The thought and the thinker

I am not my thoughts
I do not choose all of my thoughts, some choose me

I am not my thoughts
I am the potential of my thoughts, your thoughts, our thoughts

I am not my thoughts
Though I remember them

I am not my thoughts
Though I can become them

I am my thoughts
For what am I, but that which I have thought?

 

Hmm, I'm not entirely sure.

I assume the thinker is the one who created the thought. Even if the thought appear to just "come" to the thinker, he/she still thought it.

So yeah I am going to go with the thinker is the thought.

 

Interestingly good question..
Maybe they are the same? I think this because if an area of a person's brain is injured it affects their behavior and personality. The mind and the body are one. Thoughts can affect the health of the body (stress) and the body can affect the health of the thoughts (injury, elevated states through substance use...)

 

There's a famous example in philosophy the problem of identity that's pretty relevant here, although I forget its name.

Basically, a wooden ship is built, but after some time, it starts rotting. Over the years the rotting planks are replaced by new planks, one by one, and thrown into a pile, until none of the original planks are left. Is it still the same ship?

The plank-ship relationship is similar to the thought-thinker relationship. I think the answer is that the "ship" or "self" are only abstract concepts. Unlike an atom of a certain isotope and element, a ship is not the same as another ship. Atoms are inherently atoms, ships are only the relationship between the atoms in the planks of wood.

There were some experiments done with people whose two halves of the brain were separated in order to stop seizures. Each eye is controlled by one half of the brain. Different forms of communication are also controlled by different halfs of the brain. When participants were asked to indicate a certain picture, the answer varied depending on which eye they saw it with, and which communication method was used.

tl;dr - The idea of a cohesive self is a misconception.

 

I would say that the thinker is the thought up to the point where the thinker surrender himself to the thought and allows it to take over himself. A thought is merely a part of yourself until it is given full control to consume every part of you, at which point the thinker proceeds from the thought.

Or they are one and the same, as the sum of the thoughts is the thinker, and the thoughts are only as much as the one who thinks them.

 

I'm not too familiar with Eastern religion, but it looks similar. I think..?

 

We are, deep inside, what we think about or what is on our mind. This is our natural being and tends to attract things of similar nature. If you feel positive inside it radiates through your body language and energy. People and things that are positive will come to you.

It seems, to me, that we have automatic thoughts, ones which probably dominate most of our thinking. If our automatic thoughts are negative or we want to change them, it is definitely possible but requires cognitive therapeutic techniques to correct. But we also have conscious thought, which we choose to think about something we want/need to think about. I like what Milon said.

 

I believe that your thoughts just happen, sometimes without provacation and they are random. It is later that when we realize that we are having thoughts we begin to think.

 

Like a fish philosopher, bound by water knowing only its limited space in time, it may only know the depth of what it is by experiencing that which it is not. The thinker is being, being is manifested consciousness.

Thinking is a limited process of the mind, the mind is a limited programme of the consciousness. The programme assists the being. Consciousness is pure realisation, realisation is the drive, of which is evolution being a process of infinite potential which can be realised in the finite world.

Much of a muchness really.