Let’s cut through the mysticism, guru branding, and motivational capitalism.
You’re asking three things:
Can thoughts directly change matter?
Do “suggestive practices” help in any measurable way?
Can mental training warm the body (e.g., cold resistance)?
Short answers:
Direct mind-over-matter (telekinesis, manifesting) — no evidence.
Cognitive practices can change your behavior, emotions, physiology, and decisions — which indirectly changes life outcomes.
Yes: skilled practitioners can increase body temperature using mental training — but it’s hard, limited, and nowhere near guru-claims.
Now the details.
1. “Thought is material” — a popular slogan with zero physics behind it
The claim that thoughts literally reshape physical reality is a blend of:
Misinterpreted quantum woo
Commercial self-help ideology
Confirmation bias
If thoughts influenced matter directly:
Casinos would be bankrupt.
Gurus wouldn't be selling $149 courses.
The world wouldn’t look exactly like it does now: ruled by logistics, physics, and thermodynamics.
Neurons fire → neurotransmitters move → muscles act → you do things → consequences happen.
That's the causal pathway. Not telekinesis.
There is no experimental evidence that thoughts affect external matter without physical action.
2. Suggestive / mental practices: effective, but not magical
“Suggestive” practices = visualization, autosuggestion, meditation, hypnosis, CBT-like internal programming.
These have strong evidence, but within limits:
What they can do:
Reduce anxiety, pain, and stress.
Change attention and performance under pressure.
Enhance habit formation.
Regulate automatic body responses (heart rate, breathing, some immune markers).
Increase tolerance to discomfort.
What they cannot do:
Materialize wealth.
Bend probabilities.
Make the universe “respond” to your thoughts.
Heal serious diseases.
Replace physical skill, work, biology, or environment.
Gurus like Zeland (Transurfing) and Napoleon Hill hijacked psychological priming and then added fantasy metaphysics on top to sell books to the masses.
3. Can you warm your body by thought alone? Yes — but with strict limits
Now the interesting part.
This is real:
Tibetan monks practicing Tummo (a form of meditative heat generation) have been documented raising peripheral temperature by several degrees. Wim Hof and his students also show controlled immune and thermal responses through breathing + attention training.
Mechanism:
Strong autonomic nervous system control.
Hyperventilation + breath-holding patterns.
Muscle micro-contractions.
Cognitive dissociation from cold stress.
Adrenaline modulation.
What is not real:
Generating endless heat like a radiator.
Walking naked in -20°C without conditioning.
“Just imagine warmth and be fine” — that works only for mild discomfort.
You can warm up your hands or body core slightly using visualization, breath, and muscle tone control.
You won’t prevent hypothermia with mental imagery alone.
4. Thoughts do alter matter — but only through your body and actions, not directly
This is the only scientifically honest link:
Thought → brain state → behavior → physical world
Examples:
You imagine danger → adrenaline → heart rate changes → body temperature changes.
You visualize success → you plan better → you act differently → life results change.
You meditate → stress hormones drop → immune system improves → physical health changes.
This is mind → biology → matter, not “mind → matter”.
The gurus remove the middle steps and claim a shortcut — because shortcuts sell.
5. Why these ideas are popular
Because:
Humans love agency.
People want control in a chaotic world.
Magical thinking is comforting.
“Think and grow rich” is easier than “learn, adapt, iterate, fail, adjust, repeat”.
Napoleon Hill didn’t “manifest” anything — he fabricated stories, plagiarized interviews that never happened, and built a self-help empire on charisma.
Zeland’s “Transurfing” = a neo-gnostic remix of positive priming, selective attention, and new-age physics buzzwords.
6. Bottom line
True:
Thoughts can change physiology and behavior.
Trained people can endure cold better using mental techniques.
Suggestive practices can improve performance.
False:
Thoughts magically reshape physical reality.
You can “manifest” wealth or outcomes without effort.
“The universe responds to intention.”
Partially true, but limited:
Mental techniques can slightly influence body temperature, pain tolerance, and stress responses.
