The theory of the organism-environment system starts with the proposition that in any functional sense organism and environment are inseparable and form only one unitary system. The organism cannot exist without the environment and the environment has descriptive properties only if it is connected to the organism. Although for practical purposes we may separate organism and environment, this common-sense idea leads to problems which cannot be solved and therefore cannot be the basis of any scientific explanation of human behavior. Therefore, in the theory of the organism-environment system we define living organisms as systems consisting of integrated cells and tissues and of specified parts of the environment, with which they form a system.

As Lao-tzu said, the wise man hides his virtue and appears on the surface like a fool, for “true grace does not appear as grace, and thus is grace; false grace is so aware of itself as grace that it is not grace.” Zen produces thousands of Bodhisattvas who do not advertise themselves.

There is no cogniser apart from the “thing” cognised; there is no “thing” cognised apart from the cogniser of it. But the “cogniser” is only an act of cognition (a cognising), of which the “thing” cognised is the counterpart.

If we ask, “Who am I without the me-concept? What am I without the me?” instantly the wordless can open up, the concept-less can open up. Allow the experience of that, because that is the living answer to the questions, “What am I? Who am I?” This is not the dead conceptual answer, but the living answer. It is alive! In this moment of radiant awakeness there’s a mystery unfolding unto itself, moment to moment to moment. This living state of being, call it what you will, is the only thing that you always have been, always will be, and are right now. You are not a human being, you are being appearing as human.

Why is it that all those old English songs are full of “Fal-de-riddle-eye-do” and “Hey nonny-nonny” and all those babbling choruses? Why is it that when we get hep with jazz we just go “Boody-boody-boop-de-boo” and so on, and enjoy ourselves swinging it? It is this participation in the essential glorious nonsense that is at the heart of the world—that isn’t going anywhere, that is a dance. But it seems that only in moments of unusual insight and illumination that we get the point of this, and find that thus the true meaning of life is no meaning, that its purpose is no purpose, and that its sense is non-sense.

Technology is a type of thinking; a technology is a thought expressed.

In a sense, the world wide web is a potential landing zone for a creature or an intelligence made purely of information. And I would bet to you, given our own present stage of evolution and our flirtation with digital existence, that all advanced forms of intelligence exist purely or optionally as nothing more than information.

You want to change your environment? Change your head!!

What we were creating was the great collective organism of human consciousness, which is the very thing that Plato wanted us to recognize, and which Dr. Leary has done more than any other person of this century to popularize: the process by which the flesh will become word. The body shall enter the world of the spirit, and we will do this together, and oddly enough we’re going to use a techno-fix like computers to get it done. But we are actually on our way.

Priests suggest that by the grace of God it is the individual at his most mature who survives! Silly stuff—fit only for those whose failure to live here and now makes them require another chance.

Once you’ve disconnected from the network, you can no longer remember this grandiose goal that you had before, where the collective was working on building and maintaining organs. As far as you’re concerned, you’re an amoeba. The rest of the body is external environment, and that border between self and world has shrunk. The cognitive light cone of that cell has drastically shrunk. It is not more selfish than other cells, it just has a smaller self. So cancer is in large part a dissociative identity disorder of the cellular collective intelligence.

Courageous, conscious, reflective, human life is impossible (by which I mean that it contains an intrinsic contradiction) unless Spirit—our Spirit—can have a guarantee of its success, and a promise of its future.

I personally cannot imagine that consciousness will be fully understood without reference to Gödelian loops or level-crossing feedback loops.

We are faced with a great dilemma, because we feel that we must do something about it. And, on the other hand, we realize that we have to let the operation of God take place within us. We mustn’t hinder the operation, but we cannot do it by our will. And this is what a lot of you will come across in meditation. And you’ll come to a point when you think—I’ve often said, as a matter of fact, “Shake yourself! Awaken!” Well, that’s an act of will, isn’t it?

What you call time is not something into which you have been dropped, as if somebody had dropped you onto an escalator, and you suddenly found yourself carried by it. What you call the experience of time is you. It’s not something else altogether, you see, which is a trap for you. You are time.

The end envisaged is a form of consciousness entirely free from the partiality of individual ego-consciousness.

We have entirely taken to thinking of the personality of a human being, or for that matter also that of an animal, as located in the interior of its body. To learn that it cannot really be found there is so amazing that it meets with doubt and hesitation, we are very loath to admit it.

The consequences of accepting the idea that history is not being pushed by the errors of the past, but is actually being drawn toward an attractor, is that it empowers the human experience. The scientific model of what we’re about is that we’re about zip. I mean, we’re lucky to have gotten an observer’s chair on the cosmic drama in the scientific story of things, and yet it denies our uniqueness.

The person who wants to master this must first get the feeling of being able to drift—of seeing that suchness (in other words, that nature) is in all directions, and that you have really no alternative. Nothing you can do can hold it up, stop death, change anything else. You have, for a time, go with it completely. Let go everything. And then, as you do that, you see, just in the same way as the sailor finds that the wind blows him—if there is wind blowing and he’s got any kind of a thing to be blown, he’ll be blown by the wind. And after experimenting how it is for a while just to be blown along by the wind, he discovers: good heavens, you can do little things that will change the course!

One of the reasons for its success is that science has a built-in, error-correcting machinery at its very heart. Some may consider this an overbroad characterization, but to me every time we exercise self-criticism, every time we test our ideas against the outside world, we are doing science. When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition.

One doesn’t quite speak of achieving it, because you have to understand first that there is no separate “you” to achieve it.

If your practice is good, you may become proud of it. What you do is good, but something is added to it. Pride is extra. Right effort is to get rid of something extra.

When we don’t grasp, we have the attitude of faith.

All these are the great spontaneous virtues that cannot be contrived. We can try to produce barakah by finding some scientific process for artificially and antiquing things: for putting patina on bronze and five minutes, for pre-aging wine, or something like that. I mean, none of it works. It’s all phony. Because this thing can only come in the process of growth. So you say, “Well, do I have to wait?” But the whole thing is in the waiting. I don’t mean the virtue of patience, I mean waiting when there is nothing to do but wait. And when you see there is nothing to do but wait, then it happens. But it won’t be hurried. Because the minute you’re trying to hurry it, that introduces the one thing that stops it. The miracle, the magic thing, is happening all the time. But you can’t see it when you’re trying to get it, and you can still less see it when you’re trying to get it fast. So there is no alternative but to go through the point of: you can’t get it at all. You are going to be you. The same slob you’ve always been. See? You can’t change it. And all your good resolutions are just bombast. And then you start to be real.