Thinking

I am thinking right now. What does that mean? My brain is doing something in its little chemical box. How did I make that happen? What do I do to make my mind think of apples? How do I even know that I want to think of apples? When I think of apples, do the exact same sequence of apple-like ideas come to mind? If not, then why not? If not, then to what degree do I really control what I think about.

If thinking is a shared activity, party controlled by my own thinking, partially controlled by the chemical mix in my head at a specific time, partially controlled by what I thought about last, and partially controlled by what ever else I am doing … then who is really thinking? Am I really part of a larger thinking universe? If seeing a red car influences what I think about when I think “apple”, then perhaps the red car is doing as much of the thinking as I am. Perhaps the whole universe is a big machine. It has chemical processes, electrical processes, physical processes … and thinking processes. When it rains on me and the water runs down my feet and into rivulets in the ground, I am part of the physical world, I change it. When a red car (Acura) triggers me to think about apples, I may just be a conduit for the giant thinking machine, I just contributed on wandering thought. Perhaps my thought about apples causes me to go get one out of the refrigerator. Since I ate the last apple, my daughter is triggered to terminate her thinking about apples and start thinking about oranges. Is that telepathy? Did I just change her thoughts by thinking about apples? Perhaps real telepathy is the transference of negative thoughts. Is it possible that only a finite number of people can think about apples at the same time? When I think apple, it might take away one unit of available apple-thoughts. If I take the last unit, then the next person cannot think apple. They have to think of cherries because all apple-thoughts are taken right now. That sounds like negative-telepathy.

I am really curious about how I control my own thinking. I perceive that thoughts are a spiritual experience – meaning something that is not material, something that is beyond flesh, unique and different from my eyebrows. But, the brain seems to be all flesh and electricity. When it thinks, the process is completely electrical/flesh. How does an image in my eye convert into a stimulus that thinks “apple”? Then when humans learned to write and read, how did we teach ourselves that “apple” meant a red thing to eat? Does “apple” and the red thing both cause the same triggers to fire in my brain? No certainly not. I can salivate when I see a good red thing, but I don’t remember ever salivating when I see “apple”.

Is thinking different from digesting? Put food in the stomach and the stomach begins to digest. It does something chemical that is unique based on the composition of the thing in stomach. Put visual or auditory stimuli into the brain and it begins to think. It thinks different and causes the body to do different things base don the content of the input. Perhaps thinking and digesting are exactly the same. Perhaps there is a reversed person co-residing with me that thinks with its stomach and eats with its brain. In that reverse person, when I eat, it thinks. When I think, it eats. It gets indigestion when I think about evil, but it goes “yum” when I think about trees and mountains. Maybe when I eat chocolate, it thinks sexy thoughts. When I eat vegetables, it thinks responsible thoughts. So the reason I like chocolate is because the reverse person sees bikini’s when I eat it. I hate beets. Those must cause reverse-person to think about child starvation in Africa.

Thinking and digesting are the same thing.

Why do we think? Perhaps for the same reason that we eat. It is a physical need. Perhaps we think because our bodies need that to survive. Some people are thinking gluttons. They think and think and think. Their brain is a big fat pig or a huge football player. Just like there are type A, B, and C food metabolisms, perhaps there are type A, B, and C thinking metabolisms. Some people are just predispositioned to think more. Their brains work better; they turn thoughts into mental muscle, while others turn thoughts into mental fat.

Thinking and digesting are the same thing.