I think about thinking and find that it is more than all I can think about.
Thinking represents a bigger change for the universe than it does for us – because we represent that change. The big changes for us come of what we think. In any case, there is something unique about thinking, something that we know about uniquely from the inside.
That we think locates thought, not as a subjective retreat but as a substantive presence in existence; and if we are to assume anything about a universe that is bigger than us, it is that it begins for us in the presence of thought – a presence of which we are a part – a thinking presence that is more than all we can think about by reference to ourselves alone. We are internal to all that is not confined to us
And the clearest view of ‘external reality’ is not by the assumption of an extended physical realm as a matter of primary necessity, but by way of a wider reality that embraces us as a fact of inevitable distinction – a facilitating mental realm. For we do not awaken to the panoply of a sentient universe in the belief that it has merely awakened in us, or as something that is secondary to a ‘real’ universe that is devoid.
Mike Laidler