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Five flights in 22 days, of which three were two-legged affairs. So eight flights really.

I have ascended 270,000 feet and descended 82,300 meters; been pressurised and depressurised; buffetted & turbulated; spun & tumble dried.

I used to think that flying dehumanised people. Herded like animals for the slaughter house, lined up and counted, tagged and scanned, and squeezed into a metal tube with neighbouring passengers well within, uncomfortably within, our personal space.

Now I think it might do the opposite - re-humanise. The herding still happens but it is part of a bigger process, a process that strips us bare, de-layers us until all that is left is the soul. The very essence of humanity.

First we are deprived of movement. Wedged into battery cages, strapped-in and told not to move until our hair catches fire. Next our hearing is reduced as the engines spin up, and is reduced further by the pressure drop. Ever wondered why aircraft don't maintain constant pressure to save your hearing? ..now you know - its deliberate sensory denial.

Vision is next to go. A tiny scratched and greasy window with a view of the clouds, or the back of a seat. You might have a miniature TV, so small and so close that watching it causes your eyes to deform, or a larger, distant screen which is tantalisingly just out of focus, like a hazy afternoon. The seat, walls and carpets are all designed to lack any visual texture.

Oral sensation was doomed from the start. The food tastes the same whichever mini-dish you eat from, and somehow has the same texture. Close your fogged eyes and the lettuce, bread and pasta will seem identical. This is why airline rice is sulphur-yellow - so you know it is rice. Carrots and bright pink salmon are an airline favourites too. Chicken or fish? Beige or pink.

Starved of external inputs, the brain desperately latches onto anything available. Like a veal-calf craving salt, the typical passenger will read anything in reach. The in-flight magazine rarely lasts beyond the taxiway, then its on to the duty-free magazine, the safety card, the life vest notice, their own clothing's washing labels, and finally, counting the window rivets.

It is at this abyssal point that the either brain's higher functions shut down completely, and we crawl back into the oceans.

But it needn't be. We are at our purest when naked, and there is no greater nakedness than this. Just a soul flying through the air, "30,000ft above the earth, and it's a beautiful thing"

A chance to reconnect with ourselves, a frame frozen so that we may study the picture. This is not introspection - there are no layers left to peer beneath. This is oneness by default, the kernel of being.

This is zen .