I think your receiver needs tuning, Doug. AFAIC, that passage is one of *the* most lyrical statements of the basic joy of being a human ever written. It's a quote that has often occurred to me at sublimely nothing moments like taking out the trash on a cold night. It makes me acutely aware of myself as a bundle of sensations, experiencing one particular moment of darkness, cold, wind, starlight -- whatever the feelings of that instant might be -- in the limitlessness of time. It makes me feel that even if life has no ultimate meaning, it's a privilege just to experience the transient awareness of an extraordinary universe. Which is a pretty good emotional return to get from the simple act of taking out the garbage -- that's thrifty New Englanders for you!
I am also amazed by the guffaws that RWE's "transparent eyeball" elicits. I can't imagine a more compelling image for a healthy negation of the ego. Since RWE's message of "self-reliance" is often misinterpreted as being the forerunner of today's "greed is good," it is important to focus on the *loss* of self that RWE speaks of along with his feeling of being part of something greater: "... all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God."
Write this off as Mellow Yellow (quite rightly) if you wish, Doug, but I think RWE's transparent eyeball could see the way to a socialistic future for the U.S.
Carl