I realized that the difference that I saw between things was the same thing as their unity, because differences (borders, lines, surfaces, boundaries… - Alan Watts

but in general there is serious competition as to who is going to be the top type of tube. All this seems marvelously futile,

Have you really looked at a seashell? There's not an aesthetic fault in it anywhere - it's absolutely perfect. Now, do you think that shells look at each other and critique each other's appearance? "Well, your markings are a little crooked and not very well spaced." Of course not, but that's what we do. Every one of us is marvellous and complicated and interesting and gorgeous just as we are. Really take a look at another person's eyes. They are jewelry beyond compare - just beautiful!

Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap. Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. For in a civilization equipped with immense technological power, the sense of alienation between man and nature leads to the use of technology in a hostile spirit — -to the “conquest” of nature instead of intelligent co-operation with nature.