Cogito, ergo sum. (I think, therefore I am)
This is a typical intellectual statement that takes several things for granted.
It was first coined by René Descartes, a French philosopher.
It has got some major loop holes:
- If you stop thinking, then you aren’t.
- Thinking comes before being.
- Thinking validates being.
- It takes for granted that there actually is an ‘I’ which is.
If you stop thinking, then you aren’t:
If a person is brought back from coma (brain activity, but no cognitive thinking) then they have been non existing for a while. This is obviously not how it works.
What about deep sleep when dreaming stops?
It is also possible to train your thoughts to stop in deep meditation.
Thinking comes before being:
If you have an experience, then you perceive a sensation. This is then translated (thought about) by your thinker. So being, as well as sensation comes before thinking.
Thinking validates being:
The thinker would like to be the validator, the regulator of reality. But, and this is a very big but, thinking makes things up! If the mind does not know what it is perceiving, then it makes it into something that makes sense to itself. (Consider optical illusions)
It takes for granted that there actually is an ‘I’ which is:
The thinker does not understand beingness. It therefore makes up a story because it cannot allow itself not to understand. But the story about ‘I’ is just that… a story, a made up fantasy about something the mind knows nothing about.
Whether or not there actually is an I is a different story (that we will tackle later), but it has nothing to do with the mind’s opinion about it.
Notice how we can talk about the mind. We can detach from it and look at it.
Soul Insights 