Belief

"¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí. ¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión, una sombra, una ficción, y el mayor bien es pequeño; que toda la vida es sueño, y los sueños, sueños son."

"Ambition and intrigue abuse the credulity and experience of men lacking all political, economic, and civic knowledge; they adopt pure illusion as reality; they take license for liberty, treachery for patriotism, and vengeance for justice."

"The problem of Illusion lies in the fact that it is a soul activity, and the result of the mind aspect of all the souls in manifestation. It is the soul which is submerged in the illusion, and the soul that fails to see with clarity until such time as it has learnt to pour the light of the soul through into the mind and the brain. p.21 It is in meditation and in the technique of mind control, that the thinkers of the world will begin to rid the world of illusion. Hence the increasing interest in meditation as the weight of the world glamour is increasingly realised, and hence the vital necessity for right understanding of the way of mind control. . . . Only the intuition can dispel illusion, and hence the need for training intuitives. Hence the service you can render to this general cause by offering yourselves for this training. p. 22/3"

"Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to him from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it. This is irreducible. And it's true of everybody. Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace."

"Illusion is primarily of a mental quality, and was characteristic of the attitude of mind of those people who are more intellectual than emotional. They have outgrown glamour as usually understood. It is the misunderstanding of ideas and thought-forms of which they are guilty, and of misinterpretations. p. 26 Today illusion is so potent, that few people whose minds are in any way developed, but are controlled by these vast illusory thought-forms, which have their roots and draw their life from the lower personality life and desire nature of the masses of men. p.32"

"It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."

"That which is changeless, existent only, and beyond both mind and speech, which shines as the Truth amidst the illusion of the three worlds, is the Brahman according to its real nature. That Brahman is known in samddhi-yoga..."

"You can't live without illusions even if you must fight for them. Such as "love conquers all." It's not true, but I would like it to be so."

"[In] 'Democratic' societies ... the state can't control behavior by force. It can to some extent, but it's much more limited in its capacity to control by force. Therefore, it has to control what you think... One of the ways you control what people think is by creating the illusion that there's a debate going on, but making sure that that debate stays within very narrow margins. Namely, you have to make sure that both sides in the debate accept certain assumptions, and those assumptions turn out to be the propaganda system. As long as everyone accepts the propaganda system, then you can have a debate."

"Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river... The current of the river swept silently over them all — young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self. ... Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. ... But one creature said at last, 'I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.'... The other creatures laughed and said, 'Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed against the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!'... But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed... Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more. ... And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried 'See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah come to save us all!'... And the one carried in the current said, 'I am no more messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.' ... But they cried the more, 'Savior!' all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone, and they were left alone making legends of a Savior."

"The world is real, not illusory. It exists and endures because of the ignorance of the soul, of the spirit. Maya, cosmic illusion, endured by man as long as he is blinded by ignorance, makes possible the maintenance of the material world."

"Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion."

"Cypher: You know, I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain...that it is juicy...and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss."

"The term Maya has been translated as 'illusion,' but then it does not concern normal illusion. Here 'illusion' does not mean that the world is not real and simply a figment of the human imagination. Maya means that the world is not as it seems; the world that one experiences is misleading as far as its true nature is concerned."

"The variety of constraints pressing upon man give rise to the illusion of several distinct species that cannot communicate."

"To perceive yourself as a vulnerable body that was born and a little later dies - that's the illusion. Body and death: one illusion. You cannot have one without the other. You want to keep one side of the illusion and get rid of the other, but that is impossible. Either you keep all of it or you relinquish all of it. p. 124"

"To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the resent moment and allow it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions. p. 36"

"If you can recognize illusion as illusion, it dissolves. The recognition of illusion is also its ending. Its survival depends on your mistaking it for reality. p. 20"

"When one illusion doesn't work then we become disillusioned and we go around with our antennae up looking for another illusion."

"Know ye not then the Riddling of the Bards? Confusion, and illusion, and relation, Elusion, and occasion, and evasion? I mock thee not but as thou mockest me, And all that see thee, for thou art not who Thou seemest, but I know thee who thou art. And now thou goest up to mock the King, Who cannot brook the shadow of any lie."

"Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate "other." p. 15"

"When the ego is at war, know that it is no more than an illusion that is fighting to survive... All that is required to become free of the ego is to be aware of it, since awareness and ego are incompatible. Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment. p. 50"

"There is no “me”. There are only these feelings - and these are bigger and deeper than any me. Identity is an illusion, a temporary state. Everyone is searching for it, but it's only a brief reflection in a very shallow pool of time."

"...to say that the universe is an illusion (māyā) is not to say that it is unreal; it is to say, instead, that it is not what it seems to be, that it is something constantly being made. Māyā not only deceives people about the things they think they know; more basically, it limits their knowledge."

"Love is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and not an illusion. Art is an illusion."

"The atman believes that "it is a consistent reality, but this is an illusion: There is only one reality, which is that of 'God' (i.e. Brahman). In the classic formula, Âtman is Brahman, but until I have attained 'liberation' I am under the contrary illusion.""

"The fundamental principle of art is deception. A work of art is either an illusion or delusion. It is never an exact reproduction of nature or facts. A portrait which accurately represents an original is not artistic. A painting, a photograph, an engraving is such a disposition of white upon black or of colours as to produce the illusion of relief."

"Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda."

"As soon as somebody or something stands out as excellent, the other shout goes up: 'Elitism!' And whatever produced that thing, whoever praises that result, is promptly put down. 'Standing out' is undemocratic."

"Hobbes’s psychology treated what he called vainglory as a pathological condition based on ignorance of man’s vulnerability, on unjustified confidence. This condition can, according to him, be cured by liberal doses of fear. One need only hear what is said today … to recognize how much of modernity is devoted to unmanning this disposition. Elitism is the catch-all epithet expressing our disapproval of the proud and the desire to be first. But, unsupported and excoriated, this part of the soul lives on, dwelling underground, receiving no sublimating education. As with all repressed impulses, it has its daily effects on personality and also occasionally bursts forth in various disguises and monstrous shapes. Much of modem history can be explained by the search of what Plato called spiritedness for legitimate self-expression."

"The Left Elite only pretend to be concerned about what's best for everyone else because it is the most effective way to manipulate you and your children into their abyss."

"What you're saying is that 'I, the superior elite, will take care of you.' Why? Because, you see, that superior, elite group needs to feel superior and elite. And they can't be superior and elite unless you have a whole lot of people down there groveling around. So you keep them down there by feeding them."

"Obviously those who burn to be professional jesters mean that they want to be successful comedians. And those are always an elite, microscopic portion of the population. But oh, how they try."

"We must confront the privileged elite who have destroyed a large part of the world."

"A monopoly on the means of communication may define a ruling elite more precisely than the celebrated Marxian formula of monopoly in the means of production."

"Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good."

"Being slim is the new elitism. Thinness today says that you are richer, smarter and more successful than the overweight masses. With our lives and food chain set up to make us fat -- I mean, you can't drive down any highway in America and find a grapefruit -- a guy needs to be smarter and more determined to get lean. So telling people you lost weight is telling them, Hey, I can outwit the world; I can beat the system."

"In Europe, anti-Americanism is much more a hobgoblin of the political, cultural, and religious elites."

"Having cancer gave me membership in an elite club I'd rather not belong to."

"In every election cycle that I can recall, there comes a moment - or a few - where charges of elitism and claims of commonness are wielded by presidential candidates like a sword and shield: 'Vote for me 'cause I'm one of you. It's the other guy who's out of touch.'"

"By denying people's sense of visual beauty in painting and sculpture, melody in music, meter and rhyme in poetry, plot and narrative and character in fiction, the elite arts wrote off the vast majority of their audience. They purposely excluded people who approach art in part for pleasure and edification in favour of social one-upmanship and an ever-narrowing, in-crowd elite."

"There's a very small group of elite actresses who are my age, who people want to work with. It's not easy to get a good job with good actors."

"The decadent writer writes shamelessly of himself, convinced that his life is special enough to impress those who have … made miserable by frankness, his handsome condescension, his elitism, and his perfect lack of candor were fatal gifts, ..."

"The only genuine elite is the elite of those men and women who gave their lives to justice and charity."

"Are we like late Rome, infatuated with past glories, ruled by a complacent, greedy elite, and hopelessly powerless to respond to changing conditions?"

"Everyone should have the same opportunity, and in many areas that's not the case because programs are built around the elite."

"Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers."

"People with advantages ... come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite, and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves."

"Mozart composed his music not for the elite, but for everybody."

"I'm worried about the future of America insofar as our academically most promising students are being funneled through the cookie-cutter Ivy League and other elite schools and emerging with this callow anti-American, anti-military cast to their thinking."