Thought – like the ‘growing of hair’
According to ancient Buddhist traditions, thinking is an involuntary operation in nature like the ‘growing of your hair’ or the ‘change of weather’, but what we identify with as ordinary thinking, the attentive recognition, comes after the fact, is reactive to the unconscious cognitive operation that is always happening in the mind. The voluntary element of thought is the one specific aspect known as “reflective thinking”, which is to ”reflect” on, or within a position of time, to think after, and in response to some preordained thought.
The “individual” already in the onset applies a rational faculty primal to the human being. Every individual applies reflective reason whether an individual reflects back at his actions or reflects before doing actions, the individual at the very basic level recognizes his thinking and at the same time is aware of himself thinking. This however does NOT constitute self-consciousness of reason because beyond the “pragmatic element” that the individual derives from reflective thinking, there is ‘no’ evidence that the individual is continually, and consciously engaged in the rational process unconsciously, and constantly, happening in his own mind. And it is in fact this latter claim that requires investigation because we might say that the mind “in me” is always in the process of thought, while at the same time, hold in thought, that the “I” as a consciousness of “that” is NOT the same outside of me that I maintain is within my mind.
“Anima”
We might question whether; a) the mind is “always” in the-process of thought, and that condition is actually the real consequences of infinite thought, or b) while my “abrupt” awakenings of awareness into being of thought are instincts from an otherwise unconscious, call it, animalistic consciousness. The “anima” according to Carl, is the internal energy disclosed in the cognitive faculties in the mind to exhibit an outwards character, or a set of characteristics that can be said to be operating under “same” identity.
But what may have been overlooked in the concept of “anima”, either by the originator or its contemporaries, is that; the “anima” is also an “animal“, it is also the basic set of characteristics that are shared among all “animate”, ie., alive variables, rather than; inanimate, or objects NOT having the element of change within them, but rather be outside of them.
They are “unlike” because they do NOT carry the internal within them, and therefore they are pure “externalities”, a set of circumstances that “can” “externally” happen to a set of animals. Externalities can be any number set of animals having the same set of external circumstances that “act” as uncertainties, or random set of possibilities, for them. For example, an “inanimate” objects have the facility of change disclosed outside, in other words, they are determined by “outside” and external forces of change that makes them into being what they “are”, but they do NOT have an internal originating principle point-of-change , i.e, coming into “being” naturally and entering into nothing.
The change in an inanimate objects is always “unnatural”, that is, inducted by some external factor, and can can be said to have an internal force for causing change into being. And so what does it mean to say that there is always an operation of thinking persisting in myself, while hold to the claim that, as a consciousness “I” am able to choose whether to think or not to, or rather choose what to think about, if we assume there is a choice.
“Stop” Thinking
Can we stop thinking?
What does it even mean to say that it is possible for someone to “stop” thinking, even just for a moment? Such questions hint at the idea that there is a connection between two inverse properties constituting the individual: First, we can say there is an objective side to thought present in the individual that is able to always produce impartial and objective truths. Objective because it is first, universal and therefore able to produce true facts independent of whether one wills it one way or another.
Second, there is the “subjective” side of thought, which is able to maintain “thought” as distinct ideas and differentiate between them. There is always a tension between the subjective side of thought, with the objective. Now the “objective” side of thought is what Hegel calls Reason, which NOT only produces “impartial” facts about nature, but is also the substance that produce “nature” in the first place.
The subjective side is the consciousness of reason. And so even to say that it is “subjective”, should only mean that it is the part of reason that aims to investigate it. The subjective side is the element which subscribes value onto reason, it is called the faculty-of-judgment because it makes decisions choosing between variables. Only insofar as to pick out reason and divide it into distinctive parts, otherwise “reason” would cease to be of it lacks this essential self-relation with itself – the “relation” producing itself and maintaining, the production.
The reason why it is “ethical” is because the recognition of the reason is a claim of a principle that is universal, pertaining to yet ‘beyond’ the particular nature of the individual. And holding claim to this challenges the subjective ego of the individual, which holds claim to things as mine and only mine, unique to me as the particular and so in this way, the particular side sustains the nature of something as distinct, but on its own it does not realize that the essential nature of the particular that makes it the kind of distinct thing that it is is in fact something universal, in fact beyond what it maintains, but it only can realize this by having maintained itself as distinct and therefore it’s object must have been maintained as distinct from it,
The usage of the term “reflective” in the abstract sense has an ironic, but inverse meaning when the same term is used in the physical domain. In purely physical terms, to “reflect” is to redirect one object off the surface of an other object. For example, when you shine a light on something, that light is reflected off of its surface in a specific direction. Reflection in the sense of “delegation” is passive because it does not concern where the action comes from, or from where it originates, but only that one force is repulsed away from an object, or is attracted towards it. One course of action is passed on towards another course of action, as when we say in language “he delegated his work to his superior”, to demonstrate the process of one thing passing on something to another thing. Energy is the passing on a course of action towards another entity.
