I wonder if it's ever struck you how
curious the thing it is that most of the
things that we experience we regard as
things that happen to us which we
ourselves do not originate which are
events expressing some sort of power or
activity that is external to ourselves
and if you consider that you realize
that what you mean by yourself is rather
narrowly circumscribed even events that
go on in our own bodies are put in the
category of things that happen to us in
the same way as things that go on in the
world outside our skins if there's a
thunderstorm or an earthquake well it
happens to you you're not responsible
for it but so in the same way when you
have hiccups you didn't plan on it if
you have belly rumbles you have no
intention of doing it and as to the
catastrophic the act of getting born
well you had nothing to do with that and
you can spend all your life blaming your
parents for putting you in the situation
in which you find yourself and this way
of looking at the world in this sort of
passive mood as something that happens
to you goes right down to our general
feeling about life it goes down to the
way in which as Westerners we have been
accustomed to look at human existence as
a precarious event in the cosmos that on
the whole is depicted as being
completely unsympathetic and alien to
our existence in other words if you're
reared with a 20th century or a shall we
say an early 20th
very common sense which is based on the
philosophy of science of the 19th
century with its rejection of
Christianity and Judaism you regard
yourself as an accident a biological
accident in a stupid universe which is
mechanical but has no feelings no finer
feelings a vast pointless gyration of
radioactive rocks and gas in which you
happen to occur of course if you don't
have that point of view and you are more
traditional you look upon yourself as a
child of God and therefore under
Authority in other words there's a big
bus on top of all this who allowed you
at his pleasure to deign to have the
disgusting effrontery to exist and you
better watch your P's and Q's because
that Almighty is looking after you with
the attitude of this is going to hurt me
more than it's going to hurt you and
when you look at the world in that image
or in the other image that it's a stupid
mechanism either point of view you take
you don't really belong you're not
really part of all this and I could use
a stronger word than part only we don't
have it in English we have to say
something like come connected with it
essential to it or to put it in the
strongest possible way it is quite alien
to Western thought to conceive that the
external world which is defined as
something that happens to you and your
body itself is something that you've got
caught up with it is quite alien to our
thought to consider all that as you
yourself because you see we have such a
myopic view
of what oneself is
