A curious example, but one helpful to the enquirer, exists in the case of bodily pain. It is utterly impossible for us to imagine pain in the abstract--existing without any mind to be conscious of it. The word becomes quite meaningless if we try to separate it from someone or something to perceive or feel it. Its very existence depends entirely on being thought of, on being related to a conscious percipient. The sensation of being felt, this alone gives reality to pain. This fact refers equally to past or present pain. It should be easy to apply this analogy to the case of mere ideas, for the latter, like pain, can never come into existence without something, some mind, to think of them. Consciousness, on the part of someone or something, alone makes them real and factual.
-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 1 : The Sensed World > # 32
-- Perspectives > Chapter 21: Mentalism > # 39
