It has not always been so, he goes on. We began to lose the vital connection, the sense of reality as participatory, when we invented writing. Essentially, Abram's argument goes something like this. The body is the location of all knowledge. That experience invariably shapes what we perceive.
Perception is inherently participatory.
Everything is animate for the sensing body. Touch a tree and the tree is touching you back. That we no longer know this is part of the tragedy. Language evolved as a form of participation with the world, not just a representation of it. When Whitehead remarked that all philosophy was just a footnote to Plato, he may have had this in mind.