“In the final analysis, superstitions, omens, and intuitions are the reflections of a conscious effort on the part of an individual to detect the subtle signals sent to us from the natural world. If we are convinced that the life and matter around us are mute, then we are confined to the silence of the scientifically concrete. If we are open to subtlety, then the world resonates with significance.”

“We fail to reckon with the reality of human nature. By nature,we are egocentric. Our world revolves around us. None of us is totally altruistic.”

“A part of us stayed like that: fearful of the world around us, and-no matter how much we despised ourselves for it-unable quite to let each other go.”

“To live a life of gratitude is to open our eyes to the countless ways in which we are supported by the world around us.”

“The brain is a far more open system than we ever imagined, and nature has gone very far to help us perceive and take in the world around us. It has given us a brain that survives in a changing world by changing itself.”

“The application of this knife, the division of the world into parts and the building of this structure, is something everybody does. All the time we are aware of millions of things around us - these changing shapes, these burning hills, the sound of the engine, the feel of the throttle, each rock and weed and fence post and piece of debris beside the road - aware of these things but not really conscious of them unless there is something unusual or unless they reflect something we are predisposed to see. We could not possibly be conscious of these things and remember all of them because our mind would be so full of useless details we would be unable to think. From all this awareness we must select, and what we select and calls consciousness is never the same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it. We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.”