I find that the sensation of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is really a hallucination.

We suffer from a hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that "I myself" is a seperate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body-a center which "confronts" an "external" world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange.

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.

We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time

Only words and conventions can isolate us from the entirely undefinable something which is everything.

You find out that the universe is a system that creeps up on itself and says 'Boo' and then laughs at itself for jumping.

We are at the moment looking at space as something to be entered by the tremendous thrust of a rocket because that is the attitude of attacking the unknown. And that causes us not to realize that we are already on the most magnificently equipped spaceship, which could hardly be improved upon. It has got a source of temperature and energy just at the right distance from it. It's beautifully equipped with oxygen, with food supplies, with all kinds of delightful things to do while on the journey.... and it's traveling through space at a colossal speed... and it's called the planet Earth.