Who is the One Thinking?

If you really study the movement of thought, on the neurological level, what you’ll find is that a thought creates a charge, then there is a firing of the neurons. The charge creates the firing, and then there is the synapse and the cognition of the thought is actually delayed. There is a gap. The thought has already created the firing and then the individual catches the thought.

Where is the thought coming from? Who is thinking? By the time the thought arises the neurons have already fired, the synapse has already occurred, so this thinking is already hardwired into the individual.

So, people don’t want to have these negative thoughts. You are not thinking, as why would you think such destructive thoughts? You don’t wake up in the morning wanting to have panicked thoughts but you find, sometimes, it happens.

So, where are these thoughts arising from?

They are arising from that unconscious state, the agyanamaya kosha, that level of consciousness is being maintained.

So, when you look at an individual who is just going through their habit patterns, you’ll find the activity is fundamentally more in the hippocampus, the mammalian brain and the reptilian brain. When the individual is very heightened, conscious, present, you’ll find that the activity is predominantly in the prefrontal cortex.

When a person is involved in creative thinking, meaning thoughts which are initiated by the individual, you’ll find the activity is in the prefrontal cortex, not in the reptilian brain.

If you took a mammal and removed the prefrontal cortex, the mammal could still go on doing certain things. If you take out certain parts of the mammalian brain, and just leave the reptilian brain, the survival mechanisms of the mammal will continue. Tests have been done to show this.

The thoughts that you have reflect the state of consciousness that you are maintaining. It’s from there that the thoughts are arising, so as you refine your consciousness, you find that these kinds of thoughts cease to happen.

Before the cessation of this kind of thinking can happen, you have to learn to transcend this kind of thinking by not giving it power, by not feeding that synapse, that circuitry. If you keep feeding that circuitry, then it will keep repeating itself and then you find yourself helpless in the face of these thoughts.

The individual doesn’t want to have these thoughts or the craving, but it happens. The craving is actually arising before the individual sense of self so the individual sense of self is secondary to the craving. So, by the time the craving has arrived, it has captured the individual.

If the individual does not have a practice, does not educate themselves, develop a culture where they can begin to access a level of intelligence before the firing of the circuitry, then they are helpless as they are meeting the thought after it has occurred and so they are always fighting themselves.

For those thoughts to arise there needs to be a conditioned belief system. So, when people want to change, they take certain steps, but then they keep relapsing. This is because they believe in an identity and keep living in fear that this can happen to them again.

The ego is always living from an effect positionality.

The transcendence of ego is the beginning of cause positionality, when the individual starts to realise that they are the cause, not the effect.

You are the creator, not the created.

So, when anything arises in the field of your awareness, it’s important to remain vigilant, that you don’t immediately believe what arises, as those things that arise in the field of your awareness are the habit patterns of the mind. So, it’s important to observe.

As you progress, the space increases. You start to develop an expanded state so now, even when it arises, it does not have the power to capture you because there is greater spaciousness available, greater choice available. There’s a greater distance between you and that which is arising.

In a lack of awareness, that spaciousness is not there. It’s a very narrow vision, the asleep state. It arises and you are it. Now you are bothered. Instead of these bothersome thoughts, feelings, sensations arising from a conditioned location, you become the content of your consciousness.

As you develop your awareness and refine and culture your perception, a natural distinction arises where you are you and you see these thoughts, emotions, sensations, arising secondary to you. You are primary now.

Instead of this sense of self which is secondary, you begin to become free from the content and then the content slowly starts to take on an illuminated value. The content now arises from an illuminated state of consciousness.

As we refine our energy, our chakras, the content of our consciousness is transformed.

However, sometimes, as you are fluctuating, you’ll find that this old conditioned thinking, identity, behaviour will still arise. That’s why consistency of practice is key.

Consistency is the key!

We have cultivated a habit of being a fake self. Believing in these identities, this conditioning, that we have picked up on our journey through space and time. But this fake self is just a habit. And yoga is about breaking the habit of being your false self.