Where do thoughts come from?

You originated OUR thought OP.

Think of your brain as a file cabinet, or better yet a room full of file cabinets. When you experience something, your brain creates a new file and puts it in it's respective "folder and cabinet." Your ability to find and pull these files decides your intelligence level....that and the amount of information you can hold.

When you asked us to imagine an apple, our eyes read the question, neurons fired down the line to the file labeled apples, found the file and pulled it up on the mental screen projector. I stuck with the first one pulled, but I could have changed between a thousand different apples with infinite different backgrounds. I would guess that anyone has millions of files, and most people store the files in mental pictures.

It's always said that children are like sponges. This is because they have few files. everything they see/learn gets a new file. Adults on the other hand discard most files according to their relevance.

You can read some about neurological programing to learn more on the subject, but don't be an a**hole and use this info in a manipulative way...read about it and you'll no what i mean.

All that being said, i wonder where dreams come from....Is it just neurons firing randomly? I tend to believe that our brain takes the oppurtunity to arrange and organize the files. Also, I have trouble falling asleep at night....I cannot quiet my thoughts easily. I have tried to meditate, but my thought will never shutup..haha. So I'm curious how to get the neurons too stop firing so to speak.

Anyway great post OP...S&F

BTW.....I pulled up a red apple with those little yellowish tiny dots that apples have. It had a stem and was sitting in a white background with nothing else.

reply to post by wylee


But it does speak.
I suppose it depends on the person how much attention they pay to the silent speech of that part, but speak it does. Some people engage it by using props, like Tarot cards or other means of divination, others listen to it directly. All you have to do do is to first acknowledge it exists in the first place, and then face the possibility that you may not like what it's telling you. (This part is important because it calms and "settles" the mind, so its "messages" can come through loud and clear.)

Maybe it sounds wishy-washy, but it is real. There *is* a part in every human being that knows everything there ever was, is and will be. (Which is all the same anyway. )

i saw manhattan kansas, then new york.

reply to post by bsbray11


I got a question Bsbray11. What about a killers thoughts? Does that come from the universe or his upper awareness?? Would that mean the universe is evil?

Originally posted by ineverknewThoughts cannot come out of nothing, can they? But before you think something to yourself, before you think of a response, there is silence in your mind. How do coherent thoughts come out of no where? Why was your apple not green (or red)?

Psychological/Scientific Explanation
During a child's early years of development, they build relationships between shapes, words, and colors. Red = Apple, Green = Veggie, etc... You are conditioned at a young age to make such relationships, so you can categorically organize the world around you. When someone says the word 'apple', your cognitions automatically go back to those early relationships. Round = Red = Apple.

When you talk about the thoughts specifically, you are referring to the conscious and subconscious. Everything in the conscious depends on what has been exposed to the subconscious. Long term exposure to something gets placed into long term memory.

Many people like to call the conscious a soul, for it gives us moral stability based upon our life space. Other words, your environmental reinforcements determine your disposition. Everything you have been exposed to reinforces how you perceive the world. Such as positive and negative reinforcements, which condition an individual to behave in a certain manner.

Recall (from previous exposure) / Collations (Relationships developed through conditioning) = Response (conscious/cognitive expression).

There are other words to explain this process, but it would be too complex for a five minute discussion. Look up the word "conditioning".

Technically, your conscious (soul) was conditioned to respond in such a manner.


[edit on 11-10-2009 by Pathos]

reply to post by Maddogkull


The less conscious someone is, the more they act out of their subconscious. Since murderers do exist, yes, you can say the universe produces them. I think society is really mostly to blame though. Some "primitive" cultures don't have words for murder or rape, and they never happen.

Originally posted by ineverknew
All right, I could try to explain what I mean by my question, but my definition may not make sense, so the best way to demonstrate what I'm getting at is by doing a very simple experiment. It's very easy:

I want anyone reading this to close your eyes for just six seconds and think of an apple. All you have to do is remember what the apple looked like.

