Real Thinking
By Gabriel Chiron

         

1.  The initiative in consciousness for thinking.

 

       The first step in real thinking is to stop accepting superficial, distracted and linear brain imaginings or calculations as substitutes or pretences of thinking.  Too much of what calls itself "thinking" is not genuine thinking, which means that we must observe our thinking from beyond our thinking with a fully potent and clear discriminating awareness.
 

       This indispensable discriminating awareness cannot itself be a mode of thinking, for then there would have to be a supervision of it from beyond it as well, which would lead us into endless recursions of discriminating about discrimination about quality of thinking.  The quality determination of genuine or false thinking must take place in consciousness beyond thinking.  That is why the Cartesian equation of "I think" = "I am" is false.  Closer to being is "I know, therefore I am.", for thinking cannot observe thinking, which means that it cannot be the observer of thinking.  Consciousness is beyond thought, for otherwise we would not even know whether we are thinking or not, nor would we be aware of any other function connected to consciousness, such as seeing the blueness of the sky or feeling hunger or thirst in the sensate body. 
 

       Because I am conscious, I have being; because I am, I have consciousness.  It is through consciousness that I am conscious of being.  Because I know, perceive, observe and cognise, I therefore am, I continue to exist, to continue being.  Even in deep sleep, when I am apparently unconscious, I retain a consciousness of an unconsciousness that allows me to claim that it was my being that lost a great portion of consciousness and re-acquired it upon awakening.  Even in sleep there is a consciousness of being asleep.
 

       Real consciousness causes thinking to proceed in the organ or faculty of thought by being deliberately, wilfully present to the organ of thought with the intention that the organ of thought will be actively thinking about something of some importance or concern in consciousness as an intention.  The intention in consciousness to actually, truly, genuinely and deeply think is absolutely crucial to real thinking, and we can observe that it is exactly the absence of such an intention in consciousness that indiscriminately allows the assumption that false thinking is real thinking.  Hence, a genuine initiative to begin real thinking implies the emergence of a genuine intention to activate thinking in the organ of thought.  This real initiative about thinking flows from a real intention for thinking in the consciousness of the being who knows that thinking would be helpful to the will, concerns and intentions in consciousness of the being.  Analogously, it is not my hand that decides to grasp and lift a glass when I feel responsive in consciousness as to the thirst in my sensate body.  It is only by a real intention in consciousness to satisfy thirst that an initiative is undertaken to actually grasp and lift a glass of water to my mouth for the purpose of real drinking of water.
 

2.    That which calls us to activate real thinking.

 

       If we have understood the primacy of the will-for-real-thinking in consciousness, if there is to be real, genuine thinking at all, then the issue or question arises as to how this intentional thinking is to arise in consciousness as a genuine initiative for real as opposed to spurious, imitative or superficial so-called "thinking", "questioning", "philosophical deliberation" or the like.  I drink because I wish to relieve thirst in my body.  Analogously, I think because I wish to relieve a thirst-for-knowledge in my mind, my mental body.  If I do not feel a certain distress in my mental body as a burning thirst for some new answer or new knowledge of some kind, I will have no strong intention in consciousness as a response to a mental need or dissatisfaction. 

 

       It is some form of "thirst-for-knowledge" arising in my consciousness that alone can cause me to respond with a genuine intention to undertake real thinking.  It is the purpose for real thinking that causes me to activate real thinking in my organ of thought, my intellect, my faculty of inductive and deductive reason.  Real thinking is not arbitrary, such as our social urge to be thought of by others as "thinkers" or "philosophers", or the restless urge of the bodily neuro-system to pass the time somehow during a period of boredom.  Real thinking is neither vainglorious nor a mere hobby, for in either case there is no directly serious purpose of the thinking that will supposedly take place.

 

3.    The issue of depth of thirst-for-knowledge.

 

       There are obviously various levels of seriousness or importance as to thirst-for-knowledge.  So there is a question as to what kind of knowledge is most serious or important to acquire through thinking where indeed the organ of thought is the right faculty to deliver the missing knowledge.  In other words, what is the most significant knowledge that thinking as such can achieve?   Thinking as such, for instance, cannot arrive at observational awareness or direct experience of anything but the direct experience of actually thinking.  The purpose of thinking is not to directly increase consciousness or the being of the observer of thought.  Its purpose must be to arrive at the ultimately useful knowledge for a being that has a thirst for ultimately useful knowledge. 

