MINDWORK What's that? How did I come up with the idea? You're asking me how my mental processes work? Is that what you're asking? I hope you're not asking me that. I hope you're asking me if something or other, something outside my volition, like a leaf blowing in the wind, or the drone of a jet overhead, or the laughter of an unknown person walking down the street triggered a thought. That I can answer. But if you're asking how the thought arrived once the something happened, you're asking a question that can't be answered. You can't witness your own thought processes at work any more than you can see your own eyeballs without a mirror. Thinking is something that's happening to you; you're not making it happen; it's making you happen. You know what I think? I think that thinking is going on in spite of us. Know why? Just try to stop it without committing suicide. Go ahead, try to stop yourself from thinking. It's impossible. You'd have to think to stop thinking. Get it? It's happening no matter what you do, whether you sleep or remain awake; it doesn't matter. It's got a life of its own. So why does it seem like it's ours? I don't know. Maybe because it's happening at a place we're familiar with, like inside our heads. But, hold on a second. If the thinking is going on all by itself inside our heads, in what way then are they our heads? Seems more like Its heads, doesn't it? And just because we sense it there all the time, doesn't mean it isn't going on somewhere else too. Thinking, for all we know, could be going on right outside our heads, even in the depths of the ocean or space. It could be a sort of universe dynamic that's going on everywhere and our brains just happen to be wading through it somehow. Maybe thinking is just something that the universe does. The only problem I have with this idea is all the stars and planets and galaxies out there; I mean, if thinking is what the universe does, where did all that stuff come from? But, you know, I no sooner ask the question than the answer, as if by magic, appears. All that stuff out there is what it's thinking. Yeah, that's it! The great galaxy in Andromeda is just a thought that the universe had a long long time ago. Hell, what am I saying? Maybe it's still having the thought. Maybe that's the reason we can still see it, because the universe is still thinking about it. And that gives me another idea. Maybe it's the reason we grow old and die. Maybe the universe just can't hold onto our particular thought anymore, maybe because it's too complicated or something; I mean, we do seem to be a thought that's forever changing with the accumulation of data; our memory storehouse increases in size with every passing moment. And you can't say that about the Andromeda Galaxy, or the Milky Way either. They're just vast collections of billions and billions of stars, and stars are mostly hydrogen gas under lots of pressure, probably not thinking a single thought, at least not anything that we'd call a thought, but, they are the thought, and compared to the thought that we are, don't seem too awfully complicated. Like I said, maybe that's the reason they're able to stay around for so many billions of years: they're so simple. Hell, I'm getting to the point where even I can't hold onto me. It's no wonder the universe can't. And don't even think about asking me what that means.
(from Desert of Tears) Where Did Everything Come From?
|
