71
" If we identify with our ego - a particular, dissociated set of ideas - we turn the universe at large, and even our own intrusive thoughts and unwanted feelings, into oppressive tyrants. They become external factors that constrain and coerce us. If, on the other hand, we identify not with particular dissociated ideas but with consciousness itself - with that whose excitations give rise to all thoughts and feelings - we attain unfathomable metaphysical free will. This arises not from the power of the ego to control the world, but from the realization that we are the world. "
― Bernardo Kastrup , Brief Peeks Beyond: Critical Essays on Metaphysics, Neuroscience, Free Will, Skepticism and Culture
80
" Our ordered, logical, comprehensible world may, in a way, be the highest achievement of ego-consciousness: it embodies a coherent, shared creation out of the raw material of the mind; a well-defined work of art carefully sculpted out of chaos. At the same time, this creation inherently imposes limits on our thoughts and worldviews. The very work of art we have every reason to be proud of is also a straitjacket that restricts us to bivalent logic and linear, causal reasoning. If we are to progress in our quest for understanding the world and our condition within it - for understanding the nature of time, space, energy, matter, life, and death - we may have to transcend the boundaries imposed by our art. We may have to shatter the hollow sculpture of our own creation, for we find ourselves imprisoned within it. We may have to acknowledge the formless foundation of chaos, of pure potential, upon which our thoughts and world rest. And then we may be able to re-sculpt the formless potentials into broader, richer, more beautiful, meaningful, and transcendent art. "
― Bernardo Kastrup , Meaning in Absurdity: What Bizarre Phenomena Can Tell Us about the Nature of Reality