A good starting point for explaining how consciousness works is Buddhism, because everything goes wrong in Buddhism.

Imagine that everything was one. Everything could appear everywhere.

Even then, it would still be logical that your thoughts would appear in you, and mine in me.

But be careful:

  1. You assume that everything you know is all that exists. Yet thoughts can exist outside of yourself. There can also truly be a “you.”

  2. Buddhism takes a passive attitude toward consciousness. It is a bit as if thoughts simply arise on their own, and therefore you should not become too attached to them.

I attach myself to every thought. I act as if I am those thoughts. I like that. Simply because I can. I pretend that all the thoughts and feelings I have together make me who I am.

You want to understand reality.

You can fill your head with a billion thoughts, ideas, and feelings.

Which one do you use?

A physicist would say: I go for things that are scientifically true. I go for Newton, classical mechanics, and quantum mechanics. I also use different branches like math and biology. Maybe I mix in something experimental like Buddhism.

The problem with that is that your field of view narrows so much that it becomes impossible to find new things. You put too much weight on “truth” and “things we already know.” You are like a neural network that’s out of balance.

When you want to find new things, mix ideas that seem virtually impossible and crazy to believe—like walking on water. Is walking on water possible? I pretend it is. And then, in some weird way, it becomes kind of true. For example, my body consists of a lot of water, and I am also walking within my own body.

If you read this and think, “That’s stupid and it can’t be true,” that’s because you only see things with your “is it true?” glasses on. If you take those glasses off, anything is possible. Now the whole world can create thoughts together, have shared moments of silence, without being near each other. Now anything is possible.

The latter is what religion used to be. Spectacular. And I don’t even believe in God. But I also wouldn’t really question whether it was true or not.

Well, this universe is full of things that are not true. If you only focus on things that are true, you’re missing half of it.