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A Friendly Prickle


I have a friend who was born blind. She has no idea what darkness is and so I tried to give her an idea of what stars are and why we love them. I said, “Imagine when you touch the edge of something, you feel the edge, and then you move your hand away and nothing obstructs your hand, so there is space, nothing obstructing.

Now imagine if you could put your hands out and feel around yourself a large collection of randomly distributed prickles, sharp points, that don’t hurt you. At least not like the point of a needle. They’re kind of pleasure-pain. We get this impression with the things we call our eyes, a friendly prickle coming at us from all over space when we can see them at night.”

By Alan WattsThe Essence of Alan Watts

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