A Human Strategy: Toward a genuine spirituality, second edition

Our minds are circumscribed by our immediate reality, but we stop short at the thought of it. *** An attempt to find a positive orientation toward life which does not deny reality. *** The proud mind denies the existence of the stimulus in an argument, and so does not see or feel the force of the necessary response, creating the illusion that it is not the perceiver but the world that is twisted. *** Imagine the human task as a kind of game with clearly defined rules. The only legitimate reality is that which we verify with our senses. Consequently, reality is nothing more than surface and the relationships between surfaces. "Mind," "Depth," "Meaning," "Ideas," "Other Worlds," are unreal ... figments of an error-making organ, the brain. Now imagine an attempt to find a positive orientation toward life which does not deny this reality. ... Our minds are circumscribed by our immediate reality, but we stop short at the thought of it. ... * ... The proud mind denies the existence of the stimulus in an argument, and so does not see or feel the force of the necessary response, creating the illusion that it is not the perceiver but the world that is twisted. ... * ... Why formulate hypothetical solutions to hypothetical problems when there are real problems at hand? ... the first problem being our desire to flee from the necessary by burying our heads in the hypothetical.