What encroaches or impinges on the mind and the thinking activity is none other than the body. Thus, the mind has to be conditioned and trained by a teacher or a guide to overcome the encroachments or impingements of the body in a reasonable and sensible manner. Once it is set free from the encroachments and impingements of the body, the mind and its thinking activity set out to accomplish what are essentially two basic and intelligent aims or goals:
1. Cast doubt on the world of appearances
2. Anticipate and influence outcomes
To think is to cast doubt. Our experience in the world is something which is ongoing. We are undergoing something continuous in the world which has yet to stop or come to an end, as Dewey argued. Chief among what is going on in the world is our personal ongoing experience in the world. It follows that the thinking activity seeks to anticipate and influence the conclusions and outcomes of whatever it is that we are undergoing in the world. Knowledge is therefore subordinate to thinking, because our ongoing experience in the world augments and proliferates knowledge. Through thinking, we are making causal connections between everything that we observe in the world and we are also forging relationships between action and consequences or action and outcomes. There is risk involved in thinking, given that we are influencing something that is uncertain and ongoing. But on the flip-side, to suspend or cease in the thinking activity and to cease and desist from influencing outcomes is to assume and to behave as though a future does not exist, when in reality, there is in fact a future that awaits us. Through thinking, we lay one fact on top of another as a bricklayer does when placing one brick on top of another until an edifice for belief is built and erected, particularly a belief about the future and what it entails and holds for us.
Adam A. Azim 