Thomas said:
The source of a thought, however, might be obscure, it might not even be you...
This, of course, can lead to some interesting discussion, and can proceed more along the lines of
social inquiry & commentary, rather than metaphysics. In this case, the former would seem to be of much greater usefulness, at least,
imho.
Nevertheless, anyone who has practiced contemplative meditation long enough, will surely have realized (or at least considered) that a
great many thoughts don't actually originate with "us" at all! They simply
drift through, sort of like dandelion fluff on a gentle breeze. Those thought-forms with which we
`resonate,' will form a good part of the
stream of consciousness of a given afternoon!
In light of some of your discussion on another thread, Thomas, consider the familiar expression,
"an idle mind is the devil's playground." Certainly a busy morning at the office, or an evening spent writing an essay, will not lend itself to this expression
nearly as much as a
lazy afternoon in front of the TV can tend to do.
My own experience is that the vast majority of
thoughtforms are actually quite innocuous, so I'm not sure if I'd agree with what I've gathered thus far about
`logosmoi.' There certainly does seem to be a challenge, however, in
choosing which thoughts will occupy our awareness ... and I tend to believe that say, 95% or more of our thoughts are
not original. And perhaps this is just the point - that we tend to drift from thoughtform to thoughtform, often without any real awareness of this fact, or
why.
As a bit of commentary, based on my own understanding of modern
Discipleship, it is precisely the
conscious control of our thought-process, the ability to
stay the otherwise "ceaseless modifications of the thinking principle," as Patanjali puts it ...
aka, vritti ... toward which we are all striving (with more or less realization of this fact, and
effort toward that goal). There is a short segment called
`Three Arhats' from the Teachings of Living Ethics ("Agni Yoga"), concerning an experiment between the Buddha and three of His advanced students (the
arhats), worth looking at along these lines. It can be found online,
here.
This subject of the possible
objectivity of thought (a certainly, I long ago decided), has always interested me along the lines of what Plato called the
`Forms' - by which he meant Ideals, or archetypal thoughts (not unrelated to Jungian archetyes, either - or the subject of the
collective unconscious). It may be radical to some, even a bit daunting, to consider the notion that
not only does there exist a collective
unconscious, but also a
collective conscious, as well as a
collective Super-Conscious ... verily, a `Collective
Conscience.' But I would argue, from my own experiences and convictions -
that such is precisely the case!!!
Of course, only the former two really have anything to do with an `astral plane,' save for the extent to which our
conscience impresses itself upon us
via our emotions ... although this, certainly, is
not its primary or native mode of communication. Condiser the
Daemon of Socrates ... (Mark!)
Cheers, and Namaskara!
taijasi
