Philosophy Now Forum

There is no self/someone thinking thought.

Just as there is no self/someone growing the grass, or growing the tree. Just as there is no rainer raining the rain. Or blower blowing the wind.
The sky does not make the clouds come. The sky defines the clouds, without sky, what the heck is a cloud? .. where or what is a sky without the contrast of a cloud?

Life is just energetically living itself in myriad of energetical forms including 'thoughts' appearing and disappearing like every other ethereal sense.
No one makes a sense arise. Senses are automatic spontaneous and random appearances only. Known by awareness in the instant they arise. One with the knowing.

Thoughts have appeared as an evolutionary survival mechanism to help the human consciousness communicate with it's environment...life factored that in, and life does not claim those thoughts as belonging to a separate entity. A phantom self does apparently appear to exist within that dynamic, but it's a conceptual overlay imputed energetically over life that's already living infinitely free, unlimited and unbounded by any thought which appear in it.It's how life knows itself.

But it can only know itself as a fiction.

Real life makes no such claim. It just IS ..Life already IS prior to any thought.

Life has always been silently present and had to be in place in order for thoughts to manifest.

Life is just another word for ''pure awareness'' in which all THINGS arise and fall away.

If there was no awareness, nothing would manifest or be known. Awareness knows every thought as and when they arise, and yet awareness can never be known because awareness is already every thing known.

Pure awareness is not a state or thing to be known by a thing, because things are already known, and things that are known cannot in and of themselves know because they are inseparable from the no thing that knows. Awareness is the constant ''mother void'' out of which all things are born and die.

The void cannot be known since it is forever pregnant. And it doesn't desire to be known, for it is without doubt already here now.

So birth and death are illusory since the cycle of birth and death is what creates LIFE to be possible in the first place.

Life only appears to die as each thing is born is it simultaneously dying in the same moment which is always NOW

Now is the only place and time there is.

Past or future are 'thoughts' appearing NOW

Now has no local location for it is everywhere at once. Like space.

Dontaskme wrote:There is no self/someone thinking thought.

So you're not thinking?

There's no "you"?

Who the heck am I talking to?

No one, I guess. There's nobody that could be there.

I guess I'll stop.

Immanuel Can wrote:

waechter418 wrote:Descartes also claimed to be because he thinks (to be?)
Reasoning (thought) is known to entrap the reasoner (thinker) - more so when latter believes to be able to escape with the help of former.

The who? Whom does it trap?

Dontaskme says there's no such thing. There's no "whom" that can be trapped, he thinks.

Clearly there is no crime when there's no victim.

''He'' is a thought. Thoughts do not think...in the sense ''I am a thought'' so ''I must be the thinker of my thought''. That would be like stepping into the same river twice. One cannot even step into the same river once. There's just this one unitary flow of life happening all by itself.

No thought has ever been seen. And no thinker has ever been seen.

Such (ideas) are known only by the only knowing there is ..and that ''knowing'' is already here now which is unknowable for it is already this immediate self perpetuating and self contained phenomena appearing as and within itself. (Klein Bottle Effect)There is nothing outside of this immediate unknown ''knowing''

No one knows the knower, because that would mean splitting into two things.. the knower and the known. Therefore every thing known is a fictionally created subject.

Rene Descartes made the error of owning the thoughts arising within.. by identifying with the thought as belonging to an ''I'' aka him...he must have thought he was the source of thought since they were arising in him, hence the ''I'' as in ''I think'' ..but where did the ''I'' come from, did he not wonder where that came from? if not from more thought.

Only the mind is born here, not the thought, thoughts are dead things known, aka (fictions)...that in which they arise is this already existing unknown seamless LIFE itself...known only as fictional thought by contrast...all appearing in awareness that allows every thought to be what it is without effecting awareness itself which is ever present and free standing without taking any position.

Thoughts are not living things and do not belong to any separate living entity called ''I''. There is no 'I' except the thought. There is no outside knower looking at a thought and claiming that thought to be mine as Descartes seems to be suggesting. There is only the memory of thought which has already past and is therefore dead. Aliveness is only ever this immediate moment which is in constant flux, living and dying simultaneously as one unitary one way street movement. There is no ''I'' who can look back at itself to see who's doing the looking or the thinking ... for there will be nothing there to see, here is all there is... for there has all but passed away...and what was once .. is now once removed, in other words past and dead. You can't get there from here, here now is the only place that's real. No thing has ever left this place because there is no where for anything to go.

Within this apparent energetical thought process unique to the human mind body dynamic in which this energy appears to appear as a thought.. there is another dynamic that wrongly identifies with owning that thought. But the thought ''I think'' is the thought itself, there is no room in here for thought and thinker to exist independently, as that would cause a division ...rather,they are interdependent, mutually arising, thought and thinker can only appear simultaneously together as one unitary action/function.

