on how deep you've gotten it can be accompanied with a rush of paralysis.. only very much reversed, as if you are JUST NOW being sent the sensory information that you have been paralysed, but it's always going away.

I kind of liken that to ansethesia.... when I have surgery, I wake up in tremendous pain, but I know what I am feeling is from the past.. and it only lasts very very briefly... but encompanies an extremely intense rush.

Like... delayed sensory information just now being redistirbuted to you.

So.... I think we never stop thinking... I think we just transfer control of thought to another vessel, the unconscious..... the problem therein for me lies in that I confuse this state with sleep.. and cannot stay in it for very long, and when I abruptly come out of it... it's tiring and disorienting......

I've been here so many times that I have a vague idea of what the unconscious experience is like... what listening to the ever cascading and multiplying unconscious stream/waterrfall is like.....

and I would think that it roughly equals the ideals of ego loss.... and that being able to stay focused on that..... or... being able to stay in your "vessel" while letting the unconscious do the thinking... would equate to this "ego loss"

perhaps there is a way to stay tuned into the conscious mind, while simultaneously shutting it off.... maybe that is what meditation is about..... maybe I'm transfering my sense of "self" from conscious to unconscious, which is the normal sleep process... effectively causing these disruptions and myoclonic jerks and whatnot....

I don't know.

But I do not think it possible to ever silence your mind.... not until death at least.... I don't know.

From my experinces it just seems to be a transfer of control from you to something/someone else, i.e. the unconscious mind.

All material © 2004 by me.