"Of all the hard facts of science, I know of none more solid and fundamental than the fact that if you inhibit thought (and persevere) you come at length to a region of consciousness below or behind thought...and a realization of an altogether vaster self than that to which we are accustomed. And since the ordinary consciousness, with which we are concerned in ordinary life, is before all things founded on the little local self...it follows that to pass out of that is to die to the ordinary self and the ordinary world.

It is to die in the ordinary sense, but in another, it is to wake up and find that the "I," one's real, most intimate self, pervades the universe and all other beings.

So great, so splendid, is this experience, that it may be said that all minor questions and doubts fall away in the face of it; and certain it is that in thousands and thousands of cases, the fact of its having come even once to an individual has completely revolutionized his subsequent life and outlook on the world."

from Collected Writings, Volume 5 of Edward Carpenter:
In his autobiography, My Days and Dreams, first published in 1916, Carpenter told what it was like to age on the internal trail. He said:  "On the whole I am struck by the singularly little difference I feel in myself, as I realize it now, from what I was when a boy--say of eighteen or twenty. In the deeps of course. Specifically there are plenty of differences, but they relate mostly to superficial things like success in games, examinations and so forth.

I used to go to the beach at Brighton and dream, and now I sit on the shore of human life and dream practically the same dreams.  I remember...coming to the distinct conclusion that there were only two things really worth living for--the glory and beauty of nature and the glory and beauty of human love and friendship.

And today I still feel the same. What else indeed is there? All the nonsense about riches, fame, distinction, ease, luxury and so forth--how little does it amount to! It really is not worth wasting time over. These things are so obviously second hand affairs, useful only in so far as they may lead to the first two, and short of their doing that liable to become odious and harmful. To become united and in line with the beauty and vitality of Nature (but, Lord help us! we are far away from that at present), and to become united with those we love---what other ultimate object in life is there?

Surely all these other things--these games and examinations, these churches and chapels, these district councils and money markets, these top hats and telephones and even the general necessity of earning one's living--if they are not ultimately for that, what are they for?"

Marilyn Ferguson, in her well-known book, The Aquarian Conspiracy, recalls Carpenter as "a remarkably visionary social scientist and poet of the late 19th century." She quotes his a description of how people see the world differently if only they allow themselves to on the other side of hidden pictures, in personal paradigm shifts.