As far as experiences in this dream of duality go, one of the most deeply and intensely precious is private reading. I mean actual reading by yourself, in the inviolable sanctity and solitude of your own interiority. Not an audiobook, though I of course understand their appeal and can enjoy them, too. I mean just you and the text, you and another person's subjectivity encoded in words, transmitted across the gulf between you, creating a fusion of selves through their act of writing and your act of reading. Their thoughts and feelings, their voice and vision, transmuted through the alchemical medium of written language into your own. And note the paradox: The power of this writer/reader relationship is most intense when shared from the writer's deepest solitude and received into the reader’s. It joins us together, each in our separate and unique worlds, and clarifies our understanding of self and other. Few experiences are more delicious than sitting down alone, in silence, with a book. Totally magical.