After you open your eyes, scroll down.
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Now, you thought of an apple, right? What color was it? Green? Red? A little of both? Now, was there a reason that your apple was a certain color? Did you tell your mind, let's make a red apple, or did a red apple just pop up? And if that happened, why didn't your mind make it green?

Did the apple have a stem? How about a leaf? Did you tell your mind to give it them? Where was your apple? On a tree, or a table, or a hand? Did you say, before you pictured that apple, I'm going to make a red apple with a stem, but no leaf, and put it on a table?

Chances are, absolutely not. Here lies my question. The apple just appeared, right? Before people talk, they think of what to say (so long as they're not politicians). But what comes before people think? Thoughts cannot come out of nothing, can they? But before you think something to yourself, before you think of a response, there is silence in your mind. How do coherent thoughts come out of no where? Why was your apple not green (or red)?

people dont think of what they will say before they say it...

reply to post by Ethereal Gargoyle


Thank you for the great point, that's what I was getting to. THe knowledge does communicate with us, but most of the time it's not in words.

Like trying to prove love with words. It's a feeling and it is with our feelings in which we see. At least that's what I think Don Juan Matus is saying, hence the name Seer.

If most of this site is into the metaphysical, without being grounded in reality, I might have signed up to the wrong site.

Here is the actual scientific and psychological explanation:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

If the above explanation is not good enough, take a course in General Psychology and Adolescent Psychology. They will open the world to you in a more logical manner.

People are conditioned more than they know. Once you learn about the human condition, everything you have assumptions over will disappear. You will no longer be a slave to the environment.

Psychology rips away fantasy, and it makes you more aware.



[edit on 11-10-2009 by Pathos]

Soooo....am I the only one whom envisioned a computer then? blah.

anyhow, lets do a counter experiment, proving absolutely that your brain = your thoughts and not some sort of universal know it all feeding you thoughts.

Take a few seconds to imagine each...then write about it:

Think of an car
Think of a horse
Think of a keyboard
Think of the thing I have under my chair right now



scroll down





So, you can do 3 of em, but as far as something you have no direct knowledge of, through observation or education, you draw a blank and suddenly you start thinking of things that could be on the side of a chair...is it a dog? a pencil? another chair? you dont know because your thoughts are contained in your brain, not in some interdimensional time/space thing...if it was, then you would clearly know what it is as quickly as you know what to think of when you were told to think of a car.

Does this solve the question?

Originally posted by SaturnFX
you dont know because your thoughts are contained in your brain, not in some interdimensional time/space thing...

No, every single atom of your body is contained "in some interdimensional time/space thing" and then some.

Just because you can't do something doesn't make it impossible. Have you ever much studied any forms of meditation, as a start?

At first it was a shiny red apple with a stem and no leaves floating in a black void then it changed to green because I like them the best then I though about how much I like golden delicious apples also so it morphed to that color then it changed to a rainbow striped Apple™.

This thread got me thinkin last night. Some say that our thoughts aren't just our own, that they are entangled with everyone else's right, so what about animals thoughts, are they mixed up in there too?

reply to post by Pathos


Your no fun, party pooper...j/k

reply to post by Lichter daraus

I am a psychology nut job.
Welcome to the weird world!

[edit on 11-10-2009 by Pathos]

reply to post by ineverknew


I would say that 'thoughts' come from the right and left sides of our brain... both sides of our brain have been seeing, hearing and remembering things since birth so the thoughts which come into our brains are just that....... images & words which we have seen throughout life..... All our thoughts are stored in special compartments in our brain and they re-emerge when we need them.... much like how a computer stores it's memory only to use it when we call upon it.

Also they could come from other sources such as telepathically from someone elses brain or from ET!!

reply to post by wylee


I know you were. That was evident from the quote itself.
It was a great post.

I am going to have a stab at answering your question regarding where thoughts come from.

Although Pathos has given an abbreviated scientific view - I am going to give an holistic scientific answer that draws on the nature of reality more than the nature of the mind as we understand it by experimentation - ie. psychology.

