"In those early times, then, consciousness was more mobile. Identity was more democratic. In a strange fashion this does not mean that individuality was weaker. Instead it was strong enough to accept within its confines many divergent kinds of experience. A person, then, looking out into the world of trees, waters and rock, wildlife and vegetation, literally felt that he or she was looking at the larger, materialized, subjective areas of personal selfhood. To explore that exterior world was to explore the inner one. Such a person, however, walking through the forest, also felt that he or she was also a portion of the inner life of each rock or tree, materialized. Yet there was no contradiction of identities. A man might merge his own consciousness with a running stream, traveling in such a way for miles to explore the layout of the land. To do this he became part water in a kind of identification you can barely understand but so did the water then become part of the man."

Seth