Artemis, read his book, or take a look online for a PDF copy of his works, it might help this make sense. Or don't, it's your choice. — Antidote

If you can't tell me, it can't be all that clear or "understandable."

Give me an example. — Artemis

In your experience, have you ever known something that was not taught to you by another human being? Have you ever had a "flash of inspiration"? Have you ever been determined to find a solution to something, only to walk away from it and suddenly get the answer? Do you hear your voice of intuiton inside you? Have you ever "known" something you couldn't have known?

The examples cannot come from my experience because I cannot give you that. But you have a memory, therefore can you remember in your own experience a time when anything like this happened to you? How far back can you remember? Can you remember any of your early childhood?

Have you ever had a gap in your thinking, other than falling asleep and dropping below consciousness, instead of being awake and rising above it? Have you read any buddist material on negation?

If you can't tell me, it can't be all that clear or "understandable." — Artemis

Read the book, honestly even if its just a few pages and see what you think. If you object, listen to your objection, is it valid? What are you objecting to?

The buddist say, "Don't look at the finger pointing to the moon and mistake the finger for the moon". Sit quietly and contemplate this. What does it mean? Why is it so profound?

Why were ancient cultures more interested in listening to the heart, than the mind? What does that mean? Can you feel anything in your body? These things may help.

As I follow this, understanding brings something into thought, so is a synthesizing function, not entirely thought, and not merely thought. And in some cases, thinking can impede understanding (examples were given, Zeigarnik effect). — Pantagruel

True, understanding is the flowering and brings something much greater into it. It is greater than the sum of its parts. Thought will always intrupt this process, so the skill is as understanding arises, don't try to grasp it, instead allow it to be and it will grow.

The examples cannot come from my experience because I cannot give you that. — Antidote

That makes no sense.

Read the book, honestly even if its just a few pages and see what you think. If you object, listen to your objection, is it valid? What are you objecting to?

The buddist say, "Don't look at the finger pointing to the moon and mistake the finger for the moon". Sit quietly and contemplate this. What does it mean? Why is it so profound?

Why were ancient cultures more interested in listening to the heart, than the mind? What does that mean? Can you feel anything in your body? These things may help. — Antidote

So... he's not clear enough or sensible enough that you could just tell me. Gotcha. Sorry, no, I have a better reading list on my shelf.

In the end, all this is no better than any other religion preaching about needing to accept Jesus or whomever into their souls before you can really "see the light."

Is that what you're here for? To proselytize?

I have no wish to create any animosity, nor to be in a battle of winning or losing. I simply engaged to test my own wisdom and to benefit any that might have the eyes to see it. Go well, I wish you all the best.

simply engaged to test my own wisdom and to benefit any that might have the eyes to see it. — Antidote

So, you're here to bequeath us all with your superior insight... How kind of you.

That's called proselytizing.

Understanding is picture thinking. It is limited, lacks depth and human thoughts derive from understanding.

EDUCATION, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse. — Ambrose Bierce

The thing about this cerebral secretion, understanding, is that one can still understand the difference between a house and a horse even when one is not thinking about them. The secretion remains available should the occasion arise even when one is eating chocolate biscuits and watching tv.

That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

So true, I read a similar thing in the Emerald Tablets of Thoth, saying "knowledge is regarded by the fool as ignorance, and the things that are profitable, are to him hurtful. He lives in death, it is therefore his food."

knowledge is regarded by the fool as ignorance, and — Antidote

Yet another really convenient way to dismiss any and all critics. :brow:

Does thinking therefore add anything to understanding, or does an absense of thought allow insight to arise? — Antidote

Mathematical research problems are frequently resolved by diligent thought for a period of time, then relaxing the mind and going about one's daily routine, allowing the subconscious to produce results. However, the subconscious is not infallible and what bubbles up can be disappointing! :cool:

Absolutely so. The language of the conscious mind, which developed from picture, to symbol, to letter is not one that the sub conscious understands. It understands stories and visualisation as shown by hypnosis and the like. A child with no language is more in tune with its sub conscious and often more intuitive. It has been suggested that we become more like children in order to understand ourselves better so this leads me to conclude that all else is really a distraction. It would also follow then that the conscious mind is divisive where as the sub conscious is unifying.

