There are as many neurons in the human brain as there are stars in the Milky Way, approximately one hundred billion.

I have always wondered, where do thoughts come from? Do they originate from the brain, or from faraway galaxies, or the depths of primordial oceans?

Rodolfo Llinás, a renowned neurophysiologist, hypothesised, “thinking is the evolutionary internalization of movement.” At the early stages of life, when the first creatures were slowly coming into the flesh, the capacity to predict the viability of resources and circumstances made thinking a necessity for survival. Perhaps it’s from this stage of emergence that thoughts began to shape reality, creating forms from the formless.

It’s in the nature of the wind to move. What if the wind were a thinking creature?

The slender grass moves swiftly with elegance. The leaves on trees sway, holding on to the branches. A gentle push for the bird as she lifts into flight. Everywhere on Earth, the wind is orchestrating a dance, a movement. For us, it’s felt with a caress, through breath or flowing hair.

Thoughts and wind are both fleeting, taking the shape of the vessel. Malleable, yes—never without a mass. Wind carries the breath, perhaps even the thoughts.

We feel the weight of our thoughts; long-held beliefs are perhaps carried in the bones, inherited from our ancestors. Our thoughts decide the way we move into the world. It’s evolutionary, and yet evolution happens only through actions—thoughts remain under the veil, like the dark side of the moon: never to be seen, but we know it’s there. What is our body, if not a thought manifested into flesh by the desire for union?

From the collision of atoms to the merging of galaxies, all relationships are made through union. And if consciousness is the awareness of self and surroundings, this spatial thinking pertains to both the animate and the inanimate. Is consciousness a human phenomenon or a universal reality? When an inanimate atom of oxygen collides with two inanimate atoms of hydrogen, a chemical reaction occurs and we have a molecule of water. But is this water inanimate or animate?

The movement of the ocean is yet another sign of thought. When the body is overwhelmed, a tiny river flows from the corner of our eyes. Tears act and taste like the ocean—wild and moving. A memory of our past self that mirrors the saline waters.

Even the ocean and the wind mirror each other. When the winds move the currents of the ocean, the ocean creates the patterns of the wind. In our brain, too, mirror neurons light up when we perform an action and witness someone else doing the same. Perhaps a recognition of minds moving in sync, as if a mirror is everywhere, reflecting the same mind in every matter.

What does the universe think when it replicates patterns of self in the other and the other in self? Is this empathy? What if we were the drop and the ocean?

The purpose of thought is to give form to the formless, to awaken life from sleep. I’m still not certain where thoughts originate from, yet I’m beginning to imagine them as a movement. What if what appears to be the climate crisis is only the first step on our way back home? Perhaps it’s in the nature of the universe to think its way into life, again and again, despite the odds. 

In the bright days,
What appeared like a shadow of self,
Is now a mirror of the sun’s moving thought.

The wind and the ocean
Have carried weights,
Yet they fleet and flow.

The lonely inanimate atoms
Are now animated, in union.

Perhaps life is everywhere—
Hidden and waiting to be seen.
It’s asking

Is the world ending or beginning?

Where did thoughts originate from?

The mind belongs to the universe.
And the universe only knows
How it mirrors the hundred billion stars
In the human mind.

Words by Priyanka Singh Parihar,

Founder and Editor-in-Chief