The philosophy and religion of the Western world says that the universe is made up of separate things, planets, pencils, pancakes, people, etc. It also says that the separate things are not connected. In other words, you are something that's enclosed by skin. Where your skin ends, that's where whatever you are ends. What is beyond your skin is something else, something separate from you that is not you. You have no identity with or connection with anything that is beyond your skin.

The philosophy and religion of the Eastern world says that believing all of that is to miss the point completely. They are saying that the universe is one "thing" with many different connecting parts and it is alive. That one living "thing" can be called ultimate reality or God or whatever you choose to call it. The point is that you are not just what you have always been told you are and believe that you are. All of that is what your ego and social identity or role is. That's not, though, what you are. Your real Self is the entire universe, not just what's inside your skin. You are directly connected to that ultimate reality or God. Your real Self is, indeed, God. So is my real Self and so is the real Self of planets, pencils and pancakes. People and things are all different but not separate. Arms and legs are different but both are connected to the body. Similarly, everything in the universe is connected and that is your true Self.

There is another part of Eastern philosophy and religion that needs to be understood. It's the word "maya". People who have heard that word will likely say that maya means that the world is an illusion. Great. So what is that supposed to mean? To begin with, that's not what it means. It will take some explaining.

Everything we know, we have been taught or told about. As little kids, we are taught or told what a table is, what a glass is, etc. Every object is referred to by a certain word and everyone agrees on what a table or a glass is. This is the basis of language and verbal communication and also the basis for looking at the world as a bunch of separate, individual things that have no connection with each other. A table is separate from a glass, but what if a glass is ON the table? Are they separate or somehow a part of each other? It's all how you look at it.

We are taught how to look at things. If a baby is looking at a glass on the table, the baby doesn't know that the table is a table or that a glass is a glass or that a glass is on the table. The baby isn't dividing up what it sees into separations or categories or separating what is sees into divisions or classifications. The baby is just seeing or seeing one field of vision and that's it. That baby is also tripping. Yes, we were conceived in orgasm and born tripping. That is our real natural state of mind. In not realizing that and being completely shut off from it, we have been robbed blind by being pressured to accept a silly, limited, phony version of reality which we take so seriously.

We all go through years of social conditioning (propaganda) by way of reward and punishment. We are told what is good or bad, right or wrong, how to behave, what is accepted, how to think, what the norms are and most importantly what we are. As this process goes on, year after year, we slowly come down from that original, natural tripping state that we were born with until it is gone.

When the person has come all the way down and is now a conditioned, brainwashed, socialized robot with tunnel vision, they are told that they are now a rational, mature adult. That rational, mature adult identifies himself or herself with their social role or ego which isn't at all what they are, but what they are told that they are. Accepting your ego or social role as your entire identity is allowing others to define you and what you are and just blindly going along with it. We also blindly accept the society's definition of reality, what's real and what isn't, what's important and what isn't, etc.