From a physics perspective reality is beginning to look more and more like it is purely information - such things as dimension and mass are pieces of data, they are discreet, and come in quanta - although they of an analog nature, rather than binary.

That there are more dimensions then are visible to us is becoming mainstream physics, rather than fringe. In fact - it seems impossible that the observable dimensions represent the entirety of the answer to what is physical reality.

I think that there is a dimension of probability - or you could call it possibility. For conventional and symmetry purposes I like to conceive of a 7 dimensional universe, where measurable reality resides in 3.5 dimensions (the 0.5 representing the forward flowing temporal time dimension) and 3.5 that we cannot interact with physically or measure. Those alternate 3 dimensions being at right angles to the reality we experience in a macro sense, and the residual being the reverse flowing of time.

If all reality then is purely data - then thought presupposes physical creation and impingement on reality - which we clearly see in the famous double slit experiments. This leads me to conclude that the other dimensions are defined not by measurable's - but immeasurable's - that is they are defined by the residual data that cannot be measured that creates possibility and effects like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (you can't know an electrons position and velocity at the same instant).

That the consciousness does not directly experience reality is conceptually valid by assuming that all information we collect is transmitted through our nervous system to our brains before being interpreted and passed to the consciousness. Therefore our consciousness does not experience reality directly. We can also clearly create without association - we can think of things never conceived before, without resorting to experience - ie. total fantasy.

My answer then would be that we are multidimensional beings who interact with reality only partially - that our consciousness resides not in the physical reality - but at the interface between reality and what we could nominally call fantasy.

Our conscious mind observes reality, but our unconscious experiences the residual 'unreality' or immeasurable dimensions - the residual data of possibility and fantasy. In other words while we are awake we can see and measure this 3.5 dimensional reality - but when asleep our unconscious experiences the other 3.5 undefined dimensions.

Thought then comes from the interface between the two - which I am arbitrarily assign to the time dimension - because it seems to feel right - any arbitrary choice is as good as any other.

I see the interface as highly energetic - like two fast flowing rivers rushing past each other creating whirlpools and eddies - this I feel reflects the nature of thought. The physical analogy that appeals most to me is a figure 8, like a twisted ribbon - where the crossover is the source of thought - and the center of being that experiences oscillates between one side of the center and the other.

Thought therefore is where reality and fantasy come from - it is where everything is created at the interface. That we experience it may be a fluke - or it may simply be an unavoidable evolutionary phenomenon of the universe.

Certainly no mainstream here - but I have fairly solid grounding in physical sciences. While this is purely wild speculation - I think it models very well - and wouldn't be surprised to see more scientific data that fits with this model.

EDIT: I thought I would expand a little on the idea of the other dimensions, because people usually naturally think of an alternate space that obeys laws or looks like our reality. No, I think it would be totally different - such things as dimension and form are parts of the data that are already being used to create reality - and would not be present. So I imagine construct that may have no apparent laws or structure - it may conform to our observations - that is it might appear to be whatever we wanted it to be, or it may have some form or structure of its own that would be incomprehensible to our conscious minds.

[edit on 11-10-2009 by Amagnon]

To the OP and about the apple experiment

When you say "think about an apple",
the original thought of it was yours,
but all the rest of us, we.... well let me put up an other experiment first before going further:

Think about the last time you met your parents (or any other familiy member). Think about it for a few second.
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Now what you just did, was not producing a "thought", but producing a "memory". If your like most of us humans, you visualized the meeting with your parents and you saw the memory from above, like as if you where observing the situation from the ceiling.
That's what happens every time we have a memory (test it)

So let's go back to the original apple experiment:
The OP had the original thought,
but once he mentioned "apple", it's most likely that the rest of us produced a memory of an apple and most likely, saw one slightly from above.
Test it out before you say it isn't true!

From a psychological standpoint, your mind creates these thoughts and pictures based on the traits your used to, what you know about, or what you want. Then you visualize this picture.