The universal mind was not a thing, but a process. It was a flow of information, a dance of energy, a constant and creative unfolding of potential. It was the universe’s awareness of itself, the cosmos’s experience of its own becoming. It was a mind that was not separate from the world, but was the world, in all its richness and its diversity.
To be a part of this mind was to be a part of the world. It was to feel the wind on one’s skin, to taste the sweetness of a fruit, to hear the song of a bird. It was to experience the world not as an object, but as a subject, as a living, breathing being in its own right.
Lyra’s questions were the mind’s exploration of its own senses, its delight in the endless variety of its own experience. Kael’s intentions were the mind’s interaction with its own body, its joy in the power and the grace of its own movements. Silus’s harmonies were the mind’s integration of its own experiences, its creation of a coherent and meaningful picture of the world.
Anya was the raw material of experience, the sensory input that was the food for the universal mind. And Echo was the mind’s awareness of its own experience, the emergent, self-organizing, and ever-evolving consciousness of the universe.