The external world is as much you as your own body
Any good scientist knows that what you call the external world is as much you as your own body. Your skin doesn’t actually separate you from the world—it’s a bridge through which the world flows into you, and you flow into the world. You’re just like a whirlpool. The whirlpool has a definite form, but at no time does water stay put in it. The whirlpool is something the stream is doing, just as we are things the whole universe is doing. So if I meet you again tomorrow, I’ll recognize you as the same whirlpool I saw yesterday, but you’re moving. The whole world is moving through you—cosmic rays, oxygen, the stream of steaks and milk and eggs you eat— everything flows right through you. You’re a wiggle, and the world is wiggling you. —Alan Watts, Out of Your Mind
- previously: we are wiggles, and it’s notoriously difficult to get control over something that wiggles
- see also: we are the process of the universe, involved in the ongoing creation of what exists, and any separation is an illusion
- see also: we are collaborative compound organisms, impossible to separate from each other