Colette Obrien

What is a thought made of?  If everything in existence is made of matter, and our thoughts exist, does that mean they have matter? And if they don’t have matter, do they exist? If thoughts do have mass, and our human experience is a bundle of memories/thoughts, we will still exist when our physical bodies transform into worms and cats.

Googling for scientist’s views on this subject, a few important points emerged:

Some scientists believe the photon, a tiny particle others consider too small to have mass, does. The problem is it can’t be measured at rest. To be without mass implies it has no mass when,”At Rest”. Photons move in waves and that implies mass. Like sound waves photons can be reflected which means something with no mass can be blocked or affected by mass.  But are thoughts photons, or something related to the electric nature of the activity of the brain.

Glenn B. Wheaton of HRVG: “Because of the electrical and magnetic platform that gives birth to thoughts, it is likely that thoughts are fields that actually flash to cognizance. It is why you cannot look too closely at a thought. Thoughts have a dwell time that fades upon recognition. Thoughts are fleeting, thoughts pass, thoughts that pass are collapsing waves. We can look at a brainwave signature but we cannot chase the electrons to word, phrase, or sentence. I believe science will ultimately have to accept that thoughts are micro bursts of electromagnetic activity.”

Science is as yet uncertain and therefore of no assistance. So here we are left to our own thoughts on the subject! It’s the old “faith or reason” dilemna once again, and I’m a person of faith. 

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Oblivion derives from the latin, to forget, and is defined by Webster as the condition or fact of being forgotten.   To obliterate is to erase, leave no trace, destroy. Today it is often used to describe a place or a state of being. 

The idea that there is a place called oblivion is so radical to any thinking being it’s shocking to discover how prevalent it is in common conversation.  I would like to see this place. Is it like the image above? Has anyone ever been there?  Like heaven and hell the assumption is that these are actual physical places. Oblivion then would be a place of forgetfullness where memory is erased, but is memory any more real than a place called oblivion? Memory is an idea; an experience of the mind describing something or someone that is or was at one time Real. But memory itself is an abstraction not unlike the abstraction of nothingness, of not-being.

Current physics refuses the concept that something can be and then not be.  What is-is. What isn’t-isn’t.  Though it changes shape, all matter always was and will always be.  Life on planet earth was at one time star-stuff.  The original matter that was the star was something else before. Does that mean that the star is now in oblivion? If everything that ever was still exists in some form what difference does it make if it is remembered by the human mind?

The important thing is that it still exists;  the atom that became a star that became my cat, that will become part of a tree.  All one flow of energy in a constant stream of creative bliss; the music of the spheres.  And my little human life? What will it become and where will what I call ‘me’ go?  Certainly not to oblivion, and probably not to heaven or hell either.

A question for next time; does thought have matter?

I truly hate, abhor and am in terror of being lost.  I feel the same way about losing something, or someone, or an opportunity.  Why does loss have such a hold on our psyches that we will do anything in our power to prevent it happening? What do we mean by LOST? One moment the car keys are in my hand, the next I can’t find them and my memory isn’t helping.  Magicians constantly play with us on this subject; appearance and disappearance intrigue and frighten us. 

 ”To be or not to be” is the question. Projecting onto objects the potential for their disappearance moves us a step away from the actual fear; our own.  The mind imagines not being, just as well as it imagines being. How can one be and not be? If my keys were here and now they’re not, where are they? Is it possible for physical objects to disappear? I love the story of the clothes dryer’s ability to eat socks, one at a time. Again the mind plays with loss and imagines how it can happen. We make jokes of what frighten us and of what we are incapable of understanding.

Transformation is one of the most useful answers to lost and found– My cat Desiree dies in the forest and within several months all parts of that animal have become some element of earth.  I’m not a biologist so can’t say exactly what the animal fur and bone has transformed into but I know it has. But what happened to the cat that was and is no longer? The physical parts have transformed and Desiree is lost, never to be found again. Disappeared from the face of the earth. No wonder I’m so afraid of Loss and so intent on finding any small misplaced item; maybe it’s me.

A dream, like a dragonfly, alluringly invites us to follow. This morning early, not yet light, I woke in a state of awe; the dream, like a brilliant violet dragonfly flitted across my mind’s eye. Seductively, it came close and darted away, again and again. How I longed to name it, define it, tell it’s story, believing if I could it would be mine. But what would that accomplish, I wondered? Holding it in my hand, would it be more meaningful? Why wasn’t it enough to experience it’s color and movement, its scent of mystery, like something glimpsed through mist that comes in and out of focus?

If I did manage to catch hold of it, I would surely admire it for awhile, and eventually, believing I’d come to an understanding of its nature, I would put it down and look for something else to capture my imagination. Had I caught the dragonfly or had it caught me?

Like a dream analyzed, knowledge sought and gained leaves a brief impression on the mind, and then the fickle creature moves on.  The mind holds to the belief that the current love interest will be the final one; the one that ends the seeking. However, the mating of concept with reality is an unquenchable thirst, a hunger never sated. It is the nature of mind to seek knowledge and of knowledge to seduce with creative fluorishes of color and movement and of possibilities only dreamed of.  Like dreams in sleep that elude capture or if caught, aren’t what we’d wished for. 

Mind’s nature is to posset questions and seek their answers certain there will come one special one; one unlike all the others that will give us peace, believing if it isn’t found in life surely when the answer to that biggest question is before us, and we know what happens after death, surely then?