The language of the conscious mind, which developed from picture, to symbol, to letter is not one that the sub conscious understands. It understands stories and visualisation as shown by hypnosis and the like. — Antidote

Can you give a reference to this claim, something beyond an Eastern religious doctrine? In my opinion, as humans we reach our potential not by avoiding an aspect of mind, but by living in a kind of balance between the various aspects.

Sorry, but I have to agree - in general - with here.

There is no understanding when thought is absent. All understanding is comprised completely thereof.

I definitely agree its not by avoidance, but by negation - by the absence thereof. If you consider children stories, they often have a moral code behind them but it is coded in a way that passes the conscious mind and therefore is accepted by the subconscious. Instead of telling a story about say, the monkey foot and wishes, why not just say to the child, "careful what you wish for, it may come true". The story style remains with the child, the direct approach is registered, then forgotten, incidentally suggesting consciousness being associated with short term memory but high intensity, and sub conscious being associated with long term memory, low intensity.

Creativesoul, thats absolutely fine, what do you have when thought is absent, for instance when a baby suckles, or a newly born fish swims? For a long time I had the same view, however looking at ego shattering experience or ego death, my view reversed. Each is entitled to their own opinion of course, variety is the spice of life.

An excess of thought profits nothing. If thought were the natural outcome or effect, brought on by confusion, then the more you think, the more confused you will get. Does thinking therefore add anything to understanding, or does an absense of thought allow insight to arise? If intuition were the voice of reason, but it were quiter than the overbearing voice of thought, would you ever hear it. A room full of people talking all at once, creates a song, not a conversation.

Does understanding arise as a result of thought, or in the gaps between thoughts. — Antidote

Both. In a way I get what you’re trying to allude to: that thought is not understanding. But it’s not so much the rejection of thinking that allows for insight, but the broadening of the mind to include information beyond thoughts. Buddhist teaching advocates a clearing of the mind in order to gain awareness of the wealth of information available in each moment, and to recognise that the mind does not consist only of thoughts - but in no way does it suggest that thinking adds nothing to understanding.

Thinking enables us to conceptualise reality in relational structures well beyond our sensory experience of the present moment. But it is information from an ever-changing present moment, and with it a humble recognition that these relational structures of ours are limited and prone to prediction error, that enable us to continually improve our understanding.

It is in relating to what lies beyond our thinking - not in reducing our thinking - that promotes understanding. This means increasing awareness, connection and collaboration with what we consider to be ‘unthinkable’: inclusive of improbable, illogical, irrational and immoral possibilities. The information these relations provide is vital to a more accurate understanding of reality.

All thought is information, but not all information is thought.

You put it beautifully, and more clearly than I, thank you. It is the rising above, or going beyond thought that I was suggesting, as you rightly say. I was tempted to draw the similarity between a clear pond of water, verses the same pond but with a stone thrown in. That was the obscurity i wanted to hightlight.

Does understanding arise as a result of thought, or in the gaps between thoughts. — Antidote

Well, both. But if you think too much it will cut down on experiencing new things. Thinking - if by this we mean, verbal private thoughts - while someone is talking, is a problem. We need to be silent, to physically interact with things without mental thoughts, to list, to watch, to put ourselves into attempts to act and try doing things and a lot of other activities where thoughts can get in the way. Ruminating often is both a waste of time and a way of not learning but staying in a loop. There are many ways to find thoughts getting in the way.

On the other hand we don't have to choose in general between these two things. We can think and do other things in different moments. In fact watching, trying, and self-reflecting over the result is an incredible sequence for learning many things. There are other wonderful combinations.

An excess of thought profits nothing. If thought were the natural outcome or effect, brought on by confusion, then the more you think, the more confused you will get. Does thinking therefore add anything to understanding, or does an absense of thought allow insight to arise? If intuition were the voice of reason, but it were quiter than the overbearing voice of thought, would you ever hear it. A room full of people talking all at once, creates a song, not a conversation.

