If I am not my thoughts then who is creating the thoughts?

[alanford]

If I am the observer then who creates these thoughts in my head? Sometimes, I have up to 4 different personas in my head talking to each other about everything that happens in my life and all the ideas that I find interesting. Occasionally they remind each other that they are not real and then my head goes silent for half a minute. I am healing from my OCD significantly by grounding myself and accepting that my intrusive thoughts and thoughts in general are just thoughts and that I dont have to associate with them, but who creates them then? I feel that certain thoughts, which are neither compulsive or random like the ones I used to write all this stem from that inner me controlling them so I can talk in my head but Im unsure.

 

[Wintruz]

If I am the observer then who creates these thoughts in my head? Sometimes, I have up to 4 different personas in my head talking to each other about everything that happens in my life and all the ideas that I find interesting. Occasionally they remind each other that they are not real and then my head goes silent for half a minute. I am healing from my OCD significantly by grounding myself and accepting that my intrusive thoughts and thoughts in general are just thoughts and that I dont have to associate with them, but who creates them then? I feel that certain thoughts, which are neither compulsive or random like the ones I used to write all this stem from that inner me controlling them so I can talk in my head but Im unsure.

They are socially installed.

The mind is extremely malleable and because we are both meaning making and pattern seeking creatures, we weave a thousand contradictory, socially installed, fragments into grand ideas about ourselves and the world. This, all of it, has to be loosened sufficiently that we can at least know that we are not seeing clearly.

 

[Ziran]

If I am the observer then who creates these thoughts in my head?

There are 3 mutually exclusive entities involved in human perception:

Observer
Observed
Observation

You are the observer.
The object exists external to you.
The observation is the mental projection on the "mind's-eye", a sort of virtual, psychological, screen that exists in the human psyche.

However, there is an interesting edge-case for metaphysical concepts which is often exploited by occultists. In these cases, the observer IS the observed. Literally.

Post automatically merged: Sep 22, 2025

I have up to 4 different personas in my head talking to each other about everything that happens in my life and all the ideas that I find interesting. Occasionally they remind each other that they are not real and then my head goes silent for half a minute. I am healing from my OCD significantly by grounding myself and accepting that my intrusive thoughts and thoughts in general are just thoughts and that I dont have to associate with them, but who creates them then? I feel that certain thoughts, which are neither compulsive or random like the ones I used to write all this stem from that inner me controlling them so I can talk in my head but Im unsure.

This is how I break it out:

You are the unique confluence of:

Your talents
Your flaws
Your affinities
Your aversions

You are not your thoughts. You are the one reacting to the thoughts and feelings which arise in the heart-and-mind, either spontaneously or triggered by sensory feedback, otherwise known as "the psyche".

 

[PinealisGlandia]

To put this in a more physical lens, modern science is revealing that thought is a field. I'm strapped for a good source at the moment, so you'll have to bear with my half-recalled youtube popsci, but basically: They can put a sensor a couple feet away from your body and it will still pick up your brain waves as an EMF (ElectroMagnetic Field). There's other science I've read that suggests the brain doesn't just broadcast, it receives. So your thoughts are a mixture of internally and externally generated fields interacting in your immediate space. This isn't very woowoo until you consider that it implies telepathy is happening pretty much constantly throughout the human experience.

I believe my source for this information is Bruce Lipton on youtube. He's an epigeneticist who has observed cells under a microscope responding to this field of thought, similar to the famous

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

. Essentially, your body responds to your thoughts, but only a fraction of what you "think" really comes from yourself. A lot of it is baggage programs installed by people in your life, little moments in childhood or your early career that influenced you and are now still floating in that sphere of thought unaddressed. Some of it is internally generated, but it's the quiet part.

Let's make this a little more woowoo. Everything has an EMF. So everything interacts with your thought-bubble EMF. So it's not just people, it's objects too. It kinda brings some physical grounding to the idea that there's a spirit inside of everything. Speculatively, if we imagine that "thought" or "consciousness" manifests as an EMF, we could imagine that everything with an EMF is conscious, suggesting thoughts can affect inorganic matter (as demonstrated in the ice crystal experiments).

Of course, the real answer to your question is: It's you, it's just not you-The-Body-you. It's the divine essence that manifested as your body, which isn't substantially different from the divine essence that manifests as any given other thing. That divine essence is what generates all thoughts and consciousness, matter reflects those thoughts.

If "divine essence" puts anyone's backs up, you could rewrite that sentence as "The Force" (like Star Wars). It's an omnipresent invisible "stuff" that links everything in existence together and is responsible for everything. It wasn't put there by another entity, everything was put where it is by it. And it is you, and me, and everyone and everything we know, so on the one hand, it's not God, but on the other hand, it is, meaning this message is a memo from God (me) to theirself (you).

 

[IllusiveOwl]

I'll try and be simple here, because this is really a simple problem to solve in my eyes.

No one, your thoughts are an automatic process that "you" can guide, but you're just a bubble of a universal consciousness that everyone shares, therefore it doesn't have an individual identity, it only has a unique "happening", like whirlpools in a stream.

You are as much of an individual as a rock is an individual, only rocks form over millions of years, these bodies only last about 80 on a good roll of the dice.

This is of course a jumping off point to then Investigate what the consciousness is, rather than the swirls of the ever changing whirlpool, because deep and focused introspection is needed to really understand what's going on, no forum post can lay it all out for you, you need to see for yourself.

