"supposing I'm looking through a narrow slit in a fence and a snake goes by. I've never seen a snake before and this is mysterious. And I see, through the slit in the fence, first the snakes head, then I see a long, trailing body and then finally the tail. I say 'well that was interesting'. Then the snake turns 'round and goes back. And again I see first the head and after an interval the tail. Now if I call the head one event and the tail another; it will seem to me that the event 'head' is the cause of the event 'tail', and the tail is the effect. But if I look at the whole snake, I will see a head-tail snake and it will seem simply absurd to say that the head of the snake is the cause of the tail; as if the snake came into being first, then head and then the tail. The snake comes into being, out of it's egg, as a 'head-tailed' snake! And so in exactly the same way, all events are really one event. We are looking, when we talk about different events, we are looking at different sections or parts of one, continuous happening. And therefore, the idea of separate events which have to be linked by a mysterious process called 'cause and effect' is completely unnecessary."

- Alan Watts