Death is the unknown in which all of us lived before birth. - Alan Watts

We also speak of attention as noticing. To notice is to select, to regard some bits of perception, or some features of the world, as more noteworthy, more significant, than others. To these we attend, and the rest we ignore — for which reason conscious attention is at the same time ignore-ance (i.e., ignorance) despite the fact that it gives us a vividly clear picture of whatever we choose to notice.

Part of man’s frustration is that he has become accustomed to expect language and thought to offer explanations which they cannot give. To want life to be “intelligible” in this sense is to want it to be something other than life. It is to prefer a motion-picture film to a real, running man. To feel that life is meaningless unless “I” can be permanent is like having fallen desperately in love with an inch.

[C]onsciousness is no mere phosphorescent scum upon the foundations of fire and rock - a late addition to a world which is essentially unfeeling and mineral. [...] It is in the living organism that the whole world feels: it is only by virtue of eyes that stars themselves are light.