 

[zyfrtheFirst]

You are the one who is wondering Who you are?
If you could point at yourself, you wouldn't be the thing you point at, you would be the One pointing.

This is debated - I have made a YouTube video about it so I did a bit of a deep dive into the research.
The idea of Descartes demon - we wouldn't say we ARE our bodies. We HAVE bodies. We can't BE what we HAVE.
This is easy to accept. Where people get lost, is in assuming that they ARE their thoughts, instead of possessing thoughts.

They are the agent that is wondering who they are. They are something divine, within the thoughts, surely.

 

[barbhack80]

'the ghost in the machine' you are not one person. there is the physical blood and bones you and there is the spiritual you. the part of you that exists in part beyond your body and will one day exist totally independent of your body.

 

[Dascent]

Emmm... I'm quite tiered and I have not read all the post nor all the comments . I've read the title on reddit and landed here, read the first line, basically the first question and I stopped myself there so I please excuse me if I didn't get the full picture.... my bad....

But... from my experience and based of some knowledge, we are.... immersed in consciousness, in thoughts, in a blanket of ideas, subtle energies and some call that the Higher Mind, the field, where all probabilities exist already as signature energies, vibrations... when we generate a thought we don't think it with our analytical mind but we only process the impulses we get from the field because thoughts usually connect in a conscious or subconscious way.
So there's the Higher Mind, which sends you the impuls based on what you already resonate with (what you put out is what you get back), your analytical mind is processing it (the observer state) and the physical mind is (in a sense) creating the experience of though by attaching images, emotions, memories, experience to it... that's why we kind of identify ourselves with the mind, with Self the Ego rather than exploring the reality through our expanded awareness as multidimensional entities.

That's my understanding, I might be wrong or incomplete, I don't know how deep this goes and I don't remember the perspective of my Higher Self, I can't experience myself as my HS, so that's a threshold I don't want to push right now, I'm still young

 

[AlfrunGrima]

They are socially installed.

The mind is extremely malleable and because we are both meaning making and pattern seeking creatures, we weave a thousand contradictory, socially installed, fragments into grand ideas about ourselves and the world. This, all of it, has to be loosened sufficiently that we can at least know that we are not seeing clearly.

I have always wondered: if one would examine in its own mind which programs are socially installed and which are cultured by a person because how the analytical mind formed them, how would that work? It is an almost impossible task to distinguish ans maybe not even functional.

Post automatically merged: Today at 12:47 PM

Oh, and had to read back in one of my diaries. There is something I wrote about the subject of having thoughts in a entry on 13-07-2014: "Everything what I experience and everything I think is de facto a dream based on the neurologic interaction between my brains and the rest of the world."

 

[Vlitmer]

If I am the observer then who creates these thoughts in my head? Sometimes, I have up to 4 different personas in my head talking to each other about everything that happens in my life and all the ideas that I find interesting. Occasionally they remind each other that they are not real and then my head goes silent for half a minute. I am healing from my OCD significantly by grounding myself and accepting that my intrusive thoughts and thoughts in general are just thoughts and that I dont have to associate with them, but who creates them then? I feel that certain thoughts, which are neither compulsive or random like the ones I used to write all this stem from that inner me controlling them so I can talk in my head but Im unsure.

it sounds like you are not fully in control of your inner monologue which i have struggled with in the past and can give you some advice to help.

the 3 parts of the mind as accepted in general psychology are the conscious, the sub conscious and the unconscious.

the conscious mind is what generates your intentional inner monologue. when you think of a sentence and "hear" your thoughts in your head, like when reading a book. that's the conscious mind at work. when you think to yourself "I'm gonna go to the store" and then you do. that is your conscious mind at work.

the subconscious is a deeper level of your mind where ingrained behavior is stored. for example when a fast food worker hands you your food and says "enjoy your meal" and you reply "you too" even though that does not make sense, that's your subconscious mind recognizing an ingrained pattern of speech and momentarily taking over to reply on the consciousness behalf. your subconscious also plays many other roles in your emotions, dreams, involuntary reflexes and dreams.

your unconscious mind is the deepest most buried part of your mind. it holds your emotional trauma, PTSD, and evolutionary animalistic instincts like the need for sleep, food, water, and the desire to reproduce.

what I've noticed in my studies is that when you lose control over your inner monologue and start to have multiple "personas" in your head, as you say, its because of a lack of stress and a lack of (mindfullness) that needs to be trained like a muscle. to train your mindfullness you need to practice throughout the day to be consciously aware of what your feeling, why your feeling it. set a timer if you have to 3 to 5 times a day take a moment and a deep breath and consciously think. " what emotions am i feeling right now? why am i feeling this way? am i ok with feeling this way?"

along with this take time to distinguish between your conscious thoughts you are willingly producing yourself and the thoughts your subconscious is pushing to the top. think to yourself " these thoughts are my subconscious trying to tell me something but they are not what i am choosing to activily think about in my upper mind"

some research has suggested that naming your brain helps with this process. it helps separate the thoughts from the primary observer/ conscious mind (you) and the personas/unconscious mind. after you name your brain, talk to it, when you notice your feeling angry and having thoughts from these personas that you don't know where they are coming from. ask your brain "what's up dude?"

incorporate this into your mindfullness training and overtime you'll find you've strengthened your internal monologue and solidified your self image as to who YOU are.