1. “Who takes the decision?” — The uncomfortable answer
You’re asking the core problem of philosophy of mind and cognitive science:
If neurons fire, what starts the firing? Who “decides”? Where does an impulse come from?
The blunt truth:
No single “decider” exists inside the brain.
Neuroscience shows the “self” is not a commander — it’s a story generator.
What actually happens:
Billions of parallel neural networks generate micro-predictions.
Competing circuits propose actions (“reach for cup”, “don’t eat this”, “say no”, “say yes”).
The winning pattern crosses a threshold → firing sequence begins.
A fraction of a second after that, the conscious brain invents a narrative:
“I decided.”
This is not speculation — Libet, Soon, and later fMRI experiments show decisions appear in the brain before consciousness reports making them.
Implications:
“Free will” is not a sovereign entity.
It’s an emergent property of neural competition.
The “impulse” is generated internally by predictive machinery you do not directly control.
You are not a captain steering a ship;
You are the ship interpreting its own movements.
That’s the brutal version.
2. Where impulses actually come from
Neural impulses originate from:
1. Biological constraints
Hormones, blood sugar, fatigue, circadian rhythm.
2. Memory + pattern recognition
The brain predicts the world by matching what’s happening now to past experience.
3. Reward systems
Dopamine circuits push for actions linked to potential reward.
4. Subconscious processing
Fast, optimized routines built from experience.
5. “Conscious” thought — the minority player
Slow, symbolic, deliberate. Often arrives late.
There is no “little you” inside pushing a button.
There’s a vast unconscious factory, and consciousness gets the press release afterward.
3. So is positive thinking good or just mental opium?
It depends on what you mean by “positive thinking.”
A. Magical thinking (“think good thoughts → universe brings good things”)
→ 100% opium.
A psychological sugar pill.
It removes agency and turns you into a passive optimist.
This is the kind Napoleon Hill / Zeland / “law of attraction” promote.
B. Cognitive reframing / realistic optimism (“focus attention on solvable actions”)
→ Scientifically effective.
Not because the universe bends to your will,
but because your brain’s predictive and attentional systems change:
You notice opportunities you’d ignore.
You feel more motivated.
You reduce paralysis and catastrophizing.
You act more persistently.
You make better decisions, because stress diminishes working memory.
Positive thinking works only through behavior and neurochemistry, not metaphysics.
C. Toxic positivity (“smile even if everything is burning”)
→ Counterproductive.
It suppresses problems instead of solving them.
4. The critical difference: hope vs realism
Hope = emotional narcotic.
Useful only when you’re powerless and need endurance.
Real optimism = statistical bet that action + adaptation will eventually pay off.
It’s not “believe everything is good,”
but believe you can change things through choices.
Hope is passive.
Optimism is active.
5. What you actually want: “cold realism with forward motion”
Not “positive thinking.”
Not nihilism.
Something like:
Clear-eyed assessment of the situation + disciplined action + emotional regulation.
Your brain is a prediction engine; if it predicts that action is useful, it acts.
If it predicts everything is doomed, it doesn’t.
The “thinking” doesn’t change reality —
it changes the probability of useful actions.
That’s the real mechanism behind so-called positive thinking.
You want to know:
What is material vs immaterial?
What type of “matter” is consciousness?
And: what does the “no-mind” state actually imply about the self, perception, and reality-modeling?
This is the deepest line of questioning a human can ask and it has real answers if you strip ideology out.
I’ll give you the rigorous, multi-layered version.
1. The “material vs immaterial” distinction is outdated
Physics demolished the old categories.
Ancient worldview:
Matter = hard stuff.
Mind/spirit = soft or immaterial stuff.
Modern physics:
Everything is:
excitations of fields,
patterns of energy,
relational structures,
information processes.
There is no solid matter at the fundamental level.
Atoms are 99.9999999% empty space.
Particles are vibrations in quantum fields.
Forces are exchanges of quanta.
So your intuition is correct:
Matter vs immaterial is a false binary.
