We are in the habit of imagining our lives to be linear, a long march from birth to death. But they are in fact constantly renewed, and the great events of our lives happen again and again.

We are not thinking enough about thinking, and hardly thinking at all about awareness. Hardly thinking—which is the core of the matter.

The eye is not merely a physical organ, but the supreme instrument of touch, and we see only with our eyes open to the world; blindness is not the absence of sight but the refusal to look.

The true paradox of consciousness is that we become most fully conscious precisely when we lose the sense of being conscious at all, when the instrument becomes so perfectly attuned to its object that subject and object merge into one continuous act of perception.

The true paradox of consciousness is that we become most fully conscious precisely when we cease to be aware of ourselves—when the self dissolves into action, perception, or creation.

The true paradox of consciousness is that we become most fully conscious precisely when we cease to think about consciousness at all, and surrender ourselves to the world.

The true paradox of consciousness is that the more we think about it directly, the more it eludes us; yet in the very act of eluding our grasp, it reveals itself most fully.