The Taboo Against Knowiny Who You Are

Nevertheless, wonder is not a disease. Wonder,
and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important
things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and
intelligent and sensitive people from morons.

Most of us have the sensation
that "I myself" is a separate center of feeling and action, living inside
and bounded by the physical body—a center which "confronts" an
"external" world of people and things, making contact through the
senses with a universe both alien and strange. Everyday figures of
speech reflect this illusion. "I came into this world." "You must face
reality." "The conquest of nature."

This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the
universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all
other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not "come into" this
world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves,"
the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the whole
realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely,
if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be
true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of
themselves as isolated "egos" inside bags of skin

.We do not need a new religion or a new bible. We need a new
experience—a new feeling of what it is to be "I." The lowdown (which
is, of course, the secret and profound view) on life is that our normal
sensation of self is a hoax or, at best, a temporary role that we are
playing, or have been conned into playing—with our own tacit consent,
just as every hypnotized person is basically willing to be hypnotized.
The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against
knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently
separate, independent, and isolated ego.

Sometime, somehow, you (the real you,
the Self) will do it anyhow, but it is not impossible that the play of the
Self will be to remain unawakened in most of its human disguises, and
so bring the drama of life on earth to its close in a vast explosion.