I am driving, and I have driven for a long time; I’m rather sleepy and my reactions are slower. Suddenly I see a danger and I cut too close to a car, or I don’t see the man walking across the street. I say, ‘By Jove, I’d better get off the road and rest.’ What has made me get off the road? Not fear. Suddenly I am emotionally in contact with the incident – emotion in the sense I apprehend it, I am aware of it. I am aware, emotionally in contact with the fact of the incident, and that has made me leave the road. Now, you are not emotionally in contact with the poisonous nature of ambition; you are still merely ideationally in contact. And so you ask how, how, how, how? You don’t ask ‘how’ when you meet something face to face – you are out; you don’t go through all this rigmarole.
From Small Group Discussion 3, London, 24 May 1962