The true paradox of consciousness is that we are never more fully ourselves than when we have forgotten ourselves—and this forgetting is not a loss but a gain, for in losing the boundary of self we touch something universal.

I conceive a man's body as a sort of fiery mist enmeshed in the cage of the skeleton, and all that I conceive the whole universe to be; and the body's nerve and blood as rivers or streams of this mist, and all the mind's relations as a congeries of symbols of the body's relations unto the body itself.