Day Fifty-nine

What is beyond thought? I have more of a sense of what thought is made of; that most of the time it is applied to objects, to other thoughts, to what history is brought in and combined with present experience, categorizing, defining reactions to pleasant and unpleasant (such as "I don't like this", which is a step beyond feeling); more rarely to neutral, although with some investigation it seems that subtle thoughts are going on all the time to categorize that set which is neither pleasant or unpleasant; that set which is neither helpful or hurtful and therefore that set which does not require a following action toward or away.

Going back to touch over and over again pulls me out of thought. First it limits and contains my thought, which brings resistance for a while, but that fades. Then there is often a 'popping out' of the usual stream of thought and the stone is a base from which I have a much larger observation deck. I can see the pull again nonetheless to say "ah here is your base and all these things are yours, pick one and play with it" and so on. But once again going back and back and back to touching there is a communication between the base and looking more deeply at feeling, form and thought.

I'm beginning to think I could assemble a real robot if I can figure all this out. You know, there hasn't been a real robot mind that thought on its own, but if we can make the right components they might take up life. My mind and body, upon investigation, are but component parts. So we could make the component parts, certainly feeling could be made by a sensor and its interaction with things, perception by some register of built up categories, picking up intention, and so on. If we built it right, we'd only have to wait for craving to take place. But it is that sense of self, that fundamental ignorance that leads to craving that must help animate things. And that is so intangible, so hard to analyze, distill, so subtly resistant to study.