Arts
In Chapter 21, the author talks about what it's like to become a butterfly... "Keep peeling away layers of an onion and what do you have when you get through? Nothing. It isn’t that you peel away the layers and finally get to the onion. You get to the no-onion. The same thing is true for the self. After peeling away all the layers of the ego, you get to… no-self. Jed [McKenna] says it takes about ten years to get used to living as a no-self, to get accustomed to being “awake from the dreamstate,” to operate without false knowledge and a false ego. I don’t know about that, because I assume he’s talking about living those ten years after emerging from his cocoon as a butterfly. First, I’m not certain it’s true he’s a butterfly; and secondly, I won’t know until I get there. I do know it is a very different way to live – a very wonderful and joyful and peaceful and exciting way to live – and even where I am now takes some getting used to." He also speculates on what might happen in the future, based on Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance... "Perhaps I’m simply one of the first generation of rats to find their way to the Pacific Ocean, and perhaps those who come after me will find it much easier and faster. But it means I’m just a rat like everyone else; and I don’t want to leave this book without paying tribute to all the rats who came before me and made my maze a little easier to navigate, and especially to all those other rats who died trying to find their way out of the water. Then, maybe, if Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance turns out to be correct, all the rats who come after me will escape ten times faster, without so many wrong turns, and this process will spread throughout the world until a critical mass is reached and all the rats turn into butterflies."