Does understanding arise as a result of thought, or in the gaps between thoughts. — Antidote

Well, Aristotle did make a big deal of finding the so-called golden mean and if one subscribes to the basic idea behind it then both there exists such a thing as excess of thought and such excess of thought is bad.

What is excess of thought and how is it bad or why is it that it, in your words, "profits nothing"? Taking account of the fact that thinking animals is thought to be an apt description of humans, I don't see how any amount of thinking would be counterproductive or bad. Perhaps it's some kind of culutural conditioning but I've heard people say things like, "we didn't get enough time to think through this" and "not enough thought was given to the matter", as if to say that, setting aside the issue of time which I'll get to later, the real problem was not that there was an excess of thought but actually a deficiency of thought. In other words, the idea of an excess of thought appears incoherent in certain situations.

That said, there's the time dimension to life that we need to consider. Everything we do comes at a cost we've to meet in the currency of time. Since we have to divvy up our time between activities, thinking might be problematic if we do it at the cost of other activities in life. Thus, in a temporal sense, there can be such a thing as excess of thought, something done with disregard to other aspects of what counts as a life.

Perhaps you mean something else - that there's an inherent flaw in thinking itself that becomes apparent especially when we do it in excess. All I can say in that regard is to quote an exchange between Bohr and Einstein:

Einstein: Alas, our theory is too poor for experience
Bohr: No, experience is too rich for our theory

Excess thought in its most apparent form occurs when someone is suffering a panic attack. Granted the effect is in the body, but the cause is from the thought. Not all excessive thought results in a panic attack, because it depends on the nature of the thought. If the thought is of impending doom, especially if that is linked to ones life in the form of imminent death, then the panic attack occurs. If real physical death is felt to be imminent, then it doesnt occur the same way. So the panic attack occurs when the thought is there, but there is no real physical threat. Of course, there are degrees as in scale, sometimes it might just be anxiety or unease rather than full blown panic attack. Either way the origin is the thought.

In the sense excess thought profits nothing, is related to this topic title. The more thought there is, the less understanding there is. If understanding arises by negation or absence, then the more thought there is, the less understanding there is. For example, if you have a garden thats full of weeds, theres no room to grow fruit and veg. Thats not staying thought is not useful, its excessive thought that is unproductive.

Adding time into this muddys the water further. Granted, people do say they didnt have time for this or that, and present this as a reason for why the goal was not achieved, but was this challenged? Did anyone look at what the time was actually spent on. When ever time or money are used for reasons not to do something, usually this occurs as a clever excuse not to try in the first place, or to justify having spent the time in distraction and not on the problem at hand. Not always, but often and depending on the reason for the excuse. Once i was told, use the 5 whys. Whatever you are given as a reason, in response ask why. By the 5th time you will arrive at the real why, if not before.

In terms of time, again, it could be seen as an obstacle, or an illusion. Eckhart Tolle explains this fantastically, but i will attempt a poor repetition. Clock time, your watch time, does exist, but in the same way a tape measure exists. If you apply it to anything, then it has meaning. Without an object of relativity it becomes pretty pointless. All we really have is now, right now, this moment. You can say X happened in the past or will happen in the future, but either way when you think about it or remember it, you do so, in the now, this present moment. Consider anything in your life that didn't happen in the present moment? Nothing ever happens unless it is in this moment now. That said, eternity does exist, but it is this moment that is eternal. It takes quite some contemplating to really feel this, but once the penny drops, it is one of the big obstacles overcome.

If we create a frame of reference for ourselves, then everything after that point is within that frame of reference. If I imagine time as real i am trapped within the frame of reference called time. Time changes not, but all things change in time. Look for time, where will you find it? Yes, there is evidence of its effect if you ascribe the effect to time, but you wont find time. Dismantle a clock, you wont find time. It doesnt exist.

Absolutely right, there is an inherent flaw in thinking, i couldnt have put it better. Again, its the frame of reference. If thinking is the frame of reference, then everything following it has to remain in the frame of reference. Decates said, "i think therefore i am", framed thinking within thinking. He should have said, "i think i think, therefore i think i am". It has a place for sure, just like a starter motor has a place on a car. But you cant drive your car on the starter motor (well I guess you can but it will be painfully slow progress, and the starter motor will burn out).

