From: oldernow@dev.null   
      
   "A READER who firmly believes that he can reach any   
    satisfactory understanding of himself and his relation   
    to the universe which apparently surrounds him—via a   
    self which he is conditioned to regard as an autonomous   
    individual, is wasting his time in reading this book.   
    He would need to be prepared to lay aside such a point of   
    view and find that as such he has nothing but an apparent   
    sentient existence which has no ultimate significance   
    whatever, on account of the evident fact that he himself   
    as a `fact' and a `self' does not exist at all.   
      
    Among the uncountable, because historically unknown, human   
    beings who have come to understand what they are—that   
    inconceivable immensity in comparison with their own   
    insignificant `appearance' (as phenomenon)—there are   
    a few thousand on record, among whom a few hundred have   
    left us some account of their awakened comprehension.   
      
    That immense and total understanding of what we sentient   
    beings, each and all, human, animal and vegetable, are   
    is the exclusive subject of this book; and it is based   
    on what those who have come to understand what in fact   
    they are, have told us about what they found and how they   
    found it—which is also how we too may find it. That   
    is done by understanding that what we appear to be is a   
    fleeting shadow, a distorted and fragmentary reflection   
    of what we all are when we no longer assume that we are   
    that phenomenal appearance."   
      
   --   
   Oh, for the love of signature silliness....   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)