M. C. Escher:
However much this dragon tries to be spatial, he remains completely flat. Two incisions are made in the paper on which he is printed. Then it is folded in such a way as to leave two square openings. But this dragon is an obstinate beast, and in spite of his two dimensions he persists in assuming that he has three; so he sticks his head through one of the holes and his tail through the other.
Douglas R. Hofstadter in Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid
It is still of great interest to ponder whether we humans can ever jump out of ourselves… A Zen person is always trying to understand more deeply what he is, by stepping more and more out of what he sees himself to be, by breaking every rule and convention which he perceives himself to be chained by—needless to say, including those of Zen itself. In any case (as I see it), the hope is that by gradually deepening one’s self-awareness, by gradually widening the scope of “the system”, one will in the end come to a feeling of being at one with the entire universe.
