So long as I keep up the pretence that this one is rather like the others, there is no reason for wonder. But when I clearly see what it’s like here, and consciously am this total emptiness (which nevertheless is very much alive to itself) then this self-seeing is mixed with astonishment. ‘So What?’ becomes ‘Dumbfounded!’; and so far from the surprise wearing off, it grows with cultivation. Every day, one takes oneself—the fact of one’s actually having happened— less for granted. Not what one is, but that one is—this is ever more fascinating: and it is inseparable from that final irregularity, that virtual impossibility—the fact that there is anything whatever. That This should have contrived Its own being, engineered Its own emergence, without reason or cause or any assistance, out of mere inane nothingness, that It should possess the knack of pulling Itself up by Its own astonishing bootstraps out of the ocean of non-being— what success, what audacity, what splendour! After this impossible feat, nothing is impossible, and everything is mystery, unknowable, inexplicable. At root I am—all things are—this self-originating and self-sustaining Wonder, this Miracle which is right here and now. And even the most spectacular and mysterious goings-on out there are only its casual by-products, of no intrinsic importance.