what originates in reality that is independent of thought?

  

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We have to be very alert and careful here. For we tend to try to fix the essential content of our discussion in a particular concept or image, and talk about this as if it were a separate ‘thing’ that would be independent of our thought about it. We fail to notice that in fact this 'thing’ has by now become only an image, a form in the overall process of thought i.e. response of memory, which is a residue of past perception through the mind (either someone else’s or one’s own). And so, in a very subtle way, we may once again be trapped in a movement in which we treat something originating in our own thought as if it were a reality originating independently of this thought.

We can keep out of this trap by being aware that the actuality of knowledge is a living process that is taking place right now (e.g. in this room). In such an actual process, we are not just talking about the movement of knowledge, as if looking at it from the outside. We are actually taking part in this movement, and are aware that this is indeed what it is happening. That is to say, it is a genuine reality for all of us, a reality which we can observe and to which we can give our attention.

The key question is then: “Can we be aware of the ever-changing and flowing reality of this actual process of knowledge?” If we can think from such awareness, we will not be led to mistake what originates in thought with what originates in reality that is independent of thought. And thus, the art of metaphysics may develop in a way that is free of the confusion inherent in those forms of thought which try to define, once and for all, what 'the whole of reality is’, and which therefore lead us to mistake the content of such thought for the overall order of a total reality that would be independent of thought.


—David Bohm

Reality and Knowledge Considered as Process

Birbeck College

University of London, May 1974

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The kingdom of God is not in the clouds, in some designated point of space; 

it is right behind the darkness that you perceive with closed eyes. 

—Yogananda

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