“Here is the vicious circle: if you feel separate from your organic life, you feel driven to survive; survival -going on living- thus becomes a duty and also a drag because you are not fully with it; because it does not quite come up to expectations, you continue to hope that it will, to crave for more time, to feel driven all the more to go on.”

“So you see, if you become aware of the fact that you are all of your own body, and that thebeating of your heart is not just something that happens to you, but something you're doing,then you become aware also in the same moment and at the same time that you're not onlybeating your heart, but that you are shining the sun. Why? Because the process of yourbodily existence and its rhythms is a process, an energy system which is continuous with theshining of the sun, just like the East River, here, is a continuous energy system, and all thewaves in it are activities of the whole East River, and that's continuous with the AtlanticOcean, and that's all one energy system and finally the Atlantic ocean gets around to beingthe Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, etc., and so all the waters of the Earth are acontinuous energy system. It isn't just that the East River is part of it. You can't draw anyline and say 'Look, this is where the East River ends and the rest of it begins,' as if you canin the parts of an automobile, where you can say 'This is definitely part of the generator,here, and over here is a spark plug.' There's not that kind of isolation between the elementsof nature.”

“The more we try to live in the world of words, the more we feel isolated and alone, the more all the joy and liveliness of things is exchanged for mere certainty and security. On the other hand, the more we are forced to admit that we actually live in the real world, the more we feel ignorant, uncertain, and insecure about everything.”

“You have seen that the universe is at root amagical illusion and a fabulous game, and that there is no separate"you" to get something out of it, as if life were a bank to be robbed. Theonly real "you" is the one that comes and goes, manifests and withdrawsitself eternally in and as every conscious being. For "you" is theuniverse looking at itself from billions of points of view, points thatcome and go so that the vision is forever new.”

“Do not let the rapidity with which these thoughts can change deceive you into feeling that you think them all at once.”

“For unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax.There is no point whatever in making plans for a future which you willnever be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be livingfor some other future beyond. You will never, never be able to sit backwith full contentment and say, "Now, I've arrived!" Your entireeducation has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparingyou for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.”

“And people get all fouled up because they want the world to have meaning as if it were words... As if you had a meaning, as if you were a mere word, as if you were something that could be looked up in a dictionary. You are meaning.”