“That would distract your attention, and attention is the whole point. Attention to the experience of something given, something you haven't invented in your imagination.”

“Shanta shook her head emphatically, "That would distract your attention, and attention is the whole point. Attention to the experience of something given, something you haven't invented. Not the memory of a form of words addressed to somebody in your imagination.”

“And while you were paying attention to these things, you were momentarily delivered from daydreams, from memories, from anticiaptions, from silly notions - from all the symptoms of you.""Isn't tasting me?"..."I'd say it was halfway between me and not-me. Tasting is not-me doing something for the whole organism. And at the same time tasting is me being conscious of what's happening. And that's the point of our chewing-grace - to make the me more conscious of what the not-me is up to.”

“Grace is the first mouthful of each course - chewed and chewed until there's nothing left of it. And all the time you're chewing you pay attention to the flavour of the food, to it's consistency and temperature, to the pressures on your teeth and the feel of the muscles in your jaws.”

“Well... ...That's what you always forget, isn't it? I mean, you forget to pay attention to what's happening. And that's the same as not being here and now.”

“You're assuming,' said Dr. Robert, 'that the brain producesconsciousness. I'm assuming that it transmits consciousness. And myexplanation is no more farfetched than yours. How on earth can a set ofevents belonging to one order be experienced as a set of events belongingto an entirely different and incommensurable order? Nobody has thefaintest idea. All one can do is to accept the facts and concoct hypotheses.And one hypothesis is just about as good, philosophically speaking, asanother. You say that the moksha-medicine does something to the silentareas of the brain which causes them to produce a set of subjective eventsto which people have given the name 'mystical experience.' I say that themoksha-medicine does something to the silent areas of the brain whichopens some kind of neurological sluice and so allows a larger volume ofMind with a large 'M' to flow into your mind with a small 'm.' You can'tdemonstrate the truth of your hypothesis, and I can't demonstrate the truthof mine. And even if you could prove that I'm wrong, would it make anypractical difference?”

“Something that had been a single cell, a cluster of cells, a little sac of tissue, a kind of worm, a potential fish with gills, stirred in her womb and would one day become a man--a grown man, suffering and enjoying, loving and hating, thinking, remembering, imagining. And what had been a blob of jelly within her body would invent a god and worship; what had been a kind of fish would create, and, having created, would become the battleground of disputing good and evil; what had blindly lived in her as a parasitic worm would look at the stars, would listen to music, would read poetry.”