One of the features of thought is that it begins to lose track of what is independently real and what is produced by thought, because it can't keep track of what is projected from memory and what is direct perception and experience.
Unless thought begins to operate in a coherent manner (which requires that people be aware of and understand how they confuse the effects of memory with independent reality) then it is all going to come out more or less the same in the long run. At present the thought process profoundly affects the whole mind in a destructive way, because it imposes all sorts of irrelevant emotions and desires and assumptions and distorted facts, leading to illusion. The whole system gets disrupted--and it doesn't even work in a proper way physically and chemically.
There are things you can do that help you to become attentive and aware, through seeing what happens while you are doing them, for the sake of learning and not for the sake of getting a result. One is to pay special attention to the general process in which thought and feeling are related together through memory and its response. For example, a certain thought may disturb us, and later this disturbance reaches the solar plexus or the abdomen. We then say that we have got a deep gut feeling; we take this as proof that it is right. But in fact it may be a mechanical response to memory--just an extension of the thought process. The disturbing thought may have done it. If you regard it as having come up independently, you'll give it very great value and will be caught up in it. It is very important to pay attention to where these things come from, so that they will be given their proper value.
Society takes certain assumptions as truths because it supposes that they are necessary for its stability. Such social assumptions therefore cannot be questioned--very often you can't even mention them, much less question them. There's a tremendous pressure to stop us looking at these assumptions, or if we do look at them, to defend them in a very violent way. The defense of social assumptions can lead to the ultimate violence, to war, to murder, and to oppression, along with the most extreme self-deception and general decay of society and of the individuals who make it up. People feel very uneasy about questioning the basic assumptions of their society.
What seems to be the most important as well as the most real is the sense that consciousness as a whole is clearly divided into two distinct parts. One of these consists of the general content that is being observed; the other consists of a separate "self" that is observing the first part. But it follows from what I have said that this is a fictitious division, which constitutes a fundamental kind of fragmentation. This fragmentation introduces a false split in what may be called the very heart of one's being. Because this division appears to be so important, everything else is divided up in such a way as to support it and to give it the appearance of being secure, but this does not greatly affect the feeling and the sense of reality of this whole experience.
It is important for us to suspend our opinions, rather than either to defend them or to suppress them or to avoid expressing them in order to try to prevent conflict. To suspend something is, as it were, to keep it "hanging in front of you," constantly accessible to questioning and observation. All this means that to feel free to express your opinions, regardless of how foolish or wrong they may seem to be to others, is a key requirement for dialogue.
The minute you feel you are moving toward a goal, you know that ordinary
thought is in operation. Exploration of thought does not have a precisely
definable end in view.
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