The Need for Attention and the Creation of Now

" ... because we are plunged in appearances we are not separate as regards the sense of ourselves from the external world. This is partly due to personal psychological obstacles, such as the craving for attention.  But in part it is due to the work of the senses which put us in contact with the given world and given conditions of life which we take for granted. I will put side by side this taking of three-dimensional reality for granted and the desire for attention. They constitute one problem in my mind. The desire for attention, for the duplication of ourselves in others, the need for audience, etc., spring out of the lack of any true eternal feeling of self-existence.  At the same time taking the world for granted keeps us on a level of consciousness that cannot give us any true feeling of self-existence. We need the evidence of things unseen. Only through another sense of 'reality' can another sense of ourselves arise, which ins turn will modify the desire for attention."

Maurice Nicoll, Living Time and the Integration of the Life.