Thoughts are like particles that take birth and then die. Some thoughts live long. Some thoughts are short-lived. Some thoughts may be born often. Some thoughts may be born more rarely.
Thoughts cause action. Thoughts cause things to change. So thoughts are a force.
There are thoughts that I and other humans have. Then there are thoughts that create mechanisms by which seeds sprout, trees grow, eggs are fertilized, humans take shape. There is a mind that thought up these mechanisms and created all this.
Is it possible for one mind to meet another mind? Yes. That is what happens when you write to me. It is one mind reaching out to another. It isn’t your name reaching out to my name. It was not a body reaching out to another body, though bodies are used. That mind reaches out to this mind using lots of other things that the collective mind had created (internet, computer, controlled electricity and a lot else). The human body must also have been created by the collective mind, except that the human does not remember it.
Clearly mind is not limited by space and time. What defines boundaries of minds? Where does one mind end and another mind begin?
Minds are containers of thoughts. Thoughts are also not limited by space and time either. One human mind also seems to be a collective mind, ever amorphous.
How are thoughts born?
This question (how are thoughts born) itself is a thought. It was born by walking down a path, where the ground of the path is awareness and we walk from one thought to another like trees along the path.
Awareness that there is something like thoughts – that itself gave birth to a thought — for “there is something like thoughts” is also a thought, but it is also an observation. Observation itself leads to creation. Awareness leads to creation.
To be aware is also a faculty to have. Someone, something that created me also gave me the ability to be aware. Without awareness I would not have known that I think. Maybe thoughts would still occur and they would bring about the change that is brought about by thoughts, within me, around me — but without awareness I would not have known that this is happening. There is something very very powerful about awareness. It seems to be a faculty independent of, and in some sense, preceding thought.
Purush / Shiv is said to be the active inactive force of the universe. Prakriti/Durga, the inactive active force. It is seeming to me right now that awareness is purush tatva. Everything else — thoughts, emotions, and of course everything physical, is prakriti.
Without awareness, the thoughts, emotions will still keep rising and falling away, and all consequent physicality will still occur, but without awareness it is all mindless.