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61 " İf her feelings belong to you, she will come back to you, if not, she will never, whatever you do. You probably will think about what to do then: if everything has already been predetermined, why should I make any efforts to gain her love instead of doing absolutely nothing and just passively waiting for future results? However, it has already been predetermined that this also does not depend on you -- you simply cannot choose to be a passive observer -- just like it is not at all in your hands whether to love her or not. "
― Elmar Hussein
62 " At the deepest level, politics is the art of psychological manipulation. "
63 " Religion is somewhat of a' divine' business based on human fear of death. In order to gain the Eternal life in Heaven, offered by God, humans are ready to follow the conditions of the 'divine' contract, the Holy Book, which completely expresses the divine will: everyone has to think, behave and choose as God wills it. If not, it would mean breaking the contract with the subsequent consequent punishment in Hell. In that context, whatever you do, you do in the name of God, and there is no special need to do anything just for sake of humanity, using only your brain but not blindly following what is written in the holy book. As a result, it doesn't make you a morally perfect being, but only those who patiently obey the divine rules in order to receive the reward at the end. "
64 " Man’s real strength lies in his ability to control his mental states in order to direct all of his inner energy in one direction. Uncontrolled mental states are the main cause of all suffering. "
65 " Even if there can be the first cause of the Universe -- God, it wouldn’t necessarily support any evidence that God can convey some information about his will to some chosen persons, that there is some holy scriptures, containing just God’s message to humanity sent in that way. Any information, which you can get from the alleged ‘holy scripture’, is a product of the human mind, written by humans and changed by humans in various periods.There is no invariant version of any ‘holy scripture’, even if the concepts and propositions of it formally remain the same, their meaning is changing constantly, as a result of different interpretations, from one civilization to another, from one period to another. That interpretation is more essential and decisive than what is formally written there. Not ‘holy scripture’ itself, but its interpretation manipulates brains in such a way that a person builds his religious vision on the basis of the interpretation of ‘holy scripture’ made by somebody else. Without that interpretation, a person can hardly perceive anything in ‘holy scripture’ in terms of religion. But the main problem is that there cannot be only one interpretation of ‘holy scripture’, and there cannot be harmony among various religious visions, even within one religion. One interpretation can make you be humanist, while another -- aggressive, depending on who and how interpreted what is written there. The naked truth is that when someone interprets something, he does it according to his mental apparatus, that is why any ‘holy scripture’ can only express the state of this mental apparatus with its cognitive and emotional bias, in some cases even its serious defect and disorder, and not the will of God itself. "
66 " Most men confuse the denotation of concepts with the connotation of them. The former means which part of reality you indicate under the concept, while the latter indicates which attributes you include into that reality. Complete various usage. You believe in God, I believe in God, both of us intuitively realize which part of reality we represent by the concept of ‘God’. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that your concept of ‘God’ and my concept of ‘God’ is the same with the respect to its content. So maybe God is, in my mind, only uncaused cause point in the cause-effect chain -- God is the cause of everything in the Universe, but it doesn’t need any cause for its existence. God is a termination, the convergence point of various cause-effect chains. Maybe, it seems more logical and rational for me, but it doesn’t necessarily require the belief in omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God. All of them are the essential attributes of God, which can differ from you to me. Well, maybe I don’t believe that God can foreknow everything, that everything necessarily represent God’s will and God can change everything according to his will, break any natural regularity, which are being investigated by science and on which science predicts the future possible conditions of everything, and that God is strongly involved in the whole human civilization’s life and without his permission nobody and nothing could destroy that life. Similarly, maybe you could effectively argue that some of the writings in the Holy Scripture are true and maybe I, as a reasonable agnostic, would agree with you. However, even this fact wouldn’t mean that I think that the Holy Scripture is the product of divine knowledge but not human. Then maybe I seek for symbols and allegories there, which can stand for cosmological, historical, sexual visions of various ancient civilizations, but you seek after sacred texts for blind acceptance and examples for blind imitation. That is why before saying that somebody believes in God, think over what he means by claiming it; before being surprised at ‘miracles’ in Holy Scripture, turn over in your mind whether it could come into some rational human mind without any divine knowledge and figure out whether there had been similar mythological ‘miracle’ descriptions in ancient civilizations before that Holy Scripture. If you can free your mind from any religious presuppositions, quiet contemplation around it can change your vision of God and religious belief. "
