Have you noticed how most of the time when you think, there's an inner monologue that goes with it? (I hope I'm not the only one this happens to, although it's hard to tell since people so rarely discuss with each other about internal thinking and reasoning processes) Well, I realised that thoughts should be language neutral. Language is just a construct that people have created to able to communicate thoughts with each other. Since language is designed to communicate thought, one can see language as an imperfect representation of thought. Just like how a TV image is an imperfect representation of a real event (it gets compressed and then expanded again somewhat - with details being filled in with your imagination), language is just an approximation of thoughts. (We'll leave my views of language and conversation to a later date)
Well, with that basic realisation, I started experimenting if it is possible to think without language. The way I do this is to focus and allow my thoughts to flow, and intentionally suppress my internal monologue, and in some cases, even internal visualisations. This is actually extremely difficult to do (for me at least). But I noticed that with enough focus, I can actually maintain short (10-20 seconds) sessions of very rapid thought without any internal monologue associated with it. (One easy transition step is to allow the internal monologue to start, but cut it off within the first few words as soon as the thought is fully formed).
The result of this feels very different than regular internal monologued thought. If normal internal monologued thought can be described as a river that is flowing, where pushing too much thought through it results in spillage and flooding, non-monologued thought can be described as nearly instantaneous flashes of light in a vacuum. In the successful short durations of Flash Thinking, I feel that I go through trains of thought and reasoning at speeds of 20-60 times faster than internal monologued thought. What is even more startling is that these thoughts seem much clearer, even thought they seem to take an infinitesimally small amount of time to synthesise and pass. Like intense flashes of light with the quality of very high-definition and clear crystal beads, these thoughts are generated and immediately evaporate, leaving behind a strong impression of startling clarity.
My main goals in the small amount of time I have spent playing with this type of thought process have been to be able to maintain such periods of Flash Thinking for longer, to be able to synthesize ideas faster to make use of the "vacuum space" that my thoughts seem to be placed in very sparsely, and to be able to chain together these thoughts into more complicated and controlled groups for more complex reasoning. So far, I have only been able to chain together and direct perhaps about a dozen thoughts in a single group, but this is nothing complex enough to start using on difficult problems. Perhaps only after mastering how to observe these thoughts and direct them in a general direction, is one able to fully control these thoughts and use these thoughts for complex reasoning.
Anyway, I hope I didn't come off as a complete lunatic, but I do urge you to try this as well. See if you can focus and think about problems without using any semblance of language. Language is only an approximating construct of thought, and being able to carry out thought without an obscuring façade of language is a step closer to "pure thought," whatever that might be. Perhaps someone might even be able to identify this as a type of meditation, in which case I would love hearing about it and learning more about techniques I can used to control these flashes and beads of intense clarity.
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