The Sacrament of the Senses: Communion of the Formless and of Form
The most deeply ingrained psychological assumption of the localized identity is that the everyday world is composed of solid, inert matter. We are taught that the universe is a vast container of swirling atoms, and that consciousness is just a fortunate, localized accident, a byproduct of complex neurology firing inside our skulls. In this view, we are observers looking out at a universe that is entirely separate from us.
But what if we have the equation backward?
To understand the nature of the senses, we must first understand the nature of the world we are sensing. If we investigate our direct experience with rigorous honesty, we never actually encounter an external world. We only ever encounter our awareness of the world through the faculties of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting.
Instead of consciousness arising out of matter, consider the inversion: matter arises within consciousness.