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163 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1966
We do not "come into" this world, we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves", the universe "peoples". Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.
The individual may be seen as one particular focal point at which the universe expresses itself - as an incarnation of IT
self and other, subject and object, organism and environment, are the poles of a single process
Your entire education has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.
Life is at root playing.
The vital thing is to consolidate your understanding, to become capable of enjoyment, of living in the present, and of the discipline which this involves.
Hitherto we have been taught that we are not really responsible for our brains. We do not know (in terms of words or figures) how they are constructed, and thus it seems that the brain and the organism as a whole are an ingenious vehicle which has been "given" to us... In other words, we accepted a definition of ourselves which confined the self to the source and to the limitations of conscious attention. This definition is miserably insufficient, for in fact we know how to grow brains and eyes, ears and fingers, hearts and bones, in just the same way that we know how to walk and breathe, talk and think--only we can't put it into words. Words are too slow and too clumsy for describing such things, and conscious attention is too narrow for keeping track of all their details.
I presume, then, that with my own death I shall forget who I was, just as my conscious attention is unable to recall, if it ever knew, how to form the cells of the brain and the pattern of the veins. Conscious memory plays little part in our biological existence. Thus as my sensation of "I-ness", of being alive, once came into being without conscious memory or intent, so it will arise again and again... And if I forget how many times I have been here, and in how many shapes, this forgetting is the necessary interval of darkness between every pulsation of light. I return in every baby born.