 

       Now, what is the ultimately useful knowledge?  Is it merely knowledge of historical philosophies that wanted to believe that conclusions, judgments, beliefs, doubts or disbeliefs are more serious and important than conscious awareness?  Or is it in fact knowledge of conscious being itself?  

 

       The challenge here is to find out the real subject of ultimately useful knowledge so that we know why it is ultimate and what makes it useful for what purposes.  But there is a most peculiar paradox here, for we would have to somehow have this ultimately useful knowledge to be able to say why and how it is ultimate and useful.  This further implies a kind of pre-existent or a priori meta-knowledge, knowledge of all actual and possible knowledge even before possessing any knowledge that would be a product of thinking.  The terrible nature of the paradox is that this meta-knowledge threatens to render even the best and most genuine thinking redundant. 

 

4.    Thinking about pre-existent meta-knowledge in being.

 

       As we begin to try to understand meta-knowledge, we already have a provisional ultimately useful kind of knowledge, which is the knowledge of the ontological status of meta-knowledge as the ground of all thinking and products of thinking, which themselves would be secondary, created and original knowledge, but not meta-knowledge or knowledge of knowledge.  Thus we descend into the most ancient and primordial territory of them all, which is epistemology and not ontologyOntology is about what is and is not, but epistemology is about how we might find out what is and is not.  We cannot, for instance, determine whether an object is or is not red or green if we are colour-blind.  The epistemological organ of viable colour-vision precedes the determination of the ontological status of apparent colours or lack of colours.  The question of being is only resolvable after resolving the question of knowability.  Red or green may be the unknown for people with viable colour-vision, but they are unknowable for those who are colour-blind, even if people with colour-vision try to describe red-and-green for the colour-blind.

 

       The paradox of meta-knowledge however continues to hang over our intellect, our faculty of reason, like an executioner's sword.  No matter how much we may think about meta-knowledge, no matter how much we question it or create philosophical explanations of it as products of our thinking, knowledge of meta-knowledge is impossible, for that would be meta-meta-knowledge, which would be a super knowledge beyond meta-knowledge, which super-knowledge could not be more intellectual knowledge (which, as we have seen is below the level of meta-knowledge.)  Knowledge as a product of thinking aspiring to reach to the status of meta-knowledge would be analogous to a mountain climber hoping that reaching the top of a holy mountain would be the equivalent of entering heaven, or in a more mundane sense, would constitute flight. 

 

 5.    Leaping into the primordial abyss of epistemology.

 

       Thinking arrives at some kind of knowledge, but only intuition arrives at meta-knowledge.  Intuition is thus a superior organ of consciousness.  Those, however, who use their intellect, their organ of thought, more proficiently than ordinary folk, like to suppose that intellect is the supreme organ of consciousness and that intuition is an inferior organ somehow associated with emotional imagination of ordinary folk who cannot yet think proficiently. 

 

       The term intuition is actually a term that generally covers a broad range of organs and levels of consciousness, but for now let us designate it as that full-blown intuition that produces real insight when used in conjunction with thinking and real meta-knowledge or direct knowing when utilised in itself.

 

       We can therefore use our intuition to tell us what is indeed the ultimately useful knowledge that thinking can arrive at and get on with it. 

 

       My intuition tells me that we can develop an insight into the limits of intellectual knowledge through thinking about knowledge and the ways of its construction, deconstruction and reconstruction.  In short, the subject of epistemology, which is the process of discovery and learning, is the ultimate useful knowledge that thinking can generate.  But thinking cannot ever complete or exhaust this subject, due to the very nature of it as a series of endless fresh insights created in conjunction with the higher faculty of true intuition.  Knowledge of learning, which is epistemology, will endlessly grow and reshape itself as it goes along. 

 

       The desire to learn how to learn is the highest intention in consciousness for employment of the organ of thought, which is the intellect.  When we thus enter into real thinking about epistemology, we are exercising something like a courageous leap of consciousness into a bottomless abyss.  This is precisely because we will never arrive at a final, total or complete understanding of it.  Any grounding, support or bottom we achieve on the learning of learning will ever collapse and drop into a free-fall of greater depth.  Epistemology can always be taken deeper.  And, since it alone can furnish grounds for ontological issues, and since those grounds will be ever dropping into greater depths, our very idea of being and reality will periodically shift as it is deconstructed and reconstructed as a cyclic product of real learning and thinking. 

 

6.    The problem of content in learning.

 

       Everything seems all set up to endlessly inquire into how learning works as epistemology, but we immediately encounter a new paradox.  How can we learn how to learn if there is not something we are specifically learning, such as a science or a body of knowledge?  Do we not need a test subject, a keen referential knowledge acquisition area? 

