Why is it that we think of ourselves as only this minute part of a totality far larger than we are?
The brain is not productive of thought, but acts—so to speak—as a kind of reducing-valve, preventing us from being too omniscient. Because obviously, if we have to get out of the way of the traffic on Hollywood Boulevard, it’s no good being aware of everything that’s going on in the universe—we have to be aware of the approaching bus. And this is what the brain does for us; it narrows the field down so that we can go through life without getting into serious trouble. But—as many people have experienced, and as all the teachers of the great religions have insisted should be the case—we can and ought to open ourselves up.
As the world is a continuum, one sees immediately that ordinary language does deceive us all the time. It is one of the reasons why we have this mania—so frequently stressed in all the oriental texts—of thinking of ourselves and of every object in the world as being separate and self-subsistent when, in fact, of course, they’re all part of a universal One.
The end envisaged is a form of consciousness entirely free from the partiality of individual ego-consciousness.
All these paradoxical sayings which keep cropping up in every religion refer to this same thing: this necessity of getting rid of the essentially partial, limited, ego-centered view of the world.
