What is Thought and Where Does It Come From?

What is Thought and Where Does It Come From?

Have you ever wondered where your thoughts come from? I’m thinking that maybe I should get a home loan to pay off my credit card debt. Where did that thought come from? Am I thinking that because my credit card bill just arrived in the mail? Or did that thought come from watching a commercial on T.V. that promoted refinancing? After watching Fox News spend the last two weeks raving about the corruption of Acorn Projects, I still believe that for the most part Acorn is doing a good job in their attempts to help low income people. Why do I think this? I’ve never done any research on Acorn. Is it because of the liberal education that I received in college that I think this? What is thought? Do we ever have thoughts of our own? Can thinking lead to a change in being?

In my study of the Fourth Way there seems to be two different opinions of thought and its value. Gurdjieff and his students feel that thought is important. It is the only function that we have some control over and can lead to new knowledge that can help one to raise their level of being. Krishnamurti on the other hand feels that thought is always from the past and that one must free ones self from thought in order to discover the Truth.

Ouspensky in his book The Fourth Way maintains that we must think in a new way in order to change our level of being. He argues that in Bible the word repent comes up very often, but it is misinterpreted. Repent does not mean to regret or to ask forgiveness. Repent means to think in a different way, to think beyond the senses. According to Gurdjieff and his students, ancient knowledge exists that could lead us to a higher level of being if we could find and understand it.

We cannot put to practice the concepts of the Work if we do not know them, and we can only know them by talking to people who have this higher knowledge or by reading about this knowledge. We cannot put to practice Self Remembering if we have never though about it. If we do not have the knowledge of how our machine works, we cannot make repairs to malfunctioning centers. If we do not know that we are asleep, we cannot make efforts to awaken.

Ouspensky maintains that we must think from the Work and not from life. The Work is our second education. When we learn that we have negative emotions we can work against them and cease to lose so much energy though going with them. When we learn that we are always lose ourselves in identification, we can work on becoming less identified. When we learn that it is more profitable to externally consider, we can stop internal considering to some extent. When we learn that we have not one ‘I’, but hundreds of ‘I’s that can pop up at any moment, we can die to some of the negative ‘I’s. We can only develop Observing I if we have some knowledge of what it is. All of these work terms are learned by thinking from the Work.

Krishnamurti is concerned with the fourth level, the unknown, that which is beyond thought and time, with the immensity. In one place he states, "As the path that goes up the mountain can never contain all of the mountain, so the immensity is not the word." The immensity is beyond the word, and can never be experienced through thought. He also states that the immensity is beyond feeling, and cannot be touched with emotion. Here, Krishnmurti reinforces the Work concept that as we are at the second level of consciousness, we can only experience negative emotions that are like thought learned, from the known, and not the real thing.

Krishnamurti says that a mechanical habit, repeated over and over again can eventually be perfected. Thinking, believing the same thing over and over without deviation becomes a mechanical habit... Thought is a mechanical habit that becomes an impediment to seeing what really is. Thought is always in the past... Thought is memory...

He maintain that thought, thinking creates the many ‘I's in our make up. Sorrow has been put together by thought and thought feeding upon its self forms the I and the me. As a machine has life, so do the I and the me, a life which is fed by thought and feeling. When there is no thought, we do not exist as separate beings. Every thought shapes the mind in the mold of the known; every feeling, every emotion, however refined becomes wasteful and empty and the body fed on thought and feeling loses its sensibility.

Where does thought come from? Sensation ---- The Word---- Memory. All thought is in the past. We can use thought only to operate in the known, in the every day world of material things. And, it is important to develop thought. We have to know how to get from our homes to the place where we work. We have to earn a living. Thought can help us here. The problem is we let thought dominate...

The difference between Krishnamurti and the Gurdjieff School seems to be that the Gurdjieff School is trying to take man from the second level of consciousness to the third level. In order to reach this level that is called Self Remembering or Self Awareness, we have to use the special thought of the Work. Krishnamurti is trying to take man to the fourth level of being where he can be in touch with the Absolute. You cannot reach this level of being through thought.

So, what are your thoughts, and where do they come from? Are all of your thoughts planted in your brain by your mother, father, older siblings, teachers, the books that you read, the news programs that you listen to? Do you have any thoughts that are truly your own. Are any thoughts in this article my own thoughts? How much can we depend on our thinking?