Quotes About Reality

The first principle of Gnosticism is the nonrecognition of reality.

Coining a new language, either by giving new meanings to familiar terms or by inventing new technical terms, is one of the most effective devices for eclipsing reality.

The empty field of Nothing results from the eclipse of reality; Jean Paul has recognized its imaginary character. No projection of a man-god can overcome the Nothing, for the Nothing has been projected, by the man who deforms himself, for the very purpose of indulging in the projection of the man-god. Man can eclipse the reality of God by imagining a Nothing, but he cannot overcome the imagined Nothing by filling it with imagined somethings.

The temptation to fall from uncertain truth into certain truth is stronger in the clarity of the Christian faith than in other spiritual structures. But the absence of a secure hold on reality and the demanding spiritual strain are generally characteristic of border experiences in which man's knowledge of transcendent being, and thereby of the origin and meaning of mundane being, is constituted.

Yeah, it's hard to care when you're afraid of getting hurt. You know, the sad part is that when most people promise 'for better or for worse,' they really only mean for the better.

Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God.

The underlying notion of a world where the sane is insane

I can't compete with a ghost or a perfect memory...I'm just a man...Flesh and blood. If you decide that's what you want, you know where to find me...

Interpretation reached such proportions that the real vanished.

The Bible's claim to truth is not only far more urgent than Homer's, it is tyrannical—it excludes all other claims. The world of the Scripture stories is not satisfied with claiming to be a historically true reality—it insists that it is the only real world, is destined for autocracy.

Who says: 'Here reigns freedom' is lying, because freedom doesn't reign.

It is what it is

Who says: 'Here reigns freedom' is lying, because freedom doesn't reign." Zu sagen "Hier herrscht Freiheit" ist immer ein Irrtum oder auch eine Lüge: Freiheit herrscht nicht.

The stupendous fact that we stand in the midst of reality will always be something far more wonderful than anything we do.

Be careful how you interpret the world: It is like that.

Wird's besser? Wird's schlimmer?, fragt man alljährlich. Aber seien wir ehrlich, Leben ist immer lebensgefährlich.

We came to realise - first with astonishment, then bitterness, and finally with indifference - that intellect apparently wasn't the most important thing...not ideas, but the system; not freedom, but drill. We had joined up with enthusiasm and with good will; but they did everything to knock that out of us.

The background events in the soul are projected outwards and are experienced through the object, as a synthetic unity compounded of external reality and the psychic activation of this reality.

The animating principle of mana, the effect of magic, the magical efficacy of spirits, and the reality of collective ideas, dreams, and ordeals are all governed by the laws of this interior reality which modern depth psychology is trying to bring to the surface.

the conscious state is the late and uncommon phenomenon, and its complete attainment is far more of a rarity than modern man so flatteringly pretends, while the unconscious state is the original, basic, psychic situation

It would be nice to begin the journey with who we are. But "who we are" is a house of mirrors, a tangled knot, a great and terrible Oz that in the final analysis may consist of nothing more than, well, nothing. The self, I am afraid, may be more of an onion than a fruit, and "who we are" is the skin we shed.

Binswanger's vision of this pathological but visceral gestalt deeply influenced Dick's construction of the various idios kosmoi in his works.65

In an entry from late 1979, Dick writes Heuristics is right on. The closer you get to reality the closer you get to (and to seeing) process. Q isn't "what is (esse)?" but "What does?" […] replace each "is" with "does" and ontology vanishes. All you have is a perpetually perturbed reality field! With a self-producing vortex.12

The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery.