Thinking is a mentally active search to understand observations or the process of creating imaginations.
- Perception provides us with information.
- Memory stores this information for future use.
- Thinking uses the information provided by perception and memory; then, uses imagination to combine and organize it into new patterns and new combinations.
Perception represents the present; memory reinstates past perceptions or past imaginations; and thinking reaches toward the future, toward something that has yet to be brought into existence. Sometimes all three of these mental processes are occurring at the same time. Together they make up what is called cognition.
Broadly defined, cognition is the mental process of generating an idea. Accurate cognition includes real awareness, precise perception, enlightened reasoning, and valid judgment.
If a person were to possess only the ability to perceive, he or she would be mentally limited to his or her present observations, wants, and desires; and, his or her actions would be the result of impulse rather than thought.
If a person has perception and memory, then he or she has a past and a present. Such a person, when not controlled or changed by present events, would tend to be a nonprogressive creature of habit.
However, by adding the power of accurate thinking to correct perception and precise memory, a person is enabled to project himself or herself into the future; by doing so, a person can know and do in the present whatever is required of him or her to have a better life in the future.
Through the process of accurate thinking, a person can rearrange his or her life to suit himself or herself and to satisfy his or her wants and needs while also helping humanity become better. This is why self-education as well as formal education are vitally needed for both the well-being of an individual as well as a better world in which to live.
