Quotes About Belief

So far the "hard evidence" doesn't seem to prove much . . . But to avoid any suggestion of the weird, you have to hold a really dogmatic faith that (a) the "normal" really exists, and (b) you know all of its contents . . .

The New Fundamentalists have some dim respect for Rule A, which is deeply embedded in modern Western culture, even while their Faith drives them to act on Rule B. This leads them to remarkable flights of Irrational Rationalism.

As we said at the beginning, the bedrock claim of existentialism holds that existence precedes essence, or we have no essence. Like electrons, we jump from one information system to another, and only those who have not looked closely believe that one essence remains constant through all transformations.

The conventional explanation of such seemingly aphrodisiac effects is autosuggestion. That is, the people in question knew what the drugs were supposed to do to them and, therefore, unconsciously programmed themselves for such effects.

Everybody understands that you cannot drink the word water, and yet virtually nobody seems entirely free of semantic delusions entirely comparable to trying to drink the ink-stains that form the word water on this page or the sound waves produced when I say water aloud. If you say, The word is not the thing, everybody agrees placidly; if you watch people, you see that they continue to behave as if something called Sacred really is Sacred and something called Junk really is Junk.

After all, even those who create Disinformation Systems have themselves swallowed Disinformation Systems devised by their rivals. As Henry Kissinger once said, Anybody in Washington who isn't paranoid must be crazy.

Evidently, if Lise had expected to meet Jesus and his 12 apostles and copulate with all of them in turn, that is what she would have remembered afterward.

It begins to seem that no one reality-tunnel is adequate for the description of all human experience, although some reality-tunnels are better for some purposes than others are.

One advertising copywriter had confided to me, after six months of relentless tripping, that he was now in daily communication with the flying saucer people from outer space. Then he added cautiously, "But don't tell that to anyone else. They might think I'm crazy.

To the Idolator, events really are what they appear to be as coded into his or her favorite reality-tunnel. Any other reality-tunnel, however useful it may appear to others with different purposes and different interests, must then be mad or bad — delusory or fraudulent. Anybody who disagrees with such an Idolator must be, by definition, a loony or a liar.

If God is not mad, as Fort claimed, then maybe God is, as Buckminster Fuller once wrote, not a noun but a verb. That is, God is what religious people do, as, in some models, an electron is an operation performed by people (physicists) — God as the act of praying, the energy raised

Around the world today are millions living in the Marxist reality-tunnel, the vegetarian reality-tunnel, the Buddhist reality-tunnel, the nudist reality-tunnel, the monetarist reality-tunnel, the Methodist reality-tunnel, the Zionist reality-tunnel, the Polynesian totemistic reality-tunnel etc.

To the extent that we remain conscious of this process of superimposing structure (programming our emic reality) we will behave liberally and will continue learning throughout life. To the extent that we become unconscious of this process, we will behave Fundamentalistically or Idolatrously and will never again learn anything after the hour at which we (usually unconsciously) elevate a generalization into a dogma and stop thinking.

The only answer I can see is that no speculation is obnoxious to an open mind but all new and challenging speculations are obnoxious to Fundamentalists.

He said after reading Illuminatus! he laughed so much that he got over his paranoia.

Must have been dual hallucination. If one person sees a blasphemy, that is simple hallucination. Two people — dual hallucination. Many, many people — mass hallucination

I congratulated him on his perceptivity. Indeed, that is one of my major messages, in everything I write — our emic realities are programmed by our expectations. You are the Master who makes the grass green.

Some people (Roman Catholics, New Agers, heretical holistic physicians, etc.) will eagerly believe this yarn. Other people (the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), the American Medical Association, old-fangled Village Atheists etc.) just as eagerly wish not to believe it at all, at all.

It is accepted by all schools of philosophy that the world presents only appearances to us. Facts are deduced from the appearances, according to the various factions, by PR (pure reason) or by a combination of PR and SD (sense data) in tandem, or by PR and SD aided and abetted by creative intuition, but in any case, they are deduced, not given. Hume and Nietzsche seem to be alone in claiming that what is called a fact is just another appearance which somebody has decided to believe is a fact.

Later, alas, when Mr. Wright learned that other patients did not respond so favorably to Krebiozen, and that doctors had begun to consider the chemical worthless against cancer, he became depressed and worried. His tumors began growing again, he returned to his bed, and he died.

In the province of the mind, what is believed to be true is true or becomes true, within limits to be found experimentally and experientially. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind, there are no limits. – John C. Lilly, M.D., The Center of the Cyclone

On the other side of the dark coin of psychosomatic synergy: a South Sea shaman points a death bone at a tribesman who has offended him. The victim receives the best possible medical care from sympathetic doctors, who don't believe in Black Magic, but he shortly dies anyway. It appears that the unfortunate man died of the belief that death bones can kill people.4 ~•~ 4Rossi, op. cit. p 9-12.

Without Christian Science, shamanism, orgone or anything of that sort, the Liberal activist, Norman Cousins, has three times cured himself of major illnesses using the hypothesis that each human contains a healing energy that most of us do not know how to use.

Thus, under hypnosis, a person who has been given salt and told that it is sugar will taste it as sweet – thereby illustrating the brain-plus-tongue phenomenon. Similarly, a hypnotized subject shown a green circle and told that it is red will see it as red. That is because we see with brain-plus-eye.* ~•~