Quotes about Illusions

In order to put meaning back into our lives, we should recognize illusions for what they are, and we should reach out and touch the fabric of reality.

The important thing is not to know who "I" is or what "I" is.  You'll never succeed. There are no words for it.  

The important thing is to drop the labels.  

As the Japanese Zen masters say, "Don't seek the truth; just drop your opinions."  Drop your theories; don't seek the truth.  Truth isn't something you search for.  If you stop being opinionated, you would know.  Something similar happens here.  If you drop your labels, you would know.  What do I mean by labels?  Every label you can conceive of except perhaps that of  human being.  I am a human being.  Fair enough; doesn't say very much.  But when you say, "I am successful," that's crazy.  Success is not part of the "I".  

Success is something that comes and goes; it could be here today and gone tomorrow.  That's not "I".  When you said, "I was a success," you were in error; you were plunged into darkness.  You identified yourself with success.  The same thing when you said, "I am a failure, a lawyer, a businessman." You know what's going to happen to you if you identify yourself with these things.  You're going to cling to them, you're going to be worried that they may fall apart, and that's where your suffering comes in.  That is what I meant earlier when I said to you, "If you're suffering, you're asleep." Do you want a sign that you're asleep? Here it is: You're suffering.  Suffering is a sign that you're out of touch with the truth.  Suffering is given to you that you might open your eyes to the truth, that you might understand that there's falsehood somewhere, just as physical pain is given to you so you will understand that there is disease or illness somewhere.  Suffering points out that there is falsehood somewhere.  

Suffering occurs when you clash with reality.  

When your illusions clash with reality when your falsehoods clash with the truth, then you have suffering.  

Otherwise there is no suffering.

Values by their very nature tend to seed differences and oppositions, i.e. to make it possible for us to detect and appreciate the various perspectives from which issues may be seen; even though we (by a profound self-misconception) may find this psychologically and socially unpleasant, for the sake of value-intelligence we must learn to live and to thrive AMIDST such polemics, "in medias res," in utmost self-uncertainty and insecurity. Values, also by their inherent character and natural function, tend to form hierarchies; and even though our egos and appetites and illusions and delusions may resent being afflicted with judgments of rank and superiority/inferiority, again for the sake of connoisseurial and wisdom-seeking value-intelligence we have to stretch and traumatize our minds aristically to understand the rationality and objectivity of such intrinsic hierarchicalism, valid and authoritative over and beyond all that we may have cultivated as our idiosyncratic and subjectivist preferences (idiotia). Aristeia is naturally ingrained in the very nature of values; values are naturally ingrained in the very character and laws of nature.

Take a good long look at human beings in their actual practices and motives; bring the utmost psychological and bio-economic factors to bear on making sense of their illusions and delusions. What then would the truth have to be, such that such human beings are FIT TO KNOW IT at all, even provisionally or tentatively?

*dont ever part with your illusions.  when they're gone, you still may exist, but you will have ceased to live..*

In the Art of Dreaming Don Juan tells Carlos, "… most of our energy goes into upholding our importance… if we were capable of losing some of that importance, two extraordinary things would happen to us.  One, we would free our energy from trying to maintain the illusory idea of our grandeur; and two we would provide ourselves with enough energy to ... catch a glimpse of the actual grandeur of the universe."

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

There are no perfect human beings! Persons can be found who are good, very good indeed, in fact, great. There do in fact exist creators, seers, sages, saints, shakers, and movers...even if they are uncommon and do not come by the dozen. And yet these very same people can at times be boring, irritating, petulant, selfish, angry, or depressed. To avoid disillusionment with human nature, we must first give up our illusions about it.

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

. . . no battle is ever won . . . they are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and Victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

Reality is an illusion caused by lack of alcohol.

Don't be fooled by appearances, but be a master of illusion.

Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating; the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to. . . . you have uncovered in yourself your own wise guide. Because he or she knows you through and through, since he or she is you, your guide can help you, with increasing clarity and humor, negotiate all the difficulties of your thoughts and emotions. . . . The more often you listen to this wise guide, the more easily you will be able to change your negative moods yourself, see through them, and even laugh at them for the absurd dramas and ridiculous illusions that they are. . . . The more you listen, the more guidance you will receive. If you follow the voice of your wise guide . . . and let the ego fall silent, you come to experience that presence of wisdom and joy and bliss that you really are.

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.

Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from its readiness to fit in with our instinctual wishful impulses.

The time comes when each one of us has to give up as illusions the expectations which, in his youth, he pinned upon his fellow-men, and when he may learn how much difficulty and pain has been added to his life by their ill-will.

No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere.

A plane is a bad place for an all-out sleep, but a good place to begin rest and recovery from the trip to the faraway places you've been, a decompression chamber between Here and There. Though a plane is not the ideal place really to think, to reassess or reevaluate things, it is a great place to have the illusion of doing so, and often the illusion will suffice.

Though a plane is not the ideal place really to think, to reassess or reevaluate things, it is a great place to have the illusion of doing so, and often the illusion will suffice.

The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.

What if somebody came along who could teach me how my world works and how to control it? What if I could meet a super-advanced . . . what if a Siddhartha or a Jesus came into our time, with power over the illusions of the world because he knew the reality behind them? And what if I could meet him in person, if he were flying a biplane, for instance, and landed in the same meadow with me?

Truth is too simple for us: we do not like those who unmask our illusions.

The most dangerous thing is illusion.

The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco.

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year.

You can't walk alone. Many have given the illusion but none have really walked alone. Man is not made that way. Each man is bedded in his people, their history, their culture, and their values.

What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story,  And the greatest good is little enough: for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.

In my youth I, too, entertained some illusions; but I soon recovered from them.

Illusion is the dust the devil throws in the eyes of the foolish.