Descartes, didn't realise it was the thought itself that created the 'I' in the same moment the thought arose....and that it was not Descartes himself who was the owner of thought. If Descartes himself was the source of his thoughts, then he would have had control over the time and duration of their appearance and of the quality of those thoughts...which is impossible.

The ''I'' does not create or is the source of thought. The ''I'' is the thought. And behind each thought is an awareness aware of every thought, and is prior to any thought, else what the heck is a thought?

Any thing born of thought is a fiction appearing as real. It's the only way the real can be known via the fictional idea of itself...by association/ aka by illusory contrast.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Dontaskme wrote:There is no self/someone thinking thought.

So you're not thinking?

There's no "you"?

Who the heck am I talking to?

No one, I guess. There's nobody that could be there.

I guess I'll stop.

There is no you to stop any thing, just try stopping your thoughts, hmm, you can't do it can you...there's just what appearing,happening, and no one is controlling or driving what's appearing and happening... just as there is no one dreaming your dreams at night. and there is no self in any of the dreamt characters.

Life is being dreamt by no one.

See my post above, it's explains the apparent paradox of illusory relationships, aka the nobody home phenomena.

It's not that there is no one here.. it's that there is no separate someone here. One is here, without doubt, but it is interacting with itself only. God only knows how oneness works with itself, but it definitely does. Hence reality has to be both a noun and verb in the same moment else it could not communicate with itself... AT ALL


You have much nobody home work to do. Because at the moment you are not seeing that there is no body home. Home is an only child...living blissfully free as a bird. You should just let this bird fly.

Dontaskme wrote:

The Pictures can have no independence existence without the Black board
Our Body and Mind can have no Independence existence without Consciousness/Awareness

The 'I' arises in Awareness. Awareness is always the stable permanent state prior to the 'I'

The 'I' is an appearance that comes and goes in Awareness. Awareness cannot be emptied of it's contents/appearances. Just as space cannot be emptied of itself.Without the conscious mind for One's projection screen, where would the universe be located?

So why then is the body still there under anesthesia?

Justintruth wrote:

Dontaskme wrote:

The Pictures can have no independence existence without the Black board
Our Body and Mind can have no Independence existence without Consciousness/Awareness

The 'I' arises in Awareness. Awareness is always the stable permanent state prior to the 'I'

The 'I' is an appearance that comes and goes in Awareness. Awareness cannot be emptied of it's contents/appearances. Just as space cannot be emptied of itself.Without the conscious mind for One's projection screen, where would the universe be located?

So why then is the body still there under anesthesia?

Sorry for the long explanation, but this subject takes a lot of explaining. Because it's not a subject we usually think or talk about.

The body has never not been here, it's always here, there is nowhere for the body to go to not be here. There is no place else other than here. There is the ''experience'' of presence. But there cannot be the ''experience'' of the absence of presence... so can you see how there is always here now -now here? ..without beginning nor end...

So there is no ''body'' experiencing life. There is only the ''experiencing'' The ''body'' does not experience life, the body is the experience. The body is a conscious experience only as it appears in CONSCIOUSNESS which is inseparable from what it is conscious of.

It's not the body being conscious, it's consciousness being the body. Only the mind/consciousness is born not the body...aka the conscious awareness of the body. When awareness knows sensation consciousness is born...albeit an illusory birth, because awareness cannot die, it's always here.
That which is always here without beginning nor end is without birth or death, birth and death are illusory appearances in it like the endless coming and passing of clouds in the sky. The sky is like awareness it is always here totally unaffected by what is appearing in it, simply because what is appearing in it IS IT

Consciousness is the other side/contrasting aspect of pure awareness, they are interdependent like conjoined twins. One side is permanently present as in deep sleep or under anesthesia, and this latent state is the substratum ground from which the manifest world of senses appear. The other side is the appearance of manifestation on contact, via the senses, becoming conscious of itself...like the Necker cube changing from a stateless state of pure awareness to awareness of self, aka conscious. There is very subtle difference between the two states, but they are essentially one and the same thing...alternating between one and the other. There is no gap between the two just as there is no gap between now and now. Life is one seamless unitary flow in action. ..there is no separate body doing an action, there is a reaction, where the awareness becomes aware of itself only. It's always and ever one unitary action.