67 " To understand reality, you must to some extent change the characteristics of this reality in your mind. Otherwise, the reality can be, in general, incomprehensible in the mind. For that reason, it can be said that the majority lives in illusion, partly, but without even knowing that there can be some kind of fusion of reality with illusion in the mind -- only some are aware of it. "
68 " Sometimes you stand in a difficult dilemma: are the people around you too righteous or too naive? Perhaps naivety is simply sincere righteousness without a social mask. "
69 " Features of the hidden nature and personality of a person are expressed in his attitude to life and other people. Observe and analyze this attitude, and you will understand what kind of person he is. "
70 " Buddhism is more philosophical among the most widely practiced religions of the world, if Buddhism can be viewed as a religion in some context, because its questions are more open, but not strictly closed, as in Abrahamic religions, and therefore less dogmatic. Buddhists do not believe that their teachings are the words of a Supernatural Deity, which cannot be changed, modernized and adapted to new circumstances, but the words of the Buddha, who was just an enlightened person. The very fact of this enlightenment is a distinctive element between him and you. "
71 " For Nietzsche, woman was God's second mistake. But what then is the first? I don't know, even if I believed in the God of Abraham and Abrahamic religions, it would be a bit diffucult for me to answer it. However, based on the religious scriptures, one can assume that God was a bit disappointed with his masterpiece -- Adam, realised that life in Paradise seems a bit incomplete, uninteresting for him, he cannot find the meaning of his life, therefore God decided to correct his mistake by creating Eve to be Adam's love. As a result, with the help of Eve, eating fruit from the forbidden tree in Paradise, both of them had to abandon there. However, God couldn't do anything, because he had already made his second mistake -- he created such a charming and deceitful being for Adam's mind. Perhaps, this is just the creation myth of Abrahamic religions, nevertheless, I am convinced that the woman is a charming and deceitful being for male mind. "
72 " Given the scientific investigation, the only causal machine in human existence, in the ultimate end, is the brain, which seems to be mainly out of control: The sensation, perception and imagination of the external world are automatically determined by the interpretation of input signals receiving through sense organs; making a choice and decision are automatically realized on the base of this interpretation, which, In later period, regulate the behavior patterns in a social environment. The only causal and interpretation machine, as described above, the brain is thought to be automatically shaped by various external factors, such as genetic programming that determines the design of a brain – various proportions among the various circuits in such a way that if your brain devotes more space for aggression and anxiety centre, for example, then it is very high probability that you are a ‘wild beast’ inside. As you cannot pick out your brain when you are born, because at least the genetic inheritance is out of your control, it is nearly impossible for you to avoid the very fact that your internal world is so. Maybe, your inner wildness doesn’t reveal itself in the everyday world, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have conscious control over it. Because of being hidden mainly in your unconsciousness, even your conscious mind can be unaware of the very fact of its existence. From scientific perspective, it can be stated, in this case, that the censor system of your brain is quite active to make sufficiently well-considered selection among desires that unintentionally emerge in aggression and anxiety circuits, and to hide most of them, which involve an extreme violence and destruction, in hidden consciousness in order to protect the ‘perfect’ image of your personality in social system, or simply to avoid to be punished on the grounds of these implausible, unfavorable desires in that system. If this is so, where is your freedom – free choice? Doesn’t it seem that the naked truth is that your brain, instead of you, makes a choice, decides, controls, regulates of almost everything in your life, leaving for you a room for being just a ‘perfect’ bio-social robot that lives in his or her illusion of free will? "
73 " İf you associate the Self with the control over feeling, perception, consciousness (subjective awareness), or something else, in short, what is going on inside your brain, it would mean that the Self doesn’t exist, because it cannot control none of the aforementioned mental states. All of them are automatically controlled by the brain but not by the Self. None of them is permanent, all are mutable, constantly changing the appearences in accordance with bio-chemical changes in the brain. For instance, in most cases, if not all, it is impossible to pre-arrange what to feel or how to perceive, all of them are automatically realized by the brain. A person cannot deliberately identify which part of information should be on a conscious level, which part should be on unconscious level of the mind, considering that more than 90% of all information is hidden from the consciousness and for that reason a person is simply not aware of what is really happening inside the brain and mind. That is why it is said that the vast majority of humans are merely a bio-social robot without any self that can assume some real control of anything in life. With regard to them, the Self is an illusion, a kind of metaphoric figure. "
