Sound waves need air to exist & various objects are made up various materials but what are thoughts made of ?

Question

Music needs air to exist and travel. In space/vacuum there cant be any music/sound waves.
Similarly all objects are made up of various materials. Door from wood, tumbler from glass, toy from plastic etc. also various materials are made up of various molecules.
Light is made up of photons.
Animals and creatures are made up flesh & bones.
Etc.

However, every person is always thinking various thoughts. Some times he is thinking of music he heard before & enjoys its playback in mind. Some other time he is thinking of various objects , people, food etc.
Now the question is what these mental objects are made up of.
You can measure the properties of real objects but how do we measure properties of mental objects in thoughts.
On what ground these mental objects exist? Some one will say MIND but we dont see nor we can handle mind as a measurable object. By the existance of thoughts only we can imagine existence of mind. So how do we go about controlling the existence of mental objects?

Let us see what are desires.
When we listen to a song it remains in the memory of brain. After a while that song starts playing back again and again, why? because we have labeled it with pleasure and the human nature is , to repeat the pleasure.
And that is what is desire.
Over the time the song we heard becomes fainter and fainter in the recall. But the desire to repeat it remains. When the recall becomes very faint we again play the song and the memory becomes fresh again. Thats how we enjoy songs we heard long before.
Shall we say that the chemical reactions responsible for the recall are getting weaker? If it is so what kind of reactions are these.

If we understand how the memory functions and if we are able to control it, one day it would be possible to understand something as easy as uploading a data file. But alas, it is not so. We cannot transfer mental objects/ideas unless we experience them or
imagine them by reading or listening/speaking.

incognito : I know buddha has said about clinging and craving as main causes for the
continuum of life, but , is it not theoretical
when buddha has asked us to follow what we experience and to experience these deep truths is a different matter.

Future posthuman Archailect : You have made an important point. (about the picture part). It means that the sights and sounds are basically ideas , the comprehension of the outside signals as understood by us. But what I am not able to understand is that a song being played in an mp3 player can be copied , similarly a video also, but the sights and sounds we hear in mind cannot. Can we plug a cable to brain and copy that song. :-)
In case the sight and sounds in thoughts are merely ideas, it means that the mind converts them into ideas and plays them at will.
intriguing.

Answer 1

Good question, that one had been in my head for quite some time, and although I do not know the answer I would like to offer a few thoughts about that. Now a lot of people would say that thoughts are reactions in your brain, electrochemical signals passing through the axons of neurons and transmitted across synapses of neurons connected together. Now the problem is, an electrochemical signal in the brain is something that is physical and can be measured whereas a mental thought is abstract,immaterial and hardly measurable. "What connects the two?", one would ask. Many people use the concept of mind or even the concept of soul to bridge this gap between the physical world of brain activity and the abstract world of ideas.

Answer 2

Scientifically, thoughts are the firing of neural nerve endings that transmit small quantities of energy between closely pack neural networks. Taking this concept and combining it with recent new-age thinking, thoughts are the migration of energies primarily within the confines of the human brain.

I say primarily as there are modern scientific communities that are attributing previously unclassified mental abilities to external energy transmissions. Some modern day thinkers are postulating that thoughts occur at a quantum level and as such are not restricted to the calcium confines of the human skull.

Ultimately, everything is made up of quantum energy of some description, and I personally believe that it is this sort of energy that supports the mechanism that is the brain and it's thought processes.

And if I may clarify, we can measure quantum energies and have been measuring braing waves for some years now. Research has 'evidence' that specific thought patterns can generate measurable external effects. Devices have been developed that assist a person otherwise incapable of speaking, moving, etc to be able to communicate with others. If the energy can be used, it can be measured.

Answer 3

This might be more of a physics subject. Like the graviton and tachyon there might be some sub-atomic particle to describe thoughts. They may exist in one of those other unknown dimensions out of the supposed 10 or 11 dimensions that they talk of. You might like these lectures:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html
Listen to these. Whatever is the case, all is so elegantly coordinated and fine tuned. The Physicists are searching for the Theory of Everything. Yes: everything always goes back to Oneness. There is something so magnificent holding all this together---- Allah... subhana wa ta'ala (God....Glorious and Exalted is He).

"In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
Say: He is Allah, the One.
He is Allah, the Eternal,
Who was never born, nor ever gave birth.
The One beyond compare."
[Qur'an: surah 112 Al-Ikhlas (Purity)]

"To Him is due the primal origin of the heavens and the earth: When He decreeth a matter, He saith to it: "Be," and it is. [Qur'an 2:117

Answer 4

The five aggregates. ;-)

(What thought is made of).

Dispassion(-ateness).

(How to go about controlling it: developed gradually, energetically & zealously, along the lines of the Noble Eightfold Path).

To qualify: the five aggregates are considered whatever aggregate... "is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near".

It's my confidence that thought, the object (vissaya) of the mind, which in turn is the repository of the other 5 senses, is thus composed of these five sensory derivatives. (Including sometimes, ruupa).

The discourse below (*1) seems to distinguish these five aggregates with clinging (upaadaanakkhanda), from the five aggregates without (as objects of 'bare attention'). (*2).

I gather (c.f. Mahaa Satipatthaana Sutta), that the latter constitutes 'Nirvaana', when seen with wisdom, through appropriate effort. (*3).

Good Question. :-)

Answer 5

Mental thoughts are interpretations of patterns. When you imagine something, your neurons are firing in a particular manner which is interpreted by your neural-net brain as the object being thought of. Thus, a thought isn't "made" of anything, it's just a series of electrochemical reactions.

It's similar to the way that a picture of a car on your TV isn't made of anything, it's just a stream of electrons hitting a phosphorus layer in a particular pattern.

Answer 6

Thoughts made of the vibrations of mind. The thoughts are everywhere in and around you and me. What ever we see and understand are the reflection of the thoughts.

The father of mesmerism, Dr.Mesmer had this vision in his own experience. Once he got effected by nitrous oxide gas and he went unconscious. When he woke up, he told that he saw everything in this world are thoughts; just thoughts, nothing else.

There are plenty of ways to control the thoughts of the mind. All end up with the one technique directly or indirectly. Choose one thought and by concentrate and relay that, will neglect the other thoughts. By increasing the time of concentration by practice, that will be the only thought remains in the mind. It will be easy to control that single thought, that end up you in to the ultimate state.

Probably this answer may have provoke hundred more questions. Just trying to control the thoughts, will end up in unnecessary confusions. There are many scientific ways to approach this. It should be learned by a guru. If you need more from me, please mail me.

Answer 7

When we see, touch, hear, smell or taste something it triggers a chemical reaction in mind. This generates feelings and thoughts.

Thoughts, in my opinion, are related to soul. Since we don't have any scientific explanation of a soul (what soul is made of) and we don't know how a soul functions; so we don't know what are the properties of thoughts (what are thoughts made of).
We can replace one thought in our mind with another with the help of diversion of attention but we can't stop thinking.

Answer 8

Mental objects are made combination of thoughts formed by the human brain, the properties of mental objects are exactly as how you want it to be in your own feelings. To control them, its just as simple as thinking it the way you want it to be.

Answer 9

Mmmm. I think thoughts are made up of words in our minds, words that we have learnt over time, that we thread together privately to either keep to ourselves or share with others.

Deep question - not sure that I can answer you all that well, but it's certainly something to think about - but perhaps that was the point?

Answer 10

Energy vibrating at a higher rate than matter. They are manifestations of mental energy, not physical energy. The difference is range of frequency. Mental energy frequency is much higher than the frequency of energy that is manifesting physically. It's all energy; just different freq range of operation.