Illusion of separateness

"The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: 'I think, therefore I am.' He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking.

Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God. It is this concept of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate 'other.' You then forget the essential fact that, underneath the level of physical appearances and separate forms, you are one with all that is. By 'forget,' I mean that you can no longer feel this oneness as self-evident reality. You may believe it to be true, but you no longer know it to be true. A belief may be comforting. Only through your own experience, however, does it become liberating."

-- Eckhart Tolle