One of the most amazing, bewildering, and frustrating things about being human is how much of a mystery consciousness is.
What we don’t know about our own minds dwarfs what we do know. We know that our minds emanate (or something like that) from our brains. And we know a few structural things about which parts of the brain do some specific things.
And in time, I hope we will come to understand much more.
But for now, we don’t even know where our thoughts come from.
Sometimes, smarty-pants types will say our thoughts come from “neural processes”, or perhaps our “subconscious”. But those are just place-holder words. They don’t describe anything. We don’t know the nature of these processes. We don’t know what our subconscious actually is.
So seriously, where do thoughts come from? While we’re out and about and active, we can imagine that it’s our sense stimuli and our emotions and our memories and our focused attention that sort of dictate what thoughts come to the fore. And I’m sure that sort of describes something about what’s happening.
But if you’re daydreaming, or speaking quickly, sometimes a thought will just “pop” into your head. Where did it come from?
Or let’s simplify it as much as we possibly can. Those of you who meditate can confirm. You’ll be sitting there, peaceful, relaxed, focusing on your breathing or some sound, or whatever you technique you prefer — and suddenly some completely random-seeming thought will just pop into your brain unbidden.
Seriously, where did that come from?
The only honest answer is: We don’t know.
Some people say, “nowhere”. But since nowhere isn’t a place or a thing, that can’t be it. It clearly has something to do with the way our neurons are connected and firing and interacting with the deeper parts of the brain that deal with emotions and memories and all that stuff.
But that’s such an impenetrable mystery that we might as well say “nowhere”.
The ancients would sometimes say that thoughts come from the Gods — or possibly from demons. I’ve certainly had some mind-bending thoughts over the years. Both insightful and amazing and dark and disturbing.
It’s easy to imagine these thoughts coming from some outside force — perhaps a supernatural one.
And the ancients also used God-imagery to explain other aspects of our psyche, such as lust, rage, serenity, hunger, wisdom, etc.
There is a famous moment in the Iliad where Achilles is about to strike down Agamemnon when Athena grabs his hair from behind and stops him.
That sounds a lot like the “god” of reason coming to the fore and replacing the violent urges of another “god”.
It’s certainly easy to see how ancient humans might turn to gods to explain where our thoughts and emotions and desires come from. After all, it’s not like we have good answers to those questions either.
Those of a deterministic bent will say that all the thoughts you and I and everyone who has ever existed were pre-ordained in the first trillionth of a second of the big bang, as all the cosmic billiard balls were set in clockwork motion.
I’m not so certain of that, but of course, I don’t have much in the way of a competing theory.
Once again, I have no deep answers for you, just an interesting question.
I hope this question entertains and entices you as much as it does me.
Naturally,
Adam