I am listening to a priest chanting the Mass and a choir of nuns responding. His mature, cultivated voice rings with the serene authority of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, of the Faith once and for all delivered to the saints, and the nuns respond, naively it seems, with childlike, utterly innocent devotion. But, listening again, I can hear the priest “putting on” his voice, hear the inflated, pompous balloon, the studiedly unctuous tones of a master deceptionist who has the poor little nuns, kneeling in their stalls, completely cowed. Listen deeper. The nuns are not cowed at all. They are playing possum. With just a little stiffening, the limp gesture of bowing turns into the gesture of the closing claw. With too few men to go around, the nuns know what is good for them: how to bend and survive.

It is even now being recognized in the United States that the real danger of psychedelics is not so much neurological as political—-that “turned-on” people are not interested in serving the power games of the present rulers. Looking at the successful men, they see completely boring lives.

A witty attack on the illusion that the self is a separate ego that confronts a universe of alien physical objects.

You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

The more we try to catch hold of the present moment the more elusive it
becomes. It is like trying to clutch water in ones hands. The harder we
grip, the more it slips through our fingers.