74 " Most men are merely bio-social robots that think and act in an automatic way. Their natural ‘micro-scheme’ — brain under the influence of genetic coding and constant hormone surge determines the biological destiny of them. İn addition, being unwillingly born in certain social circumstances — from society, in general up to family, in particular -- there is no other destiny which can determine the future of a bio-social robot. In order to transform from social bio-robot to a conscious human being, in the strict sense of term, you should cultivate yourself -- your brain and mind through meditation. Meditation is not worship, or any spiritual act; it is rather mindfulness and concentration on your thought, desires and memory, most part of which is hidden in the unconscious mind. Meditation is an introspection, you can also realize it by doing science and acquiring knowledge that would enable you to better understand your mind and brain. Meditation is a means of reorganization of the brain design and redirection of its neurochemical activity, which in turn means the change of the biological destiny. God, or nature creates only a bio-social robot, it depends on you whether to become a human being, who is capable of getting to the bottom of his mind and brain, or not. "
75 " İn ordinary life we don’t pay it more attention, but our emotions, mind-set, expectations and the content in which our sensations occur -- all have a profound influence on perception. It is experimentally proven fact that people who are warned that they are about to taste something bad rate what they do taste more negatively than people who are told that the taste won’t be so bad. Similarly, people who see images of the same baby rate it as stronger and bigger when they are told it is a boy as opposed to when they are told it is a girl. Most of us don’t have so-called free will, as we suppose that we have. Our emotions, expectations and sensations are controlled by others through different forms of ideology — history, religion, political doctrine and so on. They determine where and how your mind should set in order to perceive what is going around you ‘correctly‘. After all that regulation your brain and mind gets a chance to function ‘independently’. Your freedom is hidden there. Let me introduce you to the amazing experiment from psychology. In short, in one study 12 students are sent to test a research hypothesis concerning maze learning in rats. Although it was not initially revealed to students, indeed, the students themselves were the object of this experiment, but not the rats they were going to examine. 6 of the students were randomly told that the rats they would be testing had been bred to be highly intelligent, whereas the other 6 students were led to believe that the rats had been bred to be unintelligent. However, in reality there were no differences among the rats given to the two groups of students. When the students returned with their data, the result was fascinating. The rats run by students who expected them to be intelligent, showed a significantly better maze learning than the rats run by students who expected them to be unintelligent. What had happened? All rats were only rats without any intelligence, but there was a substantial difference between brains, that is, the ways how they had been manipulated. Somehow the brain manipulation influenced on the mind, despite the fact that all of them followed, at least it seemed so, the same conditions of the experiment. Familiar situation, isn’t it? There is no apparent intention for subjective interpretation of input signals receiving by the brain, there is even no subjective awareness that your brain might be under any manipulation, whereas your brain and mind are subtly controlled and manipulated, to a considerable extent, by others through various forms of ideologies and you automatically feel, perceive, think and act according to them, as do true bio-social robots. "
76 " It is a scientific fact that our perceptions are strongly influenced by our desires and motivations. When we are hungry, food-related words tend to grab our attention more than words that are not related to food. You can observe the similar situation related to sexual hunger. Until you cannot satisfy your sexual hunger, your attention will be focused on sexual thing more than normal. That is why conservative societies, which tend to suppress sexual drives, are more implicitly sex-oriented than are liberal societies, which tolerate them. Without any regard to severe suppression of sexuality, no society can reject the fact that sexual thoughts float through a man’s brain, on average, many times each day, and it has no connection with morality. The reason lies in the design of male brain, which devotes two and a half times to sexual drives in comparison with female brain. Total and complete covering of the female body and strict prohibition against emotional contact with her only trigger the sexual fantasy of the male brain, which, in turn, leads to sexual savagery and aggressiveness, making discomfort both for the person himself and for others. "
77 " With the power of the mind, you can achieve what you cannot, with the help of physical strength. "
78 " Before studying philosophy, every time remember what Socrates said: “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think”. Philosophy is not a science in strict sense of the term, it cannot give you ready-form and closed-end answers, it can inspire and direct you to find them on your own. Study various philosophical schools, get familiar with different philosophical traditions, then forget them all and find your own way. This is a fundamental approach to philosophy and the method of philosophizing. "
79 " It is much easier to live without a "brain". "
80 " There are two kinds of history: one for the chosen people, who really know what happened, another for the masses, who can only imagine what might have happened. "