The body doesn't know it's a body, the consciousness that the body arises in knows the body on contact, the awareness becomes aware of itself via the senses, that's what I mean by on contact, ....so under anesthesia the consciousness that knows the body has changed from being conscious of itself as a body, to being unconscious of itself as a body, the consciousness is now in a state of pure awareness which is the blank screen on which the body appears. These two states of conscious and unconscious awareness are like the analogy of a Necker cube alternating between one position and another even though the cube is always and ever one unitary whole. The flicking over from one to the other position is how the dynamic of awareness and consciousness operate, they are essentially the same one awareness which is actually a stateless state since it's pure oneness.
Awareness is the latent form whereas consciousness is on contact, aware of being aware. On Contact with it's own senses.. always with itself.

This has no relatives, ''other'' is the illusion.

Life is real enough, it's a happening, but it's not happening to a single thing. It's all one unitary action/ happening.

And the irony is that even the word ''single'' or ''unit'' is equal to ONE ..so even to try and single out a single thing cannot be possible.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Dontaskme wrote:Now you have posited that there is one thing you know for sure and that is the universe you know has a ''mind'' in it.'' ...your own and others. But how can that be correct Immanuel C? ...what if the mind is not in the universe..rather, the universe is in the mind as in an ''appearance'' in the mind?

Read Descartes, and you'll know why. It's not possible to doubt the existence of your own mind...because, who would be doing the "doubting," then, if no "mind" exists to do it? So you're certain of the existence of your own mind, even if you're unclear about mine or other people's. Or you should be certain of that: you have every good reason to be. And if you're not, there's no "you" to be unclear, so there's no question anymore.

Think hard, and you'll see Descartes' point.

Keep talking Immanuel, don't run away from discussions just because I'm not agreeing with you. There is no law about agreeing with each other, everything that's being spoken about is a perfect expression of oneness, neither true or false, but just what's arising from no thing nowhere.

You ask ''who would be doing the doubting'' when it comes to the existence of your own mind. There's still something not quite right with saying your OWN MIND....as if there is someone here owning a thing call a mind.

The problem is in the existential assumption of having your OWN mind. While there can be a sense of being/existence which is true without doubt or error. There is a problem with the one claiming it to be their own existence separate from the experience of existing in and of itself. There can only be one physical world here. And yet there are billions of different internal worlds about the one physical world. Internal worlds are like dreams, they are fictions.

Descartes claiming that because thoughts are appearing - he must then exist because he is the one conscious of the thoughts.. is an error. Thoughts are not real, identifying with thought is a function of pure energy in motion, it is a movement within conscious attention, whereby energy flows where attention goes. It is not a human physical body that is aware of thought, what is a body but a thought creating the existential belief that I am because my thoughts say I am. But this is error, thoughts are not my thoughts, because there is no ''my'' other than thought itself...it's all pure dreamscape. The physical world is one, but any thought about what that oneness is ...is pure imagination.

So no matter how you attempt to cut this, it simply cannot be divided from itself via thought, because thoughts are not real, whereas oneness is and always was here.

Oneness cannot prove it exists, neither can it disprove it's existence. Because there is nothing outside or inside it. Oneness simply IS..proof is not necessary...to prove you exist would need another you inside or outside of you...but there no other you, because there is no other than YOU.

Immanuel Can wrote: It's not a "realization." It's a contentious postulate. It doesn't just "happen", so to speak, like getting hit by a lightning bolt -- it requires proof.

Seriously!
Who says so..Who told you that?

What is apparent ... is that Everything just happens. Thoughts happen, Realisations happen. Contentious postulations happen.Getting hit by a lightning bolt happens. Rainbows happen. Realisations that there is no separate independent thing existing apart from existence itself happens. Things either happen or they don't.

Can happening be proved by the whats already happening.. ?? .. A big fat NO goes to that question.

Proof needs a prover. But happenings are already this unmoved mover.

Quite a dilemma for you philosophers looking for proof of what's already happened isn't it?

Descartes couldn't prove a thought existed, and yet you have invested so much belief in his words as being truth. hmm....sounds about right the mind and the lies it weaves.

Dontaskme wrote:Keep talking Immanuel, don't run away from discussions just because I'm not agreeing with you.

Ha. No such thought.

But to go forward, a discussion needs certain elements. A common language is one of them, of course; there's no possibility of me talking in English and you in French, unless I speak French or you speak English. But a second thing is a common ground of decision-making. My choice, as a philosopher, is reason and evidence. Yours, as near as I can tell, is elaborate flourishes of gnostic rhetoric. Of course, you are entitled to whatever style of thinking you choose; but his puts you in a different "language group" from me.

So it's not the disagreement that's any problem: it's the current impossibility of a common grounds of resolution. Either you need to become rational in your claims, or evidentiary in your treatment of the subject, or I need to develop an enthusiasm for gnostic rhetoric.

