A ‘thought’ in the mind is in fact the product of a sophisticated chain of chemical reactions experienced in the brain. The physical organ of the brain is where ‘thinking’ occurs – and a chemical exchange, interaction and cascade unfolds which generates the ability (and ‘function’) of human thought. As ‘thought’ and strong emotional ‘feeling’ are often experienced simultaneously in the mind (thought) and hormonal glands situated around the heart (body) – historically the ability to think and feel has often been universally associated with the human heart – as if ‘thoughts’ are secreted from the organ of the heart. Of course, despite this common association, it is only the associated ‘feeling’ aspects of a ‘thought’ that are experienced ‘around the heart’. What the mind interprets as a ‘broken heart’ – is in fact a very strong, continuous and highly uncomfortable hormonal secretion experienced as occurring in the region around the heart.
Without the development (and use) of modern science, human-beings would not be able to gain objective (and correct) knowledge about the functionality of the mind and body. In other words, unless the paradigm of modern science is not developed – there would not be the development of anatomy and physiology – and humans would not understand the organs of the body or their locations, and have no idea of how all the parts of the body fit together and work in conjunction with one another to generate a ‘living-being’. Human understanding today, is an accumulation of the past knowledge collected by earlier generations and corelated into logical categories.
A ‘thought’ manifests within the brain (situated in the cranium) as part of the ‘mind’. The mind can be described as a more or less continuous conscious awareness of the body it inhabits, and the external that body happens to exist within. The brain continuous to monitor and involuntarily regulate hundreds of continuous biological processes that sustain the human-body from moment to moment. This monumental functionality appears to have evolved a long time before the capacity for human thought developed. A ‘thought’ seems to assume the structure of a ‘bubble’ of awareness that can be appear to be momentary or long-lasting in manifestation. A ‘thought’ emerges from a background that can be explained as the psychic fabric of the mind. A general (and ‘vague’)sense of conscious awareness is transformed as a ‘thought’ is born out of it – almost like an ‘egg’. As a consequence, a ‘thought’ is distinct from the psychic fabric from which it emerges. When ‘thought’ is finished with – like a broken-wave – it is re-absorbed back into the ocean that gave birth to it.
Once a ‘thought’ is developed, it contains an onus, a subject, a thrust or an orientation, etc. Quite often the generator of a ‘thought’ mistake this internally generated structure to simultaneously represent or ‘reflect’ a sold object or living entity existing within the physical world that exist ‘outside’ of the human-brain. It is this intuitive association that although illogical – serves as the basis for all religious thought. Once this concept is accepted and remains unquestioned, ideas produced in the brain-mind nexus are routinely ‘believed’ to be representative of concrete elements that a) definitely exist in the outer world, or b) are assumed to exist in the outer world (‘assumption’ does not imply that they do actually ‘exist’). Although thought can (and does) direct the physical behaviour of an individual – ‘thought’ itself is the product of a physical brain which has responded to external environmental factors throughout its evolution – and produced the mind-thought manifestation. The capacity to ‘think’ does not (and cannot) generate external objects and mechanical processes simply through the faculty of ‘will-power’. A thought which envisions a ‘chair’ has no associated ability to spontaneously manifest that ‘chair’ in the environment as an act of ‘will’. The only way a ‘chair’ can be made to manifest in the environment is if the human-mind also ‘thinks’ about how the wood for the chair should attained, how it should be treated, the design for the chair and how the wood should be cut, assembled and painted, etc. This cascade of thought and physical activity is the only way a ‘chair’ first imagined in the mind (as a chemical process) can become a physical reality in the external world.
In this regard, once the capacity to ‘think’ is distinguished from the background consciousness from which it emerges, then it might be stated that a ‘thought’, despite its amorphous structure and unpredictable nature, is in fact a special-type of physical construct. A ‘thought’ might well represent an internal manifestation of an externa construct and actually be an ‘approximation’ of a physical structure. It just so happens that as it is a chemical process, a thought lacks the ‘exact’ boundaries that define a genuine physical object. This evolutionary development allows the thinking process to continuously define a boundary and then lose that boundary in a second. This ability to only approximately mimic physical objects has given the capacity to ‘think’ the ability manifest over a wide area of creative speculation –an ability which serves as the foundation of not only the ‘imagination’, but also art, culture, philosophy and science, etc. The usefulness of thought lies in its poor ability to copy external images – as regardless of how ‘perfect’ a thought may appear to be – it can never generate the physical object it is attempting to internally represent.
