To Think Without Words

We tend to associate the process we call ‘thinking’ with the linear sequence of words that organize our understanding in our mind. We thus associate thinking with language and indicate that our thinking is limited by the language. A language that is rich in words and nuances will yield more advanced and complex thinking than a language that is simpler and more directly expressive of our outer experience in the world, according to this understanding.

If we reflect upon it, however, we can actually separate thinking from language and, in doing so, we remove the limitation of language from the process of thinking. The case of Nikola Tesla is illuminating. In his autobiography, he described some of the training he received as a child, which included ‘guessing the thoughts of others’ and the use of visualisation techniques. He later described how he developed various of his inventions, not through linear thought, but through ‘seeing’ them in his mind’s eye. Albert Einstein also indicated that he thought using visualisation and images, not words, to understand the universe. Some of the greatest ‘thinkers’ indicated that the use of language for thought was essentially a secondary process for them.

An interesting experiment was carried out by a young child for a school project. She designed a method to test for the existence of the power of telepathy. She paired individuals with a barrier between them. They had various shapes and colors that one party, the ‘sender’ was to focus on in his mind, and the other party, the ‘receiver’ was to identify without any speech intervening. Various pairs achieved results over 70% accuracy, far beyond the potential of random chance. Although this was obviously a simple experiment and not a “double blind” study, it did provide a measure of confidence that ‘thought’ in the form of an imaged shape and color could be communicated silently from one person to the other, with no physical or verbal cues.

The power of visualisation itself acts without language. People who speak different languages are unable to easily communicate abstract ideas that depend on language, but can quite easily understand visualised images in the mind of the other person.

Thought is clearly not limited to verbal structure or language, but to a comprehensive process of understanding that may, or may not, be tied to sequential inner dialogue of words.

When we enter the presence of an individual who has developed the power of thought, without the use of words, we can experience what many call an ‘atmosphere’ which is conducive to liberating the mind from the formal structures that language impose upon our thinking. There can come from this a new way of seeing and understanding.

The Mother observes: “So, if you want to exercise the least effect on the mental substance, the first thing is to learn how to think clearly, and not a verbal thought which depends on words but a thought which can dispense with words, which can be understood in itself without words, which corresponds to a fact, the fact of a state of consciousness or a fact of knowledge. Just try to think without words, you will see where you stand. … Have you never tried it? Well then, try.”

“You have an absolutely clear and precise understanding of what you want to communicate to others — it vibrates in a special way, it has the power to give a form to the mental substance; and then, afterwards, as a concession to human habits you organise a certain number of words around it to try — there, much lower down — to give a verbal form to the vibration of consciousness. But the verbal form is entirely secondary. it is a kind of covering, a rather crude one, for the power of thought.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter II Power of Thought, pp. 21-22