4
" Reality is far too diverse, broad, elusive, ambiguous and complex for us to pin down. Even the limited empirical data we do manage to collect can only be interpreted within the framework of a subjective paradigm. It is, therefore, not really neutral. But in our desperate search for closure and reassurance we confabulate entities and explanations to construct huge edifices of assumed truths. They make up the world we actually experience; a self-woven cocoon of stories, not facts. "
― Bernardo Kastrup , Brief Peeks Beyond: Critical Essays on Metaphysics, Neuroscience, Free Will, Skepticism and Culture
10
" Projection is thus the amazing mental mechanism by which we create ‘the other’ out of ourselves, like Eve from Adam’s rib. It enables the magical rise of a second person from the first person, the ‘you’ from the ‘I.’ Through it, the ‘outside’ world becomes a mirror for the most hidden and unacknowledged aspects of our psyches, so we can, in essence, interact with ourselves by proxy. We get a chance to dance, unwittingly, with that which is repressed within us. It is easy to see how conducive this can be to personal growth, provided that, at the end, in one of those Oh-My-God moments, one recognizes one’s own projections. "
― Bernardo Kastrup , Brief Peeks Beyond: Critical Essays on Metaphysics, Neuroscience, Free Will, Skepticism and Culture
14
" 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
Brief Peeks Beyond: Critical Essays on Metaphysics, Neuroscience, Free Will, Skepticism and Culture