“The Western objective view states that after billions of years of swirling around, matter and energy evolved to create life-forms – complex self-replicating patterns of matter and energy – that became sufficiently advanced to reflect on their own existence, on the nature of matter and energy, on their own consciousness. In contrast, the Eastern subjective view states that consciousness came first – matter and energy are merely the complex thoughts of conscious beings, ideas that have no reality without a thinker.”

— Ray Kurzweil,  The Age of Spiritual Machines, 1999