"What you think, you become"

If we are to believe, and attempt to actualize the above claim - which has been repeated and rephrased hundreds, if not thousands of times and different ways over the centuries (one of the first, apparently, was Buddha... or maybe not, eh?) - then we first must accept the utter impossibility of it! A better way to phrase the attempted notion is: "As you are now, what you think, becomes YOU." That is why the world of men is so screwed up in so many reportable ways today, and only getting more screwed up with every passing day.

Thoughts don't corrupt people, 

as much as People corrupt thoughts.

Look at what is going on in N.Korea, or Syria, or Iraq, or many other places too numerous to mention: People (i.e., their brains, top to bottom, and nothing but) corrupting what could be useful, helpful, even enlightening thoughts, into REASONS and EXCUSES for acting in the most stupid and disgustingly horrendous ways possible for our species. We, as a species, are still murdering, slaughtering, gassing, beheading, starving other higher life forms - including humans themselves - at a rate that is beyond shocking (well... except to those who see/know what's going on here). It has been noted elsewhere that due to the runaway extinction of species caused by thoughtless and stupid actions of HUMANS all over the globe, we could lose 50% of all species on earth alive today in just the next seventy-five to one hundred years. And that number may, if not probably will, include humans themselves.

What is going on here? It's rather simple when you see it. Human brains are not "perfected" by reading other people's thoughts and ideas. That is, reading books by Gurdjieff does NOT awaken anyone; reading books by Buddha does NOT enlighten anyone; etc., etc. Sure, it gives people plenty to think about, talk about, argue about, and get into long, interminable conversations about stuff and nonsense on the already charted "social media territories", but that's about it! (hey... how many are you on?)

Human brains can not BE "perfected", because humans are merely examples of so-called "higher (meaning, 'intelligent') creatures" on Earth. With very rare, if any, exceptions, all exist with one primary directive ruling their lives: "Eat or be eaten," "kill or be killed," "survive or DIE."

Humans are the only known creatures who can actualize the above directive ("What you think, you become"), and CHANGE THEIR BEING, from a totally self-CENTERED creature, to an OTHER-centered creature. Change of Being - as everyone reading this should be thinking about (acting upon), hourly, daily, for the rest of their short lives - requires certain kinds of Efforts, unknown to the masses - the 96% - but of vital interest to 4% or fewer who, somehow - by hook, crook, theft, invention, discovery, creation, mutation (i.e., whatever Works!) - do what the machine does not want to do, and for a long, long time. Sure, there are books out there that will TELL YOU in gloriously anomalous detail what that means, for you personally (although, what the HELL do they know... really?) After all, "What you think (as you are now), simply becomes translated and interpreted by your brain (as it is now), and thus, simply becomes MORE OF YOU. That is NOT, change of being. That, is believing what you like, and what you want, to believe. It changes nothing... anymore than eating loads and loads of bananas, turns you into a BANANA (from the oft-stated silliness: "You are what you eat..." which sounds a helluva lot like "You become what you think."

Yes, all of this can not be stated enough

to impact the many, or even, the few.