Thinking doesn’t seem to help very much. The human brain is too high-powered to have many practical uses in this particular universe. (Kurt Vonnegut)
Can thinking be a passive activity? Can you just think without thinking about something? From what I hear from “New Age” types, there’s a stage in meditation where your brain is functioning but that you aren’t really thinking. I can’t figure how that can be, since even if I’m asleep and dreaming I have to admit I’m “thinking” about something.
Maybe Vonnegut has a better model for the brain. Did he say?
Wow. I may have to borrow that for my sig line.
Zeldar – nah, this is just an out of context quote. (I’m reviewing quotes for use in cryptograms magazines.)
Wintermute – mi great quote es su great quote.
How about this one for the chronically unimpressed:
Never pass up a chance to pass up a chance.
Thinking might not help very much but it’s the thought that counts.
When you come to a fork in the road, take it. – Yogi Berra
It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubts. - Mark Twain
I guess I should have followed this advice. Anyone know the number to 1-800-Flowers? :smack:
So there is a desirable interpretation to what I thought was just part of getting old? Cool. At his rate I should hit nirvana way sooner than I expected.
koeeoaddi, you may be onto something! I’ve noticed that happening more frequently these days. Must be something in the aging process that allows your brain to idle some of the time.
Now that you mention it, I can recall some moments when my mind has gone almost completely blank for several seconds. I can’t recall just how long the longest stretch would have been, since that would imply that I had a good memory of the “lost time” somehow. And if I could do a memory retrace of the “before” and “after” period, that would indicate that it wasn’t a “totally blank” stretch in between cognizant periods.
I think the best way to describe that zone is that while it’s been happening I wasn’t “thinking” about anything, but was somehow sensorily (can that be a word?) aware of my existence. Trying to define the difference between actual thinking and that subliminal awareness requires words I don’t know. Maybe the state is fictitious, or maybe it just defies naming since naming would pin it down too much.
Those people who claim to have had some level of what Maslow has termed “peak experiences” use the same basic copout in trying to describe their moments in that other place, and always beg off by saying there’s no way to describe it in words. Of course, that inability to describe something prevents much meaningful discussion of it, I suppose.
I just know that the moments I have had in that “idling” state don’t make me want to spend a lot of time there. I guess that may be why meditation has never done much for me.