My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
The path up is the path down. The way forward is the way back. The universe inside is outside but the universe outside is inside.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that understanding and growth are often achieved through introspection and recognizing interconnectedness.
Robert Anton Wilson's quote explores the paradoxical nature of existence and knowledge, emphasizing that progress and understanding often come from revisiting past experiences and looking within ourselves. It invites contemplation on the idea that external experiences and internal realities are deeply interconnected, suggesting that the journey inward can reveal insights that influence our outward paths, and vice versa.
In practice
In a philosophical discussion about life and understanding, this quote can encourage deeper reflection.
My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.
There is no governor anywhere. You are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. If anybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled - by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists.
I see anarchism as the theoretical ideal to which we are all gradually evolving to a point where everybody can tell the truth to everybody else and nobody can get punished for it. That can only happen without hierarchy and without people having the authority to punish other people.
To work for libertarianism - to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual - used to be an idealistic choice taken for purely idealistic reasons. Now it is an act of intelligent and almost desperate self-defense.
The abandoned infant's cry is rage, not fear.
The only way to stave off boredom, in a complex domesticated primate like humankind, is to increase one's intelligence. This is not appealing to the average primate, who instead invents emotional games (soap opera and grand opera dramatics).
In Western Catholicism, darkness was evil. In the colonial and imperial context, dark skin was always weak, powerless, subjugated. If you see these images all the time, they become commonplace, and they no longer become a spectacular or sensational thing.
Retire at various times into the solitude of your own heart, even while outwardly engaged in discussions or transactions with others, and talk to God.
Whenever you become anxious or stressed, outer purpose has taken over, and you lost sight of your inner purpose. You have forgotten that your state of consciousness is primary, all else secondary.
This is an execution, not surgery. Where does that come from, that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain?
I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy.
Truth is most beautiful undraped.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.