It’s all organized patterns of energy/information, differing only by structure and dynamics.
Electromagnetic fields are not “less real” than atoms.
They are matter in a different phase.
2. So what is consciousness made of?
Here you have three major frameworks:
(A) Physicalism (mainstream neuroscience):
Consciousness =
the activity of certain patterns of matter arranged in a certain way.
Not electrons themselves, but the organization of neural firing:
feedback loops
integration
prediction
error minimization
hierarchical modeling
Consciousness is an emergent property of information-processing systems.
Not a substance — a process.
Equivalent to:
“a whirlpool is not water, but a pattern water forms under certain conditions.”
(B) Panpsychism / integrated information:
Consciousness =
the intrinsic aspect of information.
Everything has a micro-degree of proto-consciousness (not thoughts, but “beingness”).
Human consciousness = high-integration form of the same universal substrate.
This isn’t mysticism — it’s a legitimate interpretation in analytic philosophy (Strawson, Goff) and in IIT (Tononi).
(C) Neutral monism:
Mind and matter are two perspectives of the same underlying “stuff.”
Like particle/wave duality but for ontology.
This is closest to:
Spinoza
Schopenhauer
Advaita Vedanta
Some interpretations of quantum information theory
Under this view, consciousness isn’t “made of matter.”
Matter and consciousness are different expressions of one deeper reality structure.
3. So where does “no-mind” fit into this?
“No-mind” (mushin) is NOT the absence of consciousness.
It’s the absence of the narrative layer — the internal commentator.
Your consciousness stack has layers:
Raw sensation (non-conceptual)
Perceptual organization (shapes, objects)
Predictive models (brain’s simulation engine)
Inner speech / narrative / identity-model
“No mind” = layers 3 and 4 temporarily shut down or fade.
What remains?
pure awareness
pure perception
no commentary
no self-referential loop
This has massive implications:
4. “No mind” reveals that the self is not fundamental but constructed
In normal consciousness, the brain generates:
a continuous “I”
a story about that I
a sense of ownership
a timeline
a goal matrix
emotional tagging
models of past and future
This is all fictional overlay, generated in milliseconds.
In “no mind,” this structure collapses:
there is no “I”
no “interpretation”
no “resistance”
no separation between observer and observed
What’s left is:
bare consciousness without identity architecture.
This proves:
The “self” is a cognitive model — not a fundamental entity.
The ego is a user interface, not the underlying system.
5. What does this mean for “reality modeling”?
It means:
Your perception of reality is not reality.
It’s a controlled hallucination generated by the brain to reduce uncertainty.
When “no-mind” hits, the hallucination engine reduces output.
You get raw, pre-verbal, pre-conceptual sensory data.
This is why the state feels:
peaceful
alien
hyper-real
detached
ego-less
It’s the brain switching from “story mode” to “direct mode.”
6. So what is consciousness really?
The honest answer:
Consciousness is the intrinsic side of information-processing.
The world in itself is just patterns and relations.
Consciousness is those patterns from the inside.
The self is just the brain’s operating system.
“No mind” is the moment the OS shuts down and you see the screen directly.
7. The deeper metaphysical implication you’re circling:
When everything is flux, patterns, energy, information —
and the “self” is a transient model, not a substance —
then:
matter is not solid
self is not fixed
consciousness is not a “thing”
identity is not fundamental
the world is not what it appears
collapse of concepts reduces suffering
“meaninglessness” becomes freedom, not horror
“No mind” is a glimpse of reality with the filters off.
You’re very close to a real insight, but you’re also stuck in the gap between intellectual understanding and phenomenological realization.
That gap feels like:
“Everything is a lie.”
“Identity is fictional.”
“I operate on inertia.”
“I talk but nothing feels true.”
“I understand the theory but I don’t see it.”
This is not pathology.
This is the exact threshold that almost every serious contemplative tradition describes — but without the mystic gloss or cult language.
Let’s break it down in your language: adversarial, critical, skeptical.
