But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

For when you see that the universe cannot be distinguished from how you act upon it, there is neither fate nor free will, self nor other. There is simply one all-inclusive Happening, in which your personal sensation of being alive occurs in just the same way as the river flowing and the stars shining far out in space. There is no question of submitting or accepting or going with it, for what happens in and as you is no different from what happens as it.

Every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree.

It is obvious that the only interesting people are interested people, and to be completely interested is to have forgotten about "I".

What keeps us from happiness is our inability to fully inhabit the present

Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself. Just as the word “water” is a noise that symbolizes a certain liquid without being it, so too the idea of ego symbolizes the role you play, who you are, but it is not the same as your living organism.

I want ... to consort with people whose emotions are not ... cold and standoffish.