thoughts in space-time

I like to think about thoughts.  always have.

I remember being eight years old, lying in bed at night, looking through the curtains on my bedroom windows to see the stars and stretching my imagination to soar farther than my eyes could see.  consumed by curiosity and wonder, innumerable questions would fill my mind:

what makes me different from others (or them different from me)?

how did I get to be me?  (I've always felt like I got lucky somehow. . . )

what's it like to be someone else?

do other people's thoughts sound the same to them as mine sound to me?

what's it like to live beyond the stars we know?

and others, many long forgotten.

I've had so many questions and thoughts about thoughts, and consciousness in general lately, that it's been the main topic of study in my daily internet perusing for weeks.

my Sweetie is not so fond of some of the interests I've shown lately regarding consciousness, energy, thoughts and capabilities of the mind/spirit (I'm not so fond of the word spirit due to the religious charge some people place on it) and will at times let an eye roll slip if I mention something deemed "a little off" or out-there.  but I keep devouring more information, trying to maintain open-minded skepticism and patiently countering the defensive and fearful questions about measurements and scientific communities and logic and seeing-is-believing kind of bullshit (no offense, Sweetie) . . .

but then I was thinking specifically about thoughts the other day, in relation to space-time.
it's hard, keeping my head wrapped around theories and discoveries in quantum physics - I'll think I have a grasp, and I will for a moment, then it'll slip and I'll be confused again.  but it's so fascinating I can't stop.

thoughts.

what are they?


do they take up space, take time to generate?  where have they been when we retrieve them?
-- like when you try to follow a thought train back, and try to discern its origin, the starting point of a particular thought tangent . . . that's always a fun game.

brain scanning machines measure blood flow, from which thought is inferred; or they record electrical read outs, the effects of brain activity, presumably thought.
but we (science, philosophy, psychology, medicine, etc) don't know how to measure thoughts.  we don't even really know what they are.

experientially, we all know thoughts don't obey the same laws of physics our bodies do.  they aren't trapped in space-time.  we can dream an epic adventure in seconds.  we can process information faster than computers, without conscious effort at times.

thoughts have a boundless quality, that's why imagination is so powerful.
imagine our thoughts are bound to our bodies only in this dimension, where our bodies are limited by space-time and bound to the laws of physics.  imagine our consciousness, when unleashed, spans dimensions and knows nothing of the limitations we face.
imagine our brains are like radio stations, transmitting thoughts but not generating them.  our consciousness is not a part of our body, but merely lives there for awhile.  imagine it's possible this happens over and over again.

we cannot see thoughts.
we cannot measure thoughts.
does that mean they don't exist?

there are natural limitations in the world we live in, things we have no power to change: gravity, death and decomposition, the laws of thermodynamics, physically existing in the third dimension.

we don't know the limits of existence, the life span of consciousness.  we don't know the answers to an awful lot of questions.  I don't expect to find the answers - that would be no fun.  I like the exploration.  the exciting part is continuing to ask the questions, not resigning myself to never knowing.

the boundaries of my thoughts have not been found yet.  why erect them prematurely?