One of the primary evils of this existence in the Kali Yugam is the tendency to project the self over all other perceptions.  Projecting the Self means to put the self over everything else. The "I" becomes the center of the Mind and all that it perceives.  The dominance of the identity makes the mind think that it knows everything, about itself and about all subjects in the universe. The identity then uses the mind to try and make a lasting impression by attracting the attention of the everyone else to itself.  

This is its techinque to convince itself that its existence is real and not illusory. To convince itself that it is permenant and not transient and that it is not ignorant. 

Powerful (selfless) thoughts do make a lasting impact on the physical world,  but the real impact of thoughts is on the Atman.  The thought process makes modifications and changes to the Jiva Atma that determine the Karma in the next cycle of birth.  The changes to the Atman are permenant when the stage of attaining Moksham is reached.  

The Mind is meant to be a continually evolving vehicle. The evolution begins to take root only when the delusions on which thought is based is removed and replaced with "Reality".  

The delusions have been clearly identified in the Puranas.  The starting point of building a thought process based on an illusion is the conscious assignment of an identity to all perceived objects including the self.  Once unique identities are established,  our thoughts begin to play games with itself in a bid to put to use the imbalance with which it is born.

It starts to generate events that produce alternating bouts of happiness and misery, wealth and poverty, successes and failure etc.

So a perceived object's "success and happiness" becomes our "failure and misery" or our own "success and happiness" (depending on the relationship that we have with the perceived objects).  So the differentiation of identities clearly classifies the perceived world into "Us" and "Them" and "I" and "It/They".

Once it is realized that this identity, referred to as the "I" is the root cause of all misery,  the question arises as to what to replace it with,  if in fact it is necessary to ascquire an identity at all in order for thought to function.

More on the "I" and its different manifestations in the subsequent sections of this web page.