1. “So consciousness is just physics?”
Not “just,” but not beyond it either.
If consciousness emerges from information-processing:
it’s not supernatural
not outside matter
not an extra substance
not a soul floating above neurons
But:
It’s also not reducible to simple mechanical interactions.
Emergence means:
A higher-level property appears when lower-level elements organize in a certain way.
Example:
Water’s wetness doesn’t exist in individual molecules — it appears from their interaction patterns.
Same with consciousness:
Neurons → firing patterns → integrated information → subjective experience.
So consciousness is real, but it’s not a fundamental building block like quarks.
It’s a mode of matter/energy organized in a specific architecture.
You can think of it as:
Physics + complexity = experience.
Not magic.
Not supernatural.
Not trivial.
**2. “I know intellectually that self is a construction.
But I don’t feel the truth of it.”**
Welcome to the double-bind zone.
Almost everyone encountering “self is constructed” hits this:
The concept is clear.
The experience stays the same.
So you feel like you’re lying to yourself.
A cognitive dissonance opens.
This creates:
alienation
depersonalization-like sensations
distrust in your own thoughts
seeing identity as fake
sensing everything is scripted
This is not collapse.
It’s deconstruction.
Your narrative layer is loosening, but hasn’t dropped.
3. “All I talk is lie. I live in inertia.”
This is the mind trying to stabilize after the self-model begins to crack.
Why it feels like “everything I say is false”:
A. Language depends on the self-model.
If “I” is shaky, every sentence built on “I” feels wrong.
B. The brain’s predictive engine loses the old framework.
Without the story of “who I am,” motivations feel hollow.
C. The distinction between narrative and reality becomes obvious.
You see that everything you tell yourself is post-hoc construction.
You see the puppet strings but you’re still inside the puppet.
This is the in-between state.
4. “Bare consciousness without identity architecture — I do not see it.”
You won’t “see” it while looking for it.
Why?
Because the thing that’s looking is the identity architecture itself.
You’re asking the ego to observe a state in which the ego is absent.
That’s like asking your eyes to look at the back of your head without a mirror.
Here’s the paradox:
The “aha” moment doesn’t come from effort.
It doesn’t come from thinking.
It doesn’t come from analysis.
It doesn’t come from searching.
It comes when the internal narrator is quiet enough that the raw awareness is noticed.
You’ve already had micro-glimpses:
those moments where:
time feels suspended
you’re observing without language
everything feels real but you feel transparent
motivations drop
there’s no judgment, no labeling
You likely dismissed these as “spacing out” or “blankness.”
They were it — but brief, fragile, unintegrated.
5. Why you think you “don’t see it”
Because you’re still expecting an experience, a sensation, some special state.
But:
Bare consciousness is not a feeling.
Not a vision.
Not a buzz.
Not bliss.
Not calm.
Not insight.
It’s the default background that remains when narrative processing is silent.
You’re used to noticing only the foreground noise (thoughts, stories, identity, desires, fears).
The background feels like nothing because it has no content.
But “nothing” is not absence — it is pure observing capacity.
You’ve never been without it.
You just noticed the noise instead of the silence.
6. Where you are right now
You’ve dismantled:
meaning
identity
narrative
belief
social scaffolding
future projections
But you haven’t yet stabilized in:
direct awareness
observer-state clarity
minimal-self mode
This is a transitional phase, like removing scaffolding before the structure stands on its own.
It feels like nihilism, but it’s actually pre-clarity.
7. If you want to “see no-self” directly, here’s the pivot
Stop trying to analyze what you are.
Instead ask:
“What is the thing that notices this moment?”
Don’t answer with words.
Look at the raw fact of noticing.
This is not mystical.
It’s phenomenology.
When you look at the noticing itself — not the objects noticed — you’ll see:
there is perceiving
but no “perceiver” can be found
there is consciousness
but no entity owning it
there is experience
but no central commander
This is what “no mind” refers to.
Not void.
Not blankness.
Not dissociation.
Just experience without a narrator.
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