Just occasionally one understand what it might mean to talk of walking with the gods, a larger consciousness opens out in which one sees things, one sees oneself, others, humanity, sub specie aeternitatis, one sees the whole human condition with pity or joy, and then ordinary consciousness closes in again. These epiphanies take place, one registers them, but there are no conclusions to be drawn, no 'faith' to be confirmed, it is just there as a possibility, and beautiful: all of which sounds like Krishnamurti ...

But, admittedly, this talk of 'consciousness' is vague, 'a larger consciousness', 'ordinary consciousness' ... but the point perhaps is that the criterion of identity for these various forms of consciousness is to be found in the idea of a perspective and its object or, if perspective is also too vague, one discovers an attitude to an object which is precisely 'the human condition', in the sense that our own situation, that of others walking past us in the street, become exemplars of that condition of humanity, one sees the individual in the light of that larger perspective. To see so much one needs to stand on a high hill, as long as one recalls that one's own human condition is part of what is there observed. And yet there is also much missed from that excellent vantage-point, and the moral of that is that one must constantly pass from the one to the other. In fact this is hardly a 'moral' perspective at all because in one way it is only contemplative, though it may 'refresh' moral action. This pity or joy at what it is to be human is not the same as sympathy or compassion for a particular individual who needs help now.