“I used to think my thoughts were true.”
That line, spoken over iced tea, started a conversation that became the philosophical core of the book. The response: “You have to believe your thoughts are true! Don’t you? What are your thoughts to you?”
Good question.
Consciousness and Its Contents
Meditation teachers ask you to notice things as they appear in consciousness and then fall away — breath, sounds, thoughts. Sam Harris calls these things the “Contents of Consciousness.” Consciousness itself is the unchanging space where experience appears.
Whether the inputs come from the real world or a simulation built by overlords in The Matrix, consciousness is the stage. Everything else is passing through.
The 2x2
One of the things they teach at Harvard Business School is how to think in 2x2s. So a picture appeared:
| Before Words | After Words | |
|---|---|---|
| Voluntary | Breath | Thought |
| Involuntary | Breeze | Stream |
Breath and Thought are structurally alike — we can control them, but they also happen without effort.
The line down the middle matters. On the left is life before language. On the right is life after language. That line is so important it’s one of the most famous lines in any book: “In the beginning, was the word.”
Before words, nature’s ability to transmit information through generations was severely limited. When we acquired the ability to use words, everything changed — a new beginning for the planet and for humanity.
See the poem The Thinker & The Naught and Subtle Choice.
From Zen and the Art of [nothing] by John Zdanowski & Jeff Abrams, Chapters 5–6.