title: Gods and Consciousness: mapping the development of consciousness through views of ultimacy (Volume 1)
author:  Doug Kraft 
description: Doug Kraft is a long-time student of Buddhist meditation, dhamma teacher, psychotherapist, minister emeritus of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento and author of several books including <i>Buddha's Map</i> and <i>Meditator's Field Guide.</i>
zlib_text: 
  
  
  ALSO BY ROBERTO CALASSO
  
  
  _K_.
  
  
  _Literature and the Gods_
  
  
  _Ka_
  
  
  _The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony_
  
  
  _The Ruin of Kasch_
  
  
  _The Forty-Nine Steps_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../Images/Cala_9780307272966_epub_tp_r1.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  TO ENZO TUROLLA
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The outcome of these little perceptions is therefore more efficacious than one
  would think. They form that _je ne sais quoi_ , those inclinations, those
  images of the qualities of the senses, clear as a whole, but confused in their
  parts; those impressions that surrounding bodies make on us, and that embody
  infinity; the bond that every living being has with the rest of the universe.
  One may even say that as a consequence of these little perceptions the present
  is pregnant with the future and laden with the past, which plots all
  _(sýmpnoia pánta_ , as Hippocrates put it), and that in the smallest of
  substances penetrating eyes like those of God might read all the concatenation
  of the things of the universe.
  
  
  G. W. LEIBNIZ
  
  
  _New Essays on Human 