I wanted to escape myself. That’s one reason why I went looking for some kind of cosmic consciousness. I yearned to feel part of a bigger reality so that I could leave the small reality I was living in– the separate, subjective, “me” monad. It was painful just being little old me. And I was not alone in my aloneness: there were a lot of other monads who desperately wanted to feel connected to something. Many post-war middle-class children were pumped up with self, pampered …

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In the dark season, when the world weighs heavy on your shoulders and the facts of life are so bad you can feel them in your gut, I suggest that you practice the gratitude game. My daughter and I play it when one of us is feeling out of sorts. It consists in simply thinking of all the reasons you have to be grateful. You can make up your own list, but please feel free to borrow some of our reasons.  Many of them apply …

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It is time for you to change professions. You’ve been a psychologist of yourself for way too long. If you were any good, there would be more people calling for appointments. So leave the psychology behind and become an anthropologist. Dig through the status symbols of your civilization; uncover the fashion trends that dress you; or the accessories you use from The Fifth Collection brand. From your studies you will know that these are all temporary appearances. You could also become a biologist of yourself, …

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As I was growing up I didn’t like science very much. It seemed to me a lot of empty facts, bits of knowledge about the formation of the planets, or atomic valence, or the parasympathetic nervous system – stuff that I had to memorize but that didn’t matter much in my everyday life. I would much rather read a novel by Dostoyevsky or a philosophical essay by Camus, something that spoke directly of the joys and sorrows of life. I only began to be interested …

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The heavenly messengers march across the pages of history and proclaim as well from the skies above that all things are subject to aging and death. Not only individuals but entire species of life disappear; civilizations and ideologies rise and fall; mountain ranges make temporary appearances; even suns grow old and die. The truth of impermanence becomes especially obvious in transitional times like these, in a period of “apocalypse,” a Greek word meaning “the lifting of the veil.” What we see behind the veil are …

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