There is a normally unnoted neural activity always present amidst what men call their thinking  --  a kind of thinking-within-thinking,
which provides the structure and support for the recognized outer shell;
a brain which deals more directly with the thinking-within-thinking
is the one able to achieve the realization and see what is really going on.
 

This thinking-within-thinking is not the sub, or un consciousness of Psychology
(though it be their skewed genesis),
it is something discretely apart from anything conceivable by ordinary thinking
(no matter how trained or educated);
if routine thinking could grasp it, it would not be a thinking-within-thinking,
but would be the normal manifestation and totality of human thinking.
Standard thinking can sense its reality; propose theories about it;
imagine descriptions of it: concoct names for it,
but ordinary thinking can no more see and realize what it is than dark can light;

The rare ability to see it is a dual matter of the certain man’s anatomy,
and unflagging interest;
he is born with a brain whose normal thinking is innately wired closer to the
thinking-within-thinking,
which gives his brain an interest unknown to men with routinely wired ones.
 

Picture expediently this thinking-within-thinking as let us say,
a sphere within a sphere: an outer shell of thinking --
known, used and talked about by everyone,
and an inner one: unrecognized and silent to ordinary minds:
the outer shell compared to the inner is very complex,
and increases therein constantly  -–  second by second in standard men’s lives;
it is self perpetuating, and relentlessly generates its own ever increasing complexity;
the inner facet of the thinking-within-thinking is by contrast simple,
and for any meaningful talking about it  --
is no different than it was from its beginning;
no more complex; no smarter; no stupider, no nothing-er,
it merely is-what-it-is while the outer shell of thinking is forever
whatever the thinker thinking it, thinks it is at the time he is thinking it.
 
 

Even though it cannot be adequately described,
still your picturing thus is not misleading:
the inner thinking of the thinking-within-thinking is the core,
like that of the Earth, from which comes all life and all that supports life,
and the outer shell of thinking is what takes on form,
such as the many species of plants and animals that populate the planet,
and just like the normally understood physical arrangement just noted,
the unseen, unheard, inner thinking-within-thinking is the sole source of nourishment to the visible, audible public life of the outer shell.
This neural situation has eternally intrigued man’s brain,
and metaphorically it has incessantly scrambled for a way to picture it to itself, ranging from modern psychological models back to the earliest mythologies of gods, these (and everything in between) being nothing other than the mis-viewed attempt to put a verbal face on the inner facet of thinking-within-thinking
whose unquestionable presence men have always felt.

The grandest human delusion of all  –  so magnificent that it defies recognition –
is men saying that:  they are in control of what they think;
the arrangement in the brain for this mirage is so perfected that
no man can be shown that he is not so in control –
he cannot even hear the statement made to any benefit whatsoever;
the words making the claim are but ridiculous noise,
totally and instantly disproved by the experience of each man’s mind --
(at least that is what each normal man’s brain says)   --   and yet --

Here words fail completely, even when clearly seen,
there is no way to describe to outer shell thinking what is going on in the brain --  what is going on of which it is an integral part;
the brain knows that it is not producing these thoughts  --  how can it not?! --
yet it literally cannot admit that it knows;

It cannot be said --  it cannot be said that man is not in control of what he thinks;  you cannot say that  --  you should not think that to yourself;