“…I heard a great story once to get across the point that the earth really is alive if you were to interview a butterfly, standing on the branch of a sequoia tree. Now a butterfly lives only for a few days, and a sequoia tree can live over a thousand years. If you were to ask the butterfly, ‘Do you perceive the object on which you are standing as being alive?’, the butterfly would say, ‘Of course not. I’ve been here all my life (which is all 5 days) and the tree hasn’t done a thing.’

Well, it’s the same problem with the human being. If you were to ask a person, perhaps one who has lived over a hundred years, ‘Do you perceive the Earth (which is really 5 billion years old) as being alive?’, he would say, ‘Of course not, I’ve been here all my life, and it hasn’t done a thing.’…”