Alas, the latter is definitely not going to happen. However, I may still hope the former will, one day. And until then, I fear there's little to be said. We need a referee on the field or a score keeper to run the board, and we can't find any we both accept. So the game can't go forward.

Immanuel Can wrote: Either you need to become rational in your claims, or evidentiary in your treatment of the subject, or I need to develop an enthusiasm for gnostic rhetoric.

You're welcome to play the game of belief about illusions.

But if You want a rational conversation out of me, I cannot give it to you because I don't see anything rational or logical in the quote..''I think therefore I Am'' whereas you do - so I guess it's a stale mate in this particular game.

So be it, there is nothing more to discuss.

Dontaskme wrote:So be it, there is nothing more to discuss.

Quite so.

Be well.

Dontaskme wrote:But then doesn't the 'someone' arise in the same moment as the 'thought' ?... for how else could a 'someone' be known .. if it's not the known thought itself arising in the same instant?

If the 'someone' and the 'thought' arise mutually in the same moment.. then it is thought itself that creates a thinker? Absence of 'thought' where is the thinker? Any thinker had to be a thought. The thinking is the thinker itself. The thinker cannot get rid of the thought, they come together as one conjoined package.
In other words, no one is thinking...there's just thinking ?

I rarely can parse, let along agree with, your posts. I notice this one got no reply. Perhaps it is not so easily refuted. I notice IC only replying to one-line snippets pulled out of context after this.

Noax wrote:

Dontaskme wrote:But then doesn't the 'someone' arise in the same moment as the 'thought' ?... for how else could a 'someone' be known .. if it's not the known thought itself arising in the same instant?

If the 'someone' and the 'thought' arise mutually in the same moment.. then it is thought itself that creates a thinker? Absence of 'thought' where is the thinker? Any thinker had to be a thought. The thinking is the thinker itself. The thinker cannot get rid of the thought, they come together as one conjoined package.
In other words, no one is thinking...there's just thinking ?

I rarely can parse, let along agree with, your posts. I notice this one got no reply. Perhaps it is not so easily refuted. I notice IC only replying to one-line snippets pulled out of context after this.

I snip because it keeps the overall short. Can you imagine the message that would ensue if I did not? Dontaskme is windy, and loves to use ten words to express one. His messages are long, convoluted and rambling, and (as he is delighted to tell us all) do not employ reason or logic in any integrated way. He's a hit-or-miss thinker, more a rhetorician and stylist than a philosopher, and very, very verbose in making any point. And that's the style he chooses, delights in, and advertises as profoundly enlightened. But he's doing very well at producing a lot of it; nobody needs the same from me.

So try to pick out the clearest ideas, but I clip out the redundant claims or things to implausible to merit serious attention. I saw this particular point as exemplary of the latter.

All the same, here's the answer you we asking for:

"Thought" can't create a "thinker" anymore than "drink" can create the "drinker." What I mean is that the fact that one starts to drink, or think, does not mean one pops into existence at that moment, and it would be silly to imagine it did: it only means that one is entering a new role, and so is being assigned a new descriptor. But the "one" pre-exists that moment. And everybody knows that.

What's fooled him is this: that it's true that one can start to call something a "thinker" only after it starts thinking: but giving a thing a new name is not the same as calling that entity into existence. The drinker, or the thinker, is an entity in its own right prior to any verbs we attribute to it. That we use a verbal noun to give it a new title changes nothing about the question of whether or not it pre-exists that moment.

So simple sense will tell us that the entity that performs the action, even if we simply call it a "pre-thinker," obviously pre-exists the action of "thinking." There would be no one to do it, if it were not so.

He can't get that, even after I've explained it, so there's no reason to recycle it again and again, every time he recycles the same rhetoric, is there?

So there's your reply. I don't know if you think the answer was worth the effort. I didn't. But just so you know...

Immanuel Can wrote: So simple sense will tell us that the entity that performs the action, even if we simply call it a "pre-thinker," obviously pre-exists the action of "thinking." There would be no one to do it, if it were not so.

I don't think we can quite grasp what each other is saying. You say I don't get what your saying, and well it's kind of like how that feels for me, in that you don't get what I'm saying.

So now you are saying there is an entity that pre-exists the action of thinking...is that what you are saying?

Lets clear up any confusion here, and I will try to keep my replies very short and to the point.

And this one here is a she not a he, just so you know...

Dontaskme wrote: Lets clear up any confusion here, and I will try to keep my replies very short and to the point.

We have no "referee." In the absence of reason and evidence, who will declare when a point is going to count in terms of making any progress?

And this one here is a she not a he, just so you know...

Okay, but why would it matter? Does truth have a "gender"? On email, surely nothing matters but the validity and plausibility of the argument.