What is the relationship between thought and consciousness? why do we seem unable to go beyond thought? What is thought and what is consciousness? Are the two different? When we say what is the relationship between thought and consciousness, it implies, does it not, that there are two different entities, or two different movements? First we have to consider what thought is, for it is upon this whole question of thinking that all our conduct, our activities, are based. Thought is part of our emotions, sentiments, reactions and the recognition of those reactions. And what is consciousness? To be conscious of something, to be aware of, to be able to recognise, to understand, that is the whole field in which the mind is in operation, and that is more or less what we mean by consciousness.You can reason this and think it out for your self .You don't need a degree ,you don't have to be a philosopher .So,what is the relationship between the two? All our activities are based on thought, with its images, past remembrances or future projections and the enormous activity in every direction, technological, psychological, physical. And our relationship with each other is based on thought, the thought which has created your image about another and the other's image about you. That thought surely is based on knowledge, experience, memory. The reaction of that memory is thinking. And experience, knowledge, memory and the movement of thought is a material process. So thought is always limited because knowledge is always limited. There is no complete knowledge about anything - except the ending of knowledge, which is a different matter. So where there is the operation of knowledge and the movement of memory, thought is limited, finite, definite. And what part does thought play in consciousness? All the knowledge which we have accumulated, all the experiences, not only the personal but the collective memories, genetic responses, the accumulated experience of generation after generation, all the travail, anxiety, fear and the pleasures, the dogmas, the beliefs, the attachments, the pain of sorrow - all that is our consciousness. You can add to or take away from it but it is still the movement of thought as consciousness. One can say there is a super consciousness but it would still be part of thought. Consciousness is in constant movement, breaking up the `you' and the `me'. Our consciousness is made up of its content; without that content what is our consciousness? Is there a consciousness totally differing from that which is made up of the various activities of thought which we call consciousness? To come to that point one has to find out if thought can end, not temporarily, not between two thoughts as a gap, or a period of silence or unconscious movement. Can thought ever end? Again you don't have to be a philosopher to think it out .
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