It is a pure indecency the existence of a theory which, although true, encourages unsafe and harmful practices. Why scour those nooks and crannies of nature, from which nothing but fumes extract that poison our souls? Truths harmful to society, if they occur, will always give way to comforting and useful lies.
David Hume – Essays
Sages who searched with their heart’s thought discovered the existent’s kinship in the non-existent. Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation? The Gods are later than this world’s production. Who knows then whence it first came into being? He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it, whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not?
Rig Veda, Hymn CXXIX
The age of volatile belief is intimately linked with the impact of the technetronic revolution on existing ideologies and outlooks on life. What man thinks is closely related to what man experiences. The relationship between the two is not causal but interacting: experience affects thought, and thought conditions the interpretation of experience.
Today the dominant pattern seems increasingly to be that of highly individualistic, unstructured, changing perspectives. Institutionalized beliefs, the result of the merger of ideas and institutions, no longer appear to many as vital and relevant, while the skepticism that has contributed so heavily to the undermining of institutionalized beliefs now clashes with the new emphasis on passion and involvement. The result for many is an era of fads, of rapidly shifting beliefs, with emotions providing for some the unifying cement previously supplied by institutions and with the faded revolutionary slogans of the past providing the needed inspiration for facing an altogether different future.
Zbigniew Brzezinski – Between Two Ages. America’s Role in the Technetronic Era
There is a thing inherent and natural, which existed before heaven and earth. Motionless and fathomless, It stands alone and never changes; It pervades everywhere and never becomes exhausted. It may be regarded as the Mother of the Universe. I do not know its name. If I am forced to give it a name, I call it the Way.
Laozi
I must find myself behind thoughts – namely, as their creator and owner. In the time of spirits thoughts grew till they overtopped my head, whose offspring they yet were; they hovered about me and convulsed me like fever-phantasies – an awful power. The thoughts had become corporeal on their own account, were ghosts, e. g. God, Emperor, Pope, Fatherland, etc. If I destroy their corporeity, then I take them back into mine, and say: “I alone am corporeal.” And now I take the world as what it is to me, as mine, as my property; I refer all to myself.
Max Stirner – The Ego and His Own
Her little hands were almost numbed with cold. Oh! a match might afford her a world of comfort, if she only dared take a single one out of the bundle, draw it against the wall, and warm her fingers by it. She drew one out. “Rischt!” how it blazed, how it burnt! It was a warm, bright flame, like a candle, as she held her hands over it.
It was a wonderful light. It seemed really to the little maiden as though she were sitting before a large iron stove, with burnished brass feet and a brass ornament at top. The fire burned with such blessed influence; it warmed so delightfully. The little girl had already stretched out her feet to warm them too; but the small flame went out, the stove vanished: she had only the remains of the burnt-out match in her hand.
Hans Christian Andersen – The Little Match Girl
Throughout theological history we have been assured by religious leaders that if we perform certain rituals, repeat certain prayers or mantras, conform to certain patterns, suppress our desires, control our thoughts, sublimate our passions, limit our appetites and refrain from sexual indulgence, we shall, after sufficient torture of the mind and body, find something beyond life itself.
But a tortured mind, a broken mind, a mind which wants to escape from all turmoil, which has denied the outer world and been made dull through discipline and conformity – such a mind, however long it seeks, will find only according to its own distortion.
The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality, or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosophers or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself and that is why you must know yourself. Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.
Jiddu Krishnamurti – Freedom from the Known
– The individualism of the people has been erased in this society.
– What do you mean by erased individualism?
– He is incapable of independent thinking, and therefore, he always rejects what is rejected by society, and accepts what is accepted by society.
– So „team spirit” prevails?
– It is the spirit of a herd, not of a team. It is the spirit of the herd that cannot free itself from the captivity of the prevailing culture. Whatever society considers to be good. the individual considers to be good. He is incapable of independent thinking and benefiting from the cultures of others. He is incapable of stepping out of the mold imposed on him since childhood.
– Should the individual be rebellious, for example?
– Not rebellious, but he should seek the truth. He must not efface his self and dissolve into the herd.
Ibrahim Al-Buleihi
Nothing is more wretched than a man who traverses everything around, and pries into the things beneath the earth, as the poet says, and seeks by conjecture what is in the minds of his neighbours, without perceiving that it is sufficient to attend to the daemon within him, and to reverence it sincerely. And reverence of the daemon consists in keeping it pure from passion and thoughtlessness, and dissatisfaction with what comes from gods and men.
Among other things, which to consider, and look into thou must use to withdraw thyself, let those two be among the most obvious and at hand. One, that the things or objects themselves reach not unto the soul, but stand without still and quiet, and that it is from the opinion only which is within, that all the tumult and all the trouble doth proceed. The next, that all these things, which now thou seest, shall within a very little while be changed, and be no more: and ever call to mind, how many changes and alterations in the world thou thyself hast already been an eyewitness of in thy time. This world is mere change, and this life, opinion.
Marcus Aurelius – Meditations
Solipsism is a epistemological concept, according to which the self alone is real to consciousness, all other contents of consciousness are mere ideas (subjectivism), as methodological rule used e.g. by Descartes. The main claim of solipsism is that all that exists is only a projection of one’s individual perceptions, all the while, the reality is just a collection of its subjective impressions: all objects, people, things, shapes etc. experienced, are merely the creation of mind.
Solipsism is extreme subjective idealism in the epistemological sense. Solipsist not only denies the existence of the material world. The most controversial argument made by the solipsism is a denial of the existence of consciousness in other people and other people in general.
Solipsist argues that contact with the world is always a personal experience. After all, other people’s experiences are always secondary, and may be perceived only by analogy to one’s own experiences. cf. 2