Thought – God’s gift to the mankind!!!
Einstein always believed in “Imagination is more important than knowledge”. What is imagination? It is a result of a profound thought process sparked by some sort of experience or events in our lives and is always relevant in its own context regardless of the physical prevalence of imagined thoughts. Man is considered as the supreme living being only because of his ability to imagine. World appears in myriad forms for various beings and he perceives it based on the culture of his mind. Rose is a beautiful flower symbolizing the beauty of love for a poet and it is an object which gives out pleasing fragrance for a scientist. This just highlights the importance of the perception of our mind. The perception depends largely on the way the mind is cultured. The behaviour of our mind remains the same regardless of the circumstance, but it depends on how the mind is trained to understand the situation. It is like teaching how to learn.
It is important to note that it is very difficult or almost impossible to change his/her perspective once the mind is cultured and matured. There are innumerable examples when man has failed in his life due to his inability to cope with the change in the way of thinking. This reinforces the importance of culturing our mind at the right time. Human mind has always been considered rational for practical purposes. It is interesting to note that nobody ever verified or validated the credibility of such assumptions. The sweet irony of such assumptions is the possibility of the downfall of some scientific theories which is standing on some assumptions made by an individual whose mind’s culture may be radically different from others. One of the leading philosophers of India J. Krishnamurthi has bravely attacked the conventional thinkers by saying that human mind is irrational. It appears very sensible because what is good for one could be bad for the other like a famous aphorism which says that “One’s food could be other’s poison”.
The important question is ‘Why is the irrational mind of man accepting the explicitly forced rationality on him?’ I strongly feel that the main reason behind this is the weak culturing of human’s mind which makes him vulnerable to every external thought which is vociferously instilled in him. To avoid this, we should lay a strong foundation of culture in our mind so that we have the conviction in ourselves and our principles and ideologies.
Thought has been given utmost honour and respect by man from time immemorial. Rene Descartes’, a famous philosopher had upheld the importance of thoughts by saying “I think, therefore I am”. Albeit this thought was rather critically attacked and controversial brain-in-a-vat theory was suggested, such a radical thought could be arrived only by a man like Descartes’ who had a well cultured mind which was not vulnerable and influenced by external agencies. We should also develop such kind of a mindset wherein we are able to comprehend everything, filter out the irrelevant and consume the concentrated knowledge. In order to do this we must have a mindset to be receptive to new views and thoughts and ideas and view it with no prejudice. This is in other words called ATTITUDE. Intelligence is defined as the ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from experience. So, with a harmonious blend of right attitude, proper culture of our mind and intelligence we can achieve everything which is otherwise thought impossible.
I would like to reinforce the importance and significance of thoughts and thinking habits in MK Gandhi’s own words which says “A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes."
“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.” -- anonymous
RAO