The implication of this analysis is that ‘theology’ is a particular construction of ‘thought’. It is a ‘thought’ construct imbued with the structures of a theistic interpretation of reality – one which is inherently entangled and integrated with various forms of emotional over-lay. This naked ‘thought’ of religiosity does not exist beyond the limits of each thought bubble that gives rise to it – but its internal configuration ‘assumes’ that the reality (and world-view) it expresses exists beyond the ‘thought’ bubble that creates it – somewhere (or ‘everywhere’) in the external (physical) environment. From the scientific point of view – there is no evidence that suggests a) thought exists anywhere but within the individual mind that generates it, and b) the religious conception of reality is anything but an ‘idea’ with no evidence of its existence or functionality within the physical world. People who believe in the literal reality of ‘religious’ thinking are of the opinion that this scientific analysis of the function of the mind is ‘incorrect’ and the product of crass materialist misrepresentation. The theistic religious interpretation assumes that the religious ‘thoughts’ generated in the mind are a direct (and accurate) interpretation of inner (soul) and outer (god) aspects of reality. Not to accept this religious interpretation – according to the religionists – is to possess a mind obscured from perceiving the reality of religious thinking by the presence of a demonic presence. This is merely an extrapolation of the internal structure of the religious ‘thought’ construct developed into a world-view.
Religious thinking might well be useful for human evolution and development – but its strictures cannot be ‘correct’ in the same manner as the development of objective scientific scrutiny. Religious thinking does not seek any different kind of ‘truth’ – but already assumes that it already possesses the ‘ultimate’ truth about reality – as in a god created reality and all humanity has to do is worship his presence and-or ‘merge’ spiritually with his being. The strictures of theology cannot be ‘questioned’ in anyway and any such attempts are rejected as being ‘demonic’ in nature. This represents the dogmatic (and non-progressive) nature of theology. To continue to exist, the religious ‘thought’ construct must subordinate all other versions of reality to itself – and thereby ‘limit’ the entirety of reality to the religious interpretation of reality. This even includes science. In this sleight of hand – the scientific functionality of the physical universe is a) ‘correct’, and b) a ‘manifestation’ of god’s will. Of course, until the rise of modern science as an independent intellectual development ‘outside’ of theology – the world of religious thinking was entirely unable to give rise to any form of modern science and thereby ‘assist’ humanity by relieving various aspects of its suffering. This is a demonstration of the use of ‘dishonesty’ by religiously minded individuals who do not want to recognise the importance of scientific thinking. In other words, this is the religiosity that claims to possess the ‘truth’ actually rejecting exactly the same ‘truth’ it claims to uphold.
A valid spirituality, in my view, has to admit the validity of the scientific interpretation of reality, and begins from this perspective. I would suggest that a genuine spiritual path begins with the assessment of the structure of the ‘thought’ construct generated in the mind – followed by an investigation of its ‘essential’ or ‘underlying’ reality. In reality, this is an investigation of the ‘thought’ structure and the process of how it emerges from the psychic fabric of the its conscious underlay. As an assignment, this is already a tremendous amount of work that is very different from the strictures of theistic thinking, which is more akin to various aspects of Chinese and Indian philosophical thinking. In this model an issue arises regarding the nature of the underlying consciousness – does it pre-exist the brain which ‘senses’ it from an external source – or does it post-exist the brain that chemically produces it? Of course, a pre-existing consciousness is probably an updated version of the god concept with no objective evidence proving its existence. This is a type of secular-leaning theism. The Indian Buddha, on the other-hand, states that reality can only be reduced to ‘perception’ (post-birth) and ’non-perception’ (post-death) – but with the caveat that he believes a still ‘living’ person can – through the practice of disciplined meditation – penetrate to the essence of ‘perception’ AND ‘non-perception’ without necessarily having to transition through physical death. Physical death still happens when the time is right – but is experienced through a mind (and body) fully in accordance with physical and psychological processes that are involved. In this model there is no fear or unnecessary suffering involved and all is natural.
THE SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 