In the abstract sense, the intellectual domain, to be ‘reflective’ is an active determination because it originates from the subject as a source going after things and becoming an observer of them. Reflective thinking defining a rational activity is voluntary because it is the opposite of the involuntary cognitive activity which is the unconscious mental processes of intuition, sensation, dreaming, etc,. Reflective thinking is the mental attempt at reconstructing a version of some original quality that is not directly present, but at one point conceived. To be “reflective” in the physical domain is passive and involuntary because the action being redirected is derived from some other source which is not involved in the interaction between the object being reflected and the object doing the reflection. For example, there may be an inumerable causes that determined the beam of light to be reflected off a mirror, but when the beam reflects off the mirror, it always occurs in the same way.
Reflection in this purely physical sense only cares that a light beam is bounced off the surface of a mirror, not from where that light beam originates. The empiricist say that the causes for a light to be reflected off an object has an innumerable sense of potential causes, whose special character is not integral in explaining the general process that any surface reflects off any light. But what this physical notion misses out, concerns — what is being reflected off—is always some kind of image or quality, which is obviously always related to the cause of it. For example, it is no surprise that we see an image of a man being reflected off by the water and not some other thing like a cow or a monkey because the man is the source for this reflection. in other words, the light is truly reflecting something out there that is object. The question becomes to what degree is it reflecting the true image of the phenomenon we say has an objective nature, or how many different ways, can that “thing” we call the “same”, can be reflected? Is each observer picking out a specific angle of the same phenomenon, or does the same phenomenon simply exhibit a different version of itself because it is being observed by a different observe? Or are both these question inverse propositions of the same scenario?
Different levels of physicality
Reflective thinking is characterized by “deep” thinking, which unlike the physical definition, is not a force — where objects tend to move away from each other, as per the definition of repulsion — but it is rather the entrance of one substance into, and beyond, the surface of another substance. In the physical sense we observe this when objects of different physical states interact with each other. For example, the different levels of physicality marked off by the states of matter — solid, gas, liquid — are able to penetrate, and are penetrable, to each other, I.e., a solid object absorbing a liquid state, or a liquid state emitting a gas etc,.
These levels of physicality, which are degrees of matter, are able to interact with each other without losing their essential form, e.g., just because solid objects like a sponge, absorb liquids, like water, both still remain not each other, while being maintained within the physical domain of each other. Water still exists as a liquid in the sponge, and the sponge still exists as a solid containing the water. Why do these states of matter maintain their essential form even after interfering with each other? This question has to do with the fundamental nature in all of them, which is not a physical state, but the abstract one.
The “abstract” is the most primary physical condition in two ways; first, from the observer point of view, all objects are “penetrated” by reason, that the mind can “penetrate” through the object and derive its essence in the form of an idea. for example, when you look at something, the image of that object is reflected off of it and is passed through by a stream of light towards the retina of the eye and into the brain. Second, the object itself is inherently reflecting off a rational form. What is being reflected off by objects are not merely it’s physical forms, like colours, heat, shapes etc., but it is rather how all these quantitive measures combine together to portray something essetinal, which is the idea, or what the thing is, to the observer.
Reason is not reflected off the surface of the object, like light is, but it is rather reflective by going deep into the object and accessing its essential form, and in-turn the essential form of the object, is itself a rational element, is reflected by the object back into the same abstract place that called upon it, and is recognized by an observer who understands idea of what it is. However, sensation cannot observe the process of how deep reason enters into the object; sensation stops short at only observing where the object ends at its surface. Perception only sees an image being reflected off a shape, and that shape appears to be a certain size with a certain range of motion and density, mass, texture, colour etc,. Sensation cannot witness beyond the surface of the object where the interaction of reflection happens between mind and object, nor can sensation perceive the process of reflection occurring in the mind when the image of an object is passed on there. For example, mirrors absorb the light from the object, and in turn reflect an accurate image of it. While other objects absorb light, and reflect off heat, energy, colour, vibrations etc,. In other words, they take in light and in turn reflect off some other energetic frequency. As to whether the energy source undergoes change after it passes through an object as a medium, or whether the object as a medium filters, or picks out a specific state from an indeterminate influx of qualities contained in an energetic state, that question still remains vague. Reason goes as far as possible into the object to reflect off its essential form for observation, which views it as a quality, but that quality must have been itself inherently rational in order to be recognized by an observer. .