Question 2.5.
How can users chase their thought around the internet almost looking for food?
Cognitive rest, as I’ve spoken about, is not about stopping thought, but about allowing thought to flow without judgment, without grasping, without constant evaluation. It’s about moving through ideas the way a stream moves over rocks—without getting stuck.
Again, the obsession with yoga to influencers and the rising trend of younger people almost flocking to practices of somatic therapy, yoga, or rhthymic exercise that’s gentle, yet must be controlled - in Advaita Vedanta, there’s a concept called Turiya, which is sometimes described as "the fourth state of consciousness."
Turiya is neither waking, dreaming, nor deep sleep—it’s a state beyond those three, where awareness remains, but without attachment to individual thoughts, sensory experiences, or even the sense of self as distinct from the flow of consciousness.
I can best relate this to when I run, cause I run long distance and get into this state and can streamline thought or even forget it’s there.
I think people get the same way in restaurants, in the kitchen which is frenetic and endlessly stressful and unpredictable in terms of stimulus, but when they are prepping, chopping chives, breaking down animals into portions, cuts, etc, it is when I see chefs most serene, composed, chilled, and skilled.
Turiya applies here cause it’s a state of being awake while at rest, where perception is present, but without friction.
This is fascinating in the context of the discussion on digital cognition, because it suggests that the human mind has always had modes of awareness that are neither fully active nor fully inactive—but something in between. I can relate to this as I learn more about my brain.
Turiya could be thought of as the cognitive equivalent of deep drifting—an awareness that remains engaged, but not in a way that is straining, analysing, or clinging to each passing thought.
deep driftin’ yooooo
The Western model of rest, shaped by industrial-era labour structures, is built on a binary—either work or rest, action or stillness, engagement or disengagement. But these ancient, more relational traditions have long suggested that true rest comes not from stopping action, but from aligning with a natural flow of awareness.
It reminds me of the Kyoto School, when Japanese philosophy encountered colonial interruption/intrusion, through war, and for the first time, they experienced Nilhism, and they were all completely unprepared for the feeling that accompanied this very unique, very Western encroachment of emptiness.
What happened in the Kyoto School was the study of two spaces, the Western ideas of “self” and the traditional sense of “self” in Japan. It evolved into a relationship that permitted or at least found rhythm with both in existence, in a very very different way that had been practiced before, but saved so many people from being entirely dehumanised and able to feel balanced.
What we are seeing in digital cognition is the forced acceleration of thought without the tools to let it drift, flow, or rest within itself, like I imagine the colonial interruption felt as I described to what was a long established sense of self.
That’s why many people feel mentally "exhausted" by their digital environments—not necessarily because they are thinking too much, but because they are thinking in a way that is always reactive, always categorical, always in tension with itself, and never considering that this is simply a music they haven’t heard before and that rejection actually doesn’t stop it playing, it just makes you feel more terrible about it being there.
People are running, rather than listening, and understanding how they can turn it down, sing with it, dance, or up the ante, and choosing to just drown it out with their own voices which simply do not work clashing together with one another.
I think it’s interesting this analogy because often when people are exhausted by the internet find deep rest in things like:
- Long, slow video game experiences (where thought moves without survival tension).
- Meandering book reading (where there is no demand for immediate categorisation).
- Repetitive movement like running or swimming (where the body occupies itself and the mind can drift).
- Music (where cognition can "float" without needing to decide or react).
The future of cognitive rest will likely mirror these ancient models, not because they are "spiritual" in a traditional sense, but because they represent a fundamentally different way of engaging with thought—one that does not treat thinking as a constant battlefield, but as an environment in which we can choose how to move.
my guy. :)