[LoganDark]

> Later we spoke about being able to have no thoughts - still mind. I said I can do this any time, I can stop the thoughts and be still. At the time I had no training but I could do it for 10, 20, 30 seconds easily. And I knew with training I'd be able to extend that time, it was effortless.

> To them, that was crazy - they couldn't stop thinking at all!

I have the same experience of being "unable to stop thinking". Are you by any chance neurotypical, or close to neurotypicality? My impression is that neurotypical brains have a higher degree of synchronization than autistic brains, which would make suppressing thought easier.

I'm autistic, and I don't just have thoughts; they have themselves. Thoughts just spontaneously come into existence, and just think on their own. I can think about them myself, but only by picking up existing thoughts. Thoughts come into existence whether I intend them to or not, so it is not possible for me to suppress them.

On one paw, the fact that thoughts seemingly think about themselves allows me to fit a lot of logic in my head at once without getting overwhelmed. But on the other, being unable to control which thoughts are in my head can be really infuriating.

[anon373839]

> I have the same experience of being "unable to stop thinking".

I am doubtful that anyone can truly stop thinking. But people can have more or less awareness of their thoughts, and they can be having thoughts that they don’t consider to be thoughts. For example, if you notice that your shirt is wet, that is a thought even if you don’t “think” anything about it.

I haven’t personally tried one, but I believe the purpose of a sensory deprivation tank is to create an environment where your thoughts are unavoidable.

[LoganDark]

> But people can have more or less awareness of their thoughts, and they can be having thoughts that they don’t consider to be thoughts.

Yes, that is my experience. If I try not to have thoughts, then what happens is not that thoughts stop happening, it's that I stop noticing them until they're more fully developed. This "not noticing" results in a relative lack of remarks upon those thoughts, but the thoughts themselves are not made of or depending on language. They just are things. Technically, they are "derived meaning".

When on psychedelics I can have thoughts that not only don't depend on language, but don't have language. It's not possible to describe them because they represent indescribable things. It's possible to feel them and interact with them in a way that seems to makes sense to me, but it's not possible to communicate them. If I try, they can actually result in words being generated, but those words sound like a bad phone autocomplete - stuff like "can have a haves and take a three sixteenth quarters" (real excerpt from a past trip).

(My guess is that my brain has some sort of internal format that real-world concepts are translated into in order to be operated on. That's the "meaning" that gets derived. I wonder if psychedelics allow me to create or perceive meanings that no real-world concept would ever actually translate into, and therefore don't have any way to communicate as a real-world concept.)

> I am doubtful that anyone can truly stop thinking.

This statement is a perfect example of benrutter's point:

> - We all secretly believe that deep down, everyone experiences thought like we do.

Don't be so sure that nobody has thoughts that can truly stop, even just for a short time.