A Species of Eternity...

One of the pleasures of reading authors who are  also avid readers and thinkers, you enter a continuum of thought and influence. So, for instance, you read a book by Teju Cole, who reads a book by John Berger, who reads a book by Baruch Spinoza. And you come across an illuminating & mysterious sentence such as this one:

"Although we do not remember that we existed before the body, we sense nevertheless that our mind in so far as it involves the essence of the body under a species of eternity is eternal and its existence cannot be defined by time or explained by duration." - B. Spinoza