Let’s say (since in writing a book one has to say something) that reality or existence is a multidimensional and interwoven system of varying spectra… - Alan Watts

Chuang-tzu: ‘‘The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror; it grasps nothing; it refuses nothing; it receives, but does not keep.

All information will come in by super-realistic television and other electronic devices as yet in the planning stage or barely imagined. In one way this will enable the individual to extend himself anywhere without moving his body — even to distant regions of space. But this will be a new kind of individual — an individual with a colossal external nervous system reaching out and out into infinity. And this electronic nervous system will be so interconnected that all individuals plugged in will tend to share the same thoughts, the same feelings, and the same experiences. There may be specialized types, just as there are specialized cells and organs in our bodies. For the tendency will be for all individuals to coalesce into a single bio-electronic body.

Instead of thinking that you’re a victim of a mechanical world or an autocratic God, try this on — the life you’re living is what you have put yourself into. Only you won’t admit it because you want to play the game that it has happened to you. But instead of blaming your father for getting horny for your mother, and expecting both of them to take responsibility for your crummy life since they brought you into the world, try considering that you were the shiny gleam in your father’s eye when he approached your mother, and that it was your intention that led you to become deliberately involved in this particular existence. And even if you’ve had a terrible life — rife with syphilis and tuberculosis and the Siberian Itch — it has all, nevertheless, been a game. And isn’t that an optimal hypothesis?