This is an idea of the ultimate reality which does not govern the universe by ruling it, by telling it what to do, but by (as it were) letting it be free to organize itself harmoniously.
These forms of Asian philosophy want us, as individuals, to feel that we participate in this great democracy of nature no longer as isolated individuals trying to push it around, or command it like monarchs or bosses. For their conception of the omnipotence of nature is not like the omnipotence of a king, but of a self-governing state. Not a mere collection of units, but a body: a self-organizing pattern. And they want us to feel that the true self of each one of us is that entire pattern.
In the giving up of our own will we do not surrender power, we gain power.
The power of a human being is not so much in his particular individual identity as in a certain kind of emptiness through which something can flow.