I like the quote, it points to exactly this. Our experience is too rich for theories. Well of course it is, experience is not a theory. All is vibration, so it always was, so it always will be.

Driver: the starter motor is too slow to complete this 10,000 mile journey (moving at half a mile an hour)
Co-driver: No, the distance is just too far.

Everything on the outside is a reflection, therefore its all appears backwards. Look at your image in a mirror. Then look at a photograph of yourself, they dont match.

Excess thought in its most apparent form occurs when someone is suffering a panic attack. Granted the effect is in the body, but the cause is from the thought. Not all excessive thought results in a panic attack, because it depends on the nature of the thought. If the thought is of impending doom, especially if that is linked to ones life in the form of imminent death, then the panic attack occurs. If real physical death is felt to be imminent, then it doesnt occur the same way. So the panic attack occurs when the thought is there, but there is no real physical threat. Of course, there are degrees as in scale, sometimes it might just be anxiety or unease rather than full blown panic attack. Either way the origin is the thought. — Antidote

The problem here is not excess thought, it’s how we perceive prediction error, which is experienced as humility, pain, loss or lack. We generally refer to this as suffering, and we do our best to avoid it.

But prediction error is simply a recognition that how we conceptualise or think of reality doesn’t correspond to our sensory experience of the present moment. It’s a challenge to find the energy, attention and effort to process this new information at the time because the body operates on limited resources, which have already been allocated in advance. Do we hold onto our concepts as they are, or do we adjust them to accomodate this new information?

Anxiety, unease or full-blown panic attack occurs when we don’t recognise the internal negative affect from prediction error as our sensory experience challenging the concepts we use to make these predictions. Interoception of negative internal affect interprets this new sensory information from the present moment as the cause and therefore an imminent physical threat, and prepares the system accordingly. Instead of allocating energy to integrate the new information, the body allocates energy to generate a fight-or-flight response to this ‘offending’ information.

I can't say I fully follow, but that may well be because we are looking at this completely opposite to each other or we understand the words differently. Where you see humility as part of suffering, I only see that in context of the ego (the selfish self that is false, and will die anyway because it was never real). For instance, if I say, "I'm sorry", do I suffer? No. Unless you say did my ego take a hit and get a bit smaller by being humble, in which case the answer is "yes, it did". That, I would see as a good thing, because where the ego shrunk, the soul grew. Is there a reward in humility, and if so, to what? I would answer, the soul was rewarded because it gained back ground from the ego. I definitely do not agree that suffering should be avoided. That's not even possible. The condition is suffering. Pleasure/pain are the same coin, just different sides - a pendulum swing. The degree you have pleasure, will then attract the same degree of pain. For example, I get pleasure from my car. Then it breaks down, get smashed, etc. I suffer, its painful. But only to the degree of pleasure I had from it. Why did the whole saga happen in the first place? Because I desired pleasure from the car, I attached the car to my sense of self. Because this is wrong, I suffered.

On humility, I see this in a young child who is encouraged to say sorry. They struggle to start with and will refuse. But, once they do it, and do it a few times, they then understand the benefit to it, and then they offer "a sorry" before you ask them. That is of course, if you explain what the sorry is for, and why it is necessary. If you just get them to "parrot" a sorry, then it has no value other than to appear like a nice thing to do - an etiquette.

It may well be we have a different understanding of the words, because I will be completely honest, I don't know what "prediction error as our sensory experience" means to you, as it suggests that perhaps your senses gave you false information? I'm not sure I follow. Again, I don't understand a lot of it, but as another example, "Instead of allocating energy to integrate the new information, the body allocates energy to generate a fight-or-flight response to this ‘offending’ information." Are you suggesting that there is not enough energy in the system to understanding something? The body has not allocated any energy in my understanding from or to the "fight or flight" response, because this is a release of hormones into the blood, excreted from the adrenal glands? Has energy been diverted from somewhere else to make the glands work? I don't know. I'm sorry, I'm not being facetious, I just don't completely follow the words. I'm pretty sure its just our difference in understanding of the combination of words.