Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of human life is to grasp as much as we can out of the infinitude.
Alfred North Whitehead
On the other hand, in eastern philosophy the concept of the mind is different.
The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing; it refuses nothing. It receives, but does not keep.
Taoist sage
Alan Watts depicted this eastern principle of "Buddha mind" that the "true mind is no mind" (wu-hsin) and he is basically sustaining the principle of Tao that does not "know" how it produces the Universe just as we do not "know" how we construct our brains. We do not think to breathe we just do it. The Tao's principle is Spontaneity also known as wu-wei (non-doing, non-striving).
Chuang-tzu noticed the true state of consciousness in the Tao is in somehow similar to one's being drunk.
A drunken man who falls out of a cart, though he may suffer, does not die. His bones are the same as other people's; but he meets the accident in a different way. His spirit is in a condition of security. He is not conscious of riding in the cart; neither is he conscious of falling out of it. Ideas of life, death, fear, etc., cannot penetrate his breast; and so he does not suffer from contact with objective existences. And if such security is to be got from whine, how much more is to be got from Spontaneity ?
Though the main process of the mind is thinking it must have a counter process also which is driven from unconscious processes. Alan Watts said: "A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think except thoughts. So he looses his touch of reality and lives in a world of illusion"...
