All prey-predator relations involve competitions in linear time: the kingfisher must be able to cut time into even smaller pieces than the trout in order to catch it in mid-passage. The mongoose must be able to move in for the kill faster than the cobra can recover from its strike. The cheetah must be able to run down the antelope, and so it goes. When we humans think about time, we usually think of it in those linear competitive terms which are the source of anxiety. Regardless of its duration, life is still shortened by each passing moment. Elapsed time will never come again, and the great anxiety of the West is to cram each moment full of not necessarily perception but accomplishment.

John Bleibtreu, The Parable of the Beast

The mind is as much in the body as the body is in the world. The body penetrates the mind just as the world penetrates the body. We like to believe, since we see ourselves as enclosed within a shield of skin, that we are demarcated from the world by the envelope of skin, just as a theater curtain separates the audience from the stage before the performance. But the skin is a porous membrane. Electrically and chemically the world moves right through us as though we were made of mist. . . .

Some exceptional people occasionally have this sense of "seamlessness" of the unity of the world. They are known in the west as mystics. Others have it all the time, and they are known as schizophrenics.

John Bleibtreu, The Parable of the Beast