3. Therefore I Am

I think, therefore I am.
Rene Descartes

Modern philosophy was born with the human ego being advanced as the true judge of all things. Rene Descartes, with his famous deification of the mind, became known as the “father of modern philosophy.” The absolute truth that was once the possession of the gods of Plato was replaced by the absolute truth that was the possession of the thinking man. The goal of philosophy remained absolute knowledge, but the primary issue of philosophy became epistemology, the study of what absolute truths were knowable by man. Descartes introduced the modern era by making the mind of man, the invisible component behind the human brain, the center of the world.

Thought is a process and is more than something about change – thought is change. The organism wherein a thought is centered is changed by thought, regardless of whether it is identified as the same organism after the thought has finished. A thought may be conceptualized as a series of pictures that are interrelated or as a series of connected sub-thoughts, but regardless of the conceptualization, it is a flow that is ordered through space and time rather than a static thing that is possessed and controlled by an unchanging ego.

Thought occurs in nature and man gives his ego credit for being the thinker. See p. 195, Being and the End of History.

We think that we will be able to live happily, creatively, if we learn a method, a technique, a style, but creative happiness comes only when there is inward richness, it can never be attained through any system.
J. Krishnamurti