 

       What then is the ultimate specific subject for learning by which to observe and determine the progress of our learning over time?  Epistemology, the ultimate useful knowledge needs a focal reference that cannot be epistemology. 

 

       Since we are concerned about our progress in all this, we should focus our attention on acquiring knowledge pertaining to ultimate progress.  Each of us must therefore learn how to be a God, a divine being.  Anything less, such as a demi-god or a superhuman adept or a devil, a Satan, will not get the job done, as such achievements would only be stages along the road or even detours perchance.  The realisation of Godself status in being looks ultimate enough, especially for mere intellectuals who imagine they are already there through vainglorious intellectual comparison of thinking and quoting capacity. 

 

       No learning without ultimate content must be our principle here.  To become a God is sufficient ultimacy of specific learning, even if (out of ignorance) it seems like an impossible task.  Where is the 'ultimacy' if we are not attempting to make the impossible possible? 

 

7.    Real thinking must go too far out. 

 

       Real thinking must go too far out.  This should not be taken in the sense of speculation and excitement about UFOs, aliens, ghosts and other supernatural phenomena that cause all sorts of denial and annoyance in the minds of ignorant intellectuals and professional people.  To go too far out with extensive thinking is about stretching our mental boundaries in the depths of serious engagement with the ultimate kind of issue, such as becoming a divine being. 

 

       For the ancient Greeks, the realm of the Gods was much closer to the realm of humanity.  What modern ignorant pseudo-thinkers commonly call 'mythology' was not called that in ancient Greece.  Those Greeks were more intelligent and enlightened.  They understood the plurality of Gods and Goddesses in the powerful realm of Spirit. 

 

       To try to do real thinking in a state of modern cynical prejudice is like a swimmer trying to swim with his limbs tied and bound.  Real thinking cannot proceed in a petty little 'modern' technological intellect, which has become a mere drone, a servant of the computer and of the stupidity of lying government leaders.  As for the fragmentary sciences, they have taken the mental body and hacked it into pieces, turning it into a miserable mass of information overload hamburger with a short attention span.  Modern science is not worthy of the name. 

 

       Real thinking violates the boundaries of modern science.  It goes too far out and regenerates the subtle lifeblood of the human soul; it reactivates and renews the ancient quest for greater and brighter truth. 

 

       Recognition in ourselves of the need for real thinking is an urgent life and death matter.  Without real thinking, learning and development of the faculty of pure intuition our life is wasted.  Modern society is ignorant and evil.  It wants to sacrifice all souls to a demonic world order of spiritual futility.  

 

8.    The feeling to think.

 

       The recognition of the need to think takes place in consciousness as a will-to-know, but because it is rooted in the meta-knowledge of pure intuition, it arrives as a peculiar feeling-to-think, just as a kind of feeling arises in the mind when we are about to remind ourselves to do something we have temporarily forgotten.  This feeling to do something, which includes the feeling to think, is the feeling of intent, which is desire or will. 

       As some of us know, the more often and seriously we do genuine thinking, the easier and more pleasurable it becomes.  In fact, it becomes a promising good habit in our mental nature. This is helpful to our development.  As the intention and ability to think grows in our consciousness and our faculty of thought, we develop a viable initiative for thinking, which means we can readily initiate good thinking. 

 

9.    The possible becoming of a being. 

 

       If the human being is to become a divine being, we will need to think about the meaning of the being who is going to become another kind of being yet somehow remain the same being throughout this change of being.  Intellect may fall at the first hurdle of subjective ontology.  How can a being remain a being that has had a change of being? 

       The intuitive answer before much thinking is that the new being retains all the memories of the old being, but with the addition of new memories and new functions in consciousness.  Also, we can see the normal reverse of this where the human being degenerates and loses both functions and memories in advanced aging.  This appears to be a devolution of being rather than an evolution.  There is less of a being rather than more of a being.  It is a negative becoming,  yet is clearly an identifiable selfsame human being who has diminished in being. 

 

       We have now arrived at a deeply significant issue for any human being, which is change of being for a being who remains the same being, which seems as first to be grounded in memory.  This leads us into a new zone of epistemological ontology, for it now appears that a consciousness of being is impossible without consciousness being a living, luminous memory that is constantly being added to or subtracted from.  A new Cartesian equation asserts itself more as "I remember, therefore I am." 

 

       Knowing is then not being, but the function of a memory adding experiences and knowledge to itself.  Living memory is being.  This would hold on any level of body, mind, soul, God or beyond that has memory as a level of being. 

