to this or that, or as being more general (1) than both,” the reply is: An observer’s failure to consider something does not alter realities from what they actually are: they are either in the mind or in external reality.

Even what is more general than either is itself also in the mind. For if you suppose there to be a quiddity that is neither in the mind nor in external reality, you are making that supposition (2) only in the mind. This means that the supposition is in the mind—not that the quiddity said not to be in the mind is itself in the mind. Rather, after conceiving a quiddity in his mind, a person can suppose that it is not in his mind, although his supposition that it is not in his mind is itself in his mind, even though it is an impossible supposition.

One must therefore distinguish between a quiddity qualified by its being in the mind and an absolute quiddity conceived without reference either to a mind or to external reality, while recognizing that even this absolute quiddity exists only in the mind, though the mind may disregard its being there. Its being in the mind is one thing, while knowing that it is in the mind is another.

These people conceive (3) and suppose things, and this occurs only in the mind. Yet at the very moment when a person conceives [something] (4) in his mind and forms a supposition about it, he may not be aware of its being in the mind—like someone who sees something in external reality but becomes so occupied with the thing seen that he fails to attend to the fact that he is seeing it. This resembles what some of them call fanā (annihilation), whereby one becomes so absorbed in the object of remembrance as to lose awareness of the act of remembrance,