The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

the figure/ground relationship. This theory asserts, in brief, that no figure is ever perceived except in relation to a background.

The difficulty in realizing this to be so is that conceptual thinking cannot grasp it. It is as if the eyes were trying to look at themselves directly, or as if one were trying to describe the color of a mirror in terms of colors reflected in the mirror. Just as sight is something more than all things seen, the foundation or “ground” of our existen

Ananda Coomaraswamy once said that he would rather die ten years too early than ten minutes too late—too late, and too decrepit or drugged, to seize the opportunity to let oneself go, to “lay me down with a will.”

“I believe,” said Tertullian of Christianity, “because it is absurd.”

that what we call “things” are no more than glimpses of a unified process.

For this reason The Book I would pass to my children would contain no sermons, no shoulds and oughts. Genuine love comes from knowledge, not from a sense of duty or guilt. How would you like to be an invalid mother with a daughter who can’t marry because she feels she ought to look after you, and therefore hates you? My wish would be to tell, not h

Yet it is as true, or false, to say that the brain “feeds itself” through the stomach as that the stomach “evolves” a brain at its upper entrance to get more food.

just when our mouth was watering for the ultimate goodies, it turns out to be a mixture of plaster-of-paris, papier-mâché, and plastic glue. Comes in any flavor.

becomes clear only as one realizes, with compassion and sorrow, that many of our most powerful and wealthy men are miserable dupes and captives in a treadmill, who—with the rarest exceptions—have not the ghost of a notion how to spend and enjoy money.