 

10. Living memory is being. 

 

       The movement of life in memory as conscious being is the right definition of Spirit.  To the very ancient Aryans, prana (life) and Atma (Spirit) meant virtually the same thing, but with the distinction that Atma, Spirit, implied the individual life-force operating in a particular being.  Later this term became Jeevatma as individual living spirit as a responsible human soul, a causal ego.  Later, the term Atma, Spirit, became the essence of selfhood, of subjective being beyond causality.  Prana, life-force, then became the sthulaprana, gross life-force that moves in the living physical body; sukshmaprana, subtle life-force that moves in the living subtle or dream-body; and karanaprana, causal life-force that moves in the causal-body.  Hence the individual Spirit, Jeevatman, became the one who possesses three levels or dimensions of prana, life. 

 

       If Atma, Spirit, were not present on all levels of life it would be impossible for us to identify with our body, mind or causal soul.  In fact it would not be possible for ignorant materialists, identified with their physical body, to employ the physical brain to deny the very existence of higher, subtler levels of being.  This is itself an ultimate irony of spiritual being that it can employ the grossest level of its presence to deny its own existence!  There seems to be no theoretical limit to the insane arrogance of intellect operating through reflection of consciousness in a stupid and proud human brain. 

 

       Technology hates metaphysics and calls itself an enlightened superseding of Spirit, self, consciousness and will, which are decreed to be obsolete terms generated through emotional religious belief below the level of thought.  The observing Spirit of a real human being sees this from a higher perspective.  What we see is that the Spirit-denying brain of technological arrogance is itself below the level of real thought and will never arrive at it.  A group of robots submitting "proof" that human beings are actually nothing but biological robots could only be satisfied with such a conclusion through the fact that this is what their programming forces them to do.  Some cognitive scientists have been so thrilled with their creation of artificial intelligence that they now decree that all intelligence is artificial.  That is why they want to now replace the term 'consciousness' with 'cognition'. 

 

11. The necessary rediscovery of metaphysics. 

 

       Criticising the false authority of brain materialism is necessary to release the thinking potential of authentic intellect, which is a higher, subtler organ lodged in the causal body.  The entire causal universe is a realm of sheer abstraction where thoughts are things and things are thoughts, where mind is matter and matter is mind.  Ignorant, false, "thinkers" of our present backward and brain-snotty planet cannot yet conceive that their very world of ideas and words is a realm, a stand-alone world in itself, which is the ancient Greek meta-world called logos, the realm of verbal meaning. 

 

       Real thinking is not possible without the rediscovery of metaphysics, for it is only through metaphysics that thought can access its own pristine universe of eternal discovery, science, learning and philosophy. 

 

       In the meantime, the modern cynical pseudo-thinkers, the self-styled biological robots, can be left behind to bite the dust and eat the ashes of the world they are helping to destroy through abuse of technology and perversion of intellect in the distorting mirror that is the self-isolated human brain.  And we can also put to rest the stupid idea that metaphysics is about building up dogmatic philosophical belief-systems composed of platitudes.  Metaphysics is about exploring thoughtfully beyond the confines of crude, limited physics.  It implies connecting of thinking with inspired intuition and the realms of Spiritual being where the totality of the self includes but transcends the human body and the neuro-cognitive machinery of mechanical computation or biological robotics. 

 

12. Developing metaphysical initiative.

 

       If we are listening to the causal time-space a priori universe with an ear of true intelligence, we find ourselves in a new place within our own consciousness, like ancient mariners stepping ashore onto an unknown island in a faraway sea.  In this magic moment of the mind we pause and reflect on the meaning of all meaning, the thought of all thought, the discovery of all discovery, the wonder of all wonder. 

 

       Out of this poignant stillness is born the journey of awakened intelligence, the inquiry into the totality of all existence, the adventure of anthropological, theological and cosmological ontology, which are the three hermetic heads of Thoth, son of Osiris; Datta, son of Atri.  This is metaphysical initiative at its primordial best.  The renewal of hermetic philosophy, the resurrection in essence of Osiris, the extraterrestrial governor of the Sirius colony thousands of years ago in Egypt and Mesopotamia when Osiris was also called Oannes, the fish diety and originator of western philosophy, of protophilosophy, which is symbolised as Isis, wife of Osiris, later called Sophia by the Greeks, which means wisdom.  Philosophia, love of wisdom, is the passion of the primordial philosopher.  May we all learn to feel this way and develop our metaphysical initiative.

 

 

 

 

 

         

 

 

 

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