THE NATURE OF HUMAN THOUGHT

“You, your joys, your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free-will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules”

Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the molecular structure of DNA in 1953, as reported in Time magazine, Special Issue, Winter, 1997/98, pg 66.

In stating that the events of the universe are all predetermined, one may ask whether this determinism also extends to human thought itself. Here we must keep in mind that the human brain and nervous system is constantly acted upon by external stimuli (bio-chemical, environmental, electrical, physical, etc.) to trigger various nervous system impulses and activate certain thought centers in the brain. One can easily liken this to a kind of robotic behavior that we allow our own egos to interpret as “free will”. Our conscious and subconscious minds are constantly stimulated by these external pressures which generate certain thoughts and actions in much the same way in which a computer generates certain apparent behaviors as a result of nothing more than pre-written logical code (as opposed to our bio-logical codes).

However, as many popular authors have attempted to demonstrate, a deeper level of awareness exists, which is constantly drowned out by these gross ‘surface’ noise type stimulations. The majority of these “self-help” authors have conjectured on such theories principally on the basis of anecdotal evidence that is difficult to qualify or quantify. However, if we now look towards the theories of determinism and non-differentiation (unity) of the Cosmos, as extrapolated from the principles of quantum mechanics earlier in this book, one can begin to envisage a logical basis for such beliefs. At the very least, we can see new impetus to look further at new ways in which we could, and perhaps, should, see the world around us.

It could further be hypothesized then, that it is the artificial irritation, stimulation, or ‘itch’, caused by the gross biochemical stimulation on the human physiology that causes the sensation of desire, or rather, the addiction to desire. Desire for sweet foods, for sex, for pleasure, even for happiness itself. Effectively then, this desire, which is not a result of our own pure will, but rather, a result of the deterministic forces of the Big Bang, which dominate the actions of the body to create the preordained play of which the script was long ago cast in stone.

Throughout the course of this book, I have tried to justify the concept of space and time (the basis for our perception of reality) being "relatively" illusory. As such, the concepts of individuality (a sense of separateness between one's-self and the elements of the world around one's-self), and causality (the sense that one is causing things to happen as a function of one's own personal efforts and free-will) should also be correspondingly "relatively" illusory also. That is to say, relative to our frame of reference - depending on whether our frame of reference or frame of observation is that of the individual self or of the Greater Self which we define as the whole of that which we are aware.

This being the case, we must also conclude that thought itself (thought being a function of time, space and arguably, also neuro-anatomical processes), from which knowledge and "intelligence" are derived, must also be relatively illusory depending upon which frame of reference we chose to fix our awareness upon. Indeed, we can conceive of thought as being completely illusory if we engage our awareness from the highest frame of reference of the one-ness of the universe (the Greater Self).

Therefore, we must also conclude that knowledge is self-existant. It can be neither created, nor destroyed. Like time and space itself, all knowledge existed in its entirety in the primordial singularity before creation. It is only when we fix our awareness upon the individual self, that ego is empowered and takes as its own, the knowledge of which it is made aware. It then believes that knowledge is being created rather than "discovered". It is only when individual thought is subdued, even momentarily, that one gains a glimpse of the vast immortal reservoirs of knowledge. In such a thought-free state of intensely keen awareness (as opposed to a thought-less state of sedation), intelligence is not restricted by the limitations of the biological instinctive animal brain, and the totality of knowledge can be seen. By resting one's awareness upon an object (even a complex object such as a sophisticated piece of machinery), one becomes aware of all of its characteristics, both spatially and temporally.

To anyone who has not experienced this phenomenon, it must seem surreally absurd. It is non-the-less entirely correct and repeatable for anyone who wishes to try and perseveres long enough to become adept at it. In the mid 1980's I was running a startup robotics company. We were just a small group of students and each of us had his own specialty. The robot thus consisted of thousands of circuits and lines of software. Being a startup, we were very cash starved and everything including the circuit boards were home-made. I had been driving the design team very hard because we had a major demonstration scheduled for a big multinational. The night before the big demonstration, I was alone in the lab working on some new software. Suddenly the robot started to malfunction and eventually failed to start entirely. The problem could have been in any one of the thousands of circuits which existed on the robot or it could have been a hairline crack in any one of the tens of thousands of traces on the circuit boards. I tried making a few measurements with the oscilloscope but could not find the problem. I had been driving the design crew so hard that they were probably near mutiny. Most of them had gone out of town for the weekend and even if they returned early that evening, no one was about to come in on a Sunday night to work on a problem which could take days to solve. Furthermore, I needed the machine working so that I could write software for the next days big demonstration. The situation was desperate. I decided to focus my mind and in a thought-free state, rest my awareness upon the machine. I immediately became aware (without any intellectual thought or analysis) that a hairline fracture had occurred at a specific place amongst one of the tens of thousands of traces on a specific circuit board. I warmed up a soldering iron and flowed solder into that trace. The problem was solved and the demonstration proceeded the following day successfully.

All knowledge, past, present and future (although none of these temporal distinctions exist from the frame of reference of the Greater Self - they only exist in the 3 dimensional world of the individual self) exists at all times everywhere. The burning of libraries cannot destroy it. Supercomputers cannot create it.

Intellectualization, or the action performed through one's intelligence, is in reality, from the perspective of the Greater Self which is the truest reality, merely a self-stimulatory habitual behavior which serves no purpose other than the gratification of the nervous system of the individual self.

There are two aspects to the evolution of intelligence in mankind because there are two aspects of intelligence; that which is perceived from the relative perspective of the individual self and that which is perceived from the perspective of the Greater Self. The former is subject to neuro-chemical processes and is a function of biological evolution. Therefore, just as all biological elements in the universe, it will continue to evolve indefinitely in an adaptive response to the environmental needs of the human species. The latter, transcends the biological limitations of the physical body and its neuro-anatomical restrictions. It is the instantaneous and all pervasive awareness of the Greater Self which encompasses the individual self and everything upon which the senses of the individual self come to rest (including a malfunctioning robot). This is true intelligence.

How then do we cure ourselves of this addictive surface stimulation which clouds our awareness of “true will” ? This can be achieved through deep introspective analysis of the thoughts and actions of the body as they emerge in order to find their source and discriminate them (thoughts and actions caused by biochemical and environmental stimulation of the brain) from the script information of the quantum field or true will.

One may of course wonder if it is indeed possible to achieve a conscious awareness of all time and space and to possess the ability to tap into the vast knowledgebase of the past, present and future, why is it that we don’t see those who have mastered this ability become billionaires and world rulers by using this miraculous power ? The answer is simple.

Firstly, the state of consciousness of total cosmic awareness is extremely difficult to sustain for a prolonged period. Secondly, those who have advanced to the level of being able to live in such a state continuously, give as much importance to the very “limited” realm of physical three dimensional reality , as a teenager gives to the make-believe world of her old dolls and doll houses. Although they at one time in her development constituted a big part of her reality, she knows them now for what they are, a reality constructed through the sheer force of her “categorizing mind”, her imagination. A lesser and more primitive reality than she can now benefit from. As such, it is discarded. She moves on. She grows up. There are a small number of profound people who, having achieved this level of awareness, do remain, either to burn off the last minute vestiges of their karmic energies or to quietly help others on the path.

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