Death seems simply to be a return to that unknown inwardness out of which we were born...the truly inward source of one's life was never born...Outwa… - Alan Watts

I could make a strong, if not conclusive, case for the idea that plants are more intelligent than people — more beautiful, more pacific, more ingenious in their ways of reproduction, more at home in their surroundings, and even more sensitive. Why, we even use flower-forms as our symbols of the divine when the human face reminds us too much of ourselves — the Hindu-Buddhist mandala, the golden lotus, and the Mystic Rose in Dante’s vision of Paradise. Nothing else reminds us so much of a star with a living heart.

It seems obvious that the universe is a system which, by means of living bodies, becomes aware of itself — up to a point.

In having a flawed sense of identity, we act in a way that is inappropriate to our natural environment.