The window of time for every individual begins when we are born, and it closes with our last breath. It is in this short time between the birth and death of our minds that every single idea, choice, concept and correlation get surfaced in our mind’s present and appear as thoughts. And it is in this short period of time we strive to change our futures through thoughts.
We had seen how the window of subconscious for us humans can conceive anything between its birth and death. We use the information we learn in the present to form any mental image about the past events (events before our birth). This means that the mind is an enclosed system with birth and death as its boundaries. Within this closed system, thoughts can be randomly created by using any information available already in our brains. Any thought about the past involves our minds to remember an event and all the details recorded about the same (in the brain).
Usually, our minds not only visualise what had actually happened but also what could have, should have and would have happened. It is a well-known fact by now that our mind thinks of situations that can never happen or what could have been said or done before we go to bed every night. We usually blame ourselves for what could’ve been said or done knowing full well that we can’t change the events. What concerns us now is the question how such choices surface in our minds when it thinks of the past.
Our brains, right from the day they start functioning, keep collecting information from around their surroundings, using all the available senses in the physical body. In case of absence or malfunction of one or more senses, the functional efficiency of the other senses is tweaked up, and we call this adaptation. All this information stored in the brain (as memories) are coalesced in a particular order to form images relating to our past or the future.
The working of thoughts is very, very complex, so let’s keep it simple for now. Our brains use the events, sceneries, words, tales, experiences we shared with people, to form the past thoughts (could have’s, should have’s and would have’s). Meanwhile, the present situation we experience provides enough information for our brains to visualise any number of future possibilities as could be’s, should be’s and would be’s of thoughts. The first 5 senses constantly provide information for the brain to form the thoughts.
Our brains are inclined to believe what it sees using its eye more than what it hears about or reads about indirectly. This is why we are naturally interested in videos about any topic of learning and not the same information in texts or books. If I give you this book in a video format or even as an audio, I am sure you would find it more interesting than as this text. The present period in human history is well known to be the information revolution, and it is rightly called so, since never in the history of humankind have we added so much information to our brains!
The window of psychological time extending from birth to death, the amount of information collected and stored in the brain being too much, the number of thoughts that can be generated in the subconscious in any given time is high. This means that a person with a good memory, who can relate to any event in their past, easily experiences a lot more thoughts crossing their subconscious than an average person. We call this overthinking, but actually, it is just the way the subconscious evolved. This overthinking is in some ways helpful, like it results in a creative personality, but in some extreme cases, it results in psychopaths and sociopaths, who have very little control of their minds and, consequently, their actions.
If in case, a person’s psychological time gets stuck in a single situation and repetitively plays the situation in the subconscious (present) mind, the mind is said to have retarded, with the person losing his/ her normal function.
With the thoughts being understood, let’s take a look back at our minds, as to how they function. All through time we have learnt that it is the mind that gives rise to the different thoughts we see. But actually, it is the other way around!
The construct called mind is formed at the point where the thoughts about pasts or present or the future meet. The thought process being nanometrically continuous, we feel the mind’s presence continuously. That is, whenever a memory (or) an input from the senses is made to merge with another detail, to form a new image in the brain, the thoughts that are generated form the construct, the mind!
Not choices or free will and not even time, but the mind is the greatest illusion of all!
