Five Type of Thoughts

Part - 7 

I ended my previous article “Secrets of subconscious Mind – I” on the secret that mentions that there are two sources of thoughts: one is external world and other is internal world or subconscious mind from where mind receives the thought for processing. I wanted to write second part of subconscious mind on Human behaviour but later realized that we can’t understand the Human behaviour unless we understand the most basic unit of human behaviour that is called – Thought. So let’s discuss “Thought”

"When one thinks, then he understands; without having thought, one does not know; it is only after having thought that one understands."

What is thought?

To understand that what is thought we need to talk about how we think. Our senses receive the information from the external world and send to mind. Mind process the information and store them into memory. Thoughts can’t be called the electro chemical signals sent by senses to mind since senses are involved only in external thoughts but what about internal thoughts. Each and every time something is going on in our mind, the mental images that we keep seeing all the time. In the previous article it was explained that mind process the thoughts and store them into subconscious mind and subconscious mind is actually memory of mind where thoughts are stored and subconscious mind keep sending different thoughts to mind to process again so we can say that thought is the response of memory. There will be no thought if there is no memory.

Mind is the consciousness. Mind is the instrument by which soul materialize the material world. Its due to mind that different person perceives same thing differently. Mind is nature of consciousness and fundamentally it is immaterial but affected by material. It is product of both consciousness and matter. Thought is the result when consciousness is affected by material. Many authors mentioned that thought is a vibration or electric signal but thought can never be vibration since vibration can take place only in vehicle and since mind is not gross entity so thoughts can’t be vibration. Thought is the current state of mind or simply I can say you are what you are thinking right now. You are thinking you are happy then you are happy if you are thinking you are scared you are scared and its keep changing like a TV screen where pictures are keep changing now so I can say thoughts are modifications of mind. Mind doesn't remain in same state keep modifying these modifications are thoughts. So we got two definitions of “thoughts” first one is “thought is response of memory” and second one is “thought is the modification of mind” but if we observe minutely we will find that there are no two definitions. There is only one definition, both definitions have similar meaning since memory keep responding to mind in form of auto suggestions and mind keep modifying. It’s an automatic process weather we want or not that means you can’t stop thoughts. Thoughts will keep coming into mind but it doesn't mean that we can’t stop random thoughts coming in the mind. Meditation is technique to control this process that will be dealt in separate section.

External and internal thoughts

Imagine a lighted electric bulb suspended in a tank full of completely clear and transparent water. If the water is churned violently by some mechanical contrivance it will make all kinds of patterns in three dimensions round the bulb, these patterns being illuminated by the light from the bulb and changing from moment to moment. But what about the bulb itself? It will disappear from view, all the light emanating from it being assimilated with or lost in the surrounding water. Imagine that water is your mind, patterns are mental images, turbulence are thoughts and the bulb is your soul. This is the best example to explain the mind is philosophical terms. Our mind is like water you can compare with a lake. When we throw a stone is water, ripple occurs. Imagine the stones are external thoughts. Stones go in the bed of river and permanently stay there. Bed of lake is your subconscious mind where thoughts are stored permanently as impression. Baubles keep coming from the bed of lake to the surface and create ripples; you can imagine it with internal thoughts. When there is no external and internal disturbance water gets still you can compare it with calm and stable mind.

Type of thoughts

Every day we receive thousands of thoughts and depending on the nature of thought we can broadly classify all these thoughts in five categories. These five categories are: right knowledge, wrong knowledge, imagination, sleep and memory and each of these thoughts can further be classified in three categories: pleasurable, painful and neutral. Let’s talk one by one:

1.     Right Knowledge or Fact:  It comprises all those images which are formed by some kind of direct contact through the sense organs with the outer world of objects. It may be by direct observation or inference or by testimony all type of thoughts will come in this category. Suppose you see a car coming towards you its direct observation or you are sitting in your room and you hear the sound of car coming this is inference or your servant comes to you and tell you about car it is testimony

2.     Wrong Knowledge: It is also based on some kind of contact with external object but the mental image doesn't correspond with the object. It includes delusion, wrong inference and wrong testimony.

3.    Imagination or fancy: An image conjured up by word without any substance behind it is imagination. This type of thought is different than the first two thought since it is subjective in nature and there in no direct contact with object while above first two categories’ of thoughts are objective. Here again it is important to note that if mental image is related to previous experience then it will be memory and it won’t come in this category. Imagine a horse that has head of human. This mental image will come in this category or you are reading a book or you thought something new comes in this category.

4.    Sleep or dream: The modification of mind which is based on the absence of any content in it is sleep. It is important to understand that this state is different from Samadhi (trance). The difference lies in the fact that in the state of sleep the mental activity does not stop at all; only the brain is disconnected from the mind and so does not record the activities which are going on in the mind. When the person wakes up and the contact is established again, the brain again becomes the seat of mental activity as before. You can compare the sleep with refresh button of your computer. We receives thousands of thoughts every day at the time of sleep thoughts are sorted and stored due to that we see weird things in sleep. It doesn't have any significance meaning

5.    Memory:  Memory is not allowing an object which has been experienced to escape. Memory is here defined as the retention of past experiences in the mind. But it is to be noted that these experiences are retained in the mind as mere impressions (Samskara) and as long as they are present in their potential form, as mere impressions, they cannot be considered as thought. (Difference between thought and impression will be explained in next article). It is only when the potential impressions are converted into their active state in the form of mental images that they can properly be considered as a thought. Memory is one of the most important source of thoughts and responsible for our behaviour.

Whenever mind store the thought in memory, mind associate the feeling with thought. The feeling may be related to pleasure or pain or neutral. Its completely depend on mind and previous memory that which type of feeling mind attaches with the thoughts. How to change the certain feeling with the particular thought is subject of mind programming and a separate section  will deal about it. Feeling can be called the unit of thought. Which thought is powerful and which thought is weak can be compared by the amount of feelings attached with thought. Thought is the most basic unit of human behaviour. Number of similar thoughts and intensity of thought decides that which thought will prevail and will induce the action. Similar set of thoughts and powerful thoughts gathers and form belief. Belief is the operating system of human behaviour.