Disillusion

“ The real disillusioned spirit is not the fierce Nietzschean one whose glacial laughter is an iconoclastic battle-cry and whose freedom is a freedom achieved anew every day by a strenuous and desperate struggle. The real disillusioned spirit plays with illusions, puts them on and takes them off, lightly, gaily, indifferently, just as it happens, just as the moment demands. ”

“ Well, sir, if you think of all those illusions that mean nothing to you now, of all those things which don't even seem to you to exist any more, while once they were for you, don't you feel that—I won't say these boards—but the very earth under your feet is sinking away from you when you reflect that in the same way this you as you feel it today—all this present reality of yours—is fated to seem a mere illusion to you tomorrow? ”

“ It was the abyss of human illusion that was the real, the tideless deep. ”

“ But what after all is the character of these pleasures upon which there is such a high estimate placed? They are all vain and empty as a bubble on the wave. They are like a dream which assumes all the appearance of reality, till we awake from our slumber and discover the deception. ”

“ Yet so unconscious were they of weaving this elaborate tissue of illusion around the world they inhabited that they called the mental process by which they distorted the reality, "taking a true view of life." ”

“ What we get--well, we won't talk of that; but can one of us restrain a smile? In no other kind of life is the illusion more wide of reality--in no other is the beginning _all_ illusion--the disenchantment more swift--the subjugation more complete. ”

“ How could she face the despair of the man whose life was one inward fever, one long illusion, which was yet only half an illusion, since he was forever tortured by suspicion; whose body was wearing itself out, and spirit was destroying itself in the struggle of a vexed imagination! ”

“ And how all thought of fixity in anything had disappeared as a ridiculous illusion intended, maybe, by something to fool man into the belief that his world here, his physical and mental state, was real and enduring, a greater thing than anything else in the universe, when so plainly it was not. ”

“ But the idol to which we breathe our warm and gushing vows, and bend our eager knees, all its power, does it not exist only in our idea; all its beauty, is it not the creation of our excited fancy? And then the sweetest of superstitions ends. The long delusion bursts, and we are left like men upon a heath when fairies vanish; cold and dreary, gloomy, bitter, harsh, existence seems a blunder. ”

“ He was suffering from the loss of an illusion. ”

“ From the delusion of taking vanities for the Reality a man cometh by a life of sorrow.
352. Behold the man who is freed from delusion and who hath an unclouded vision : darkness ceaseth for him and joy cometh unto him. ”

“ They believe fully, not only that it is all a fleeting show, but that it was “for man’s illusion given,” and they smile compassionately on the poor souls who are deluded with such a transparent mockery, and go about raving in a fine melancholy about the sins and sorrows, the snares and the pitfalls, of our very imperfect earth. ”

“ Here then is the power of delusion that will gather round the first steps of a youthful spirit, and throw enchantment over the world in which it is to dwell; hope realising its own dreams; ignorance dazzled and ravished with sudden sunshine; power awakened and rejoicing in its own consciousness ”

“ But these have no foundation, no root, no independent life, and when the excitements on which they feed are withdrawn, when the emotion subsides, the high tide of fervour falling back to its mean sea-level, they lose heart and hope. They are even ready to pity themselves as the objects of an illusion. ”

“ I smile bitterly at the delusion I have so long nourished, and still more, when I reflect that I have exchanged it for another as delusive, as false, but to which I now cling with the same fond trust. ”

“ In life, when we have lost any of those sweet delusions which, like the radiant colours of the morning sky, clothe, at the dawning of our youth, thin air itself and unsubstantial vapours, nay, perhaps even the cloudy home of the future storm, with loveliness and radiance, and the most glowing hues of Heaven's own golden treasury—when we have lost those sweet delusions, I say, and any one with whom they still remain speaks of the reality of things whose emptiness we have proved, how sad, how profoundly sad, is the contrast suddenly presented to us, of what we were and what we are! ”

“ Only its impulses burst upon us from day to day and from century to century, making us weep from fear or regret, or faint with terror, or thrill wild with joy. Out of the deeps they come—the realms we do not know. ”

“ All that hitherto made life delightful, all the fine emotions, all the bright hopes, and the rare accomplishments of our nature, were dark delusions now, cruel mockeries, and false and cheating phantoms! ”

“ Many of you, no doubt, have in your serious reflecting moments, looked upon the bewildered, blind, cold, formal, powerless systems with which you were surrounded with feelings of sorrow and disgust. You have wished to know the truth, but, alas, wherever you have turned your investigations, darkness and uncertainty have stared you in the face. ”

“ He threw up his arms with an expression of despair that went further than any of his previous manifestations towards vindicating his claims to be reckoned human, for perchance the only time since this so often empty and deceptive life of mortals began its course, an illusion had seen and fully recognized itself. ”

“ Where the cause of delusion melts away, like darkness in light, in the secondless, supreme reality, undifferentiated, what separateness can there be?
In the supreme reality, the very Self of oneness, how could any word of difference dwell? By whom is difference perceived in purely blissful dreamlessness? ”

“ But delusions, illusions, and the like are the salt of life. Only the illusions do not pall; only the illusions do not pass away. True disappointment lies in complete success. One thing, at any rate, we were not deceived about. ”

“ Call them what you will, even if we say they are illusions, they are blessed illusions. They are the steel bars behind which we have caged the crouching, blind and silent forces of nature, fierce, savage and cruel as death. ”

“ In such perilous moments I believe I should go mad if I were to assure myself, for a single passing instant, that I was alone and unaided—that I had been teaching lies and superstitions all my life—that the world was a big machine, and we the accidental dust thrown out by its great chemic motions—that all the aspirations of our soul, and the voice of conscience, and the standards of right at which we aim, were all delusions and mockeries. ”

“ And again I thought about that illusion which all are subjected to, especially people whose activity is reflected on others—the illusion that, having been accustomed to see the effects of your acts on others, you verify the correctness of your acts by their effect on others. ”

“ And while vaguely asking yourself that question, you become aware that the cause is no mere illusion, that it has its substance in words spoken by living lips, in things that belong to the work-day world. ”

“ Again, when sorrow comes, when cares oppress and fears disturb and gloomy thoughts becloud the soul, their faces proclaim this inward change as clearly as the moving shadow on the landscape proclaims the floating cloud between it and the sun. ”

“ Ridiculous systems wound over the earth like a snake Devouring the children of Fear! Ridiculous customs, Ridiculous judgments and laws, philosophies, worships. You saw through and laughed at—you saw above all That a soul must make end with a groan, or a curse, or a laugh. ”

“ A delusion may be defined as a perversion of the judgment, a chimerical thought; an illusion, an incorrect impression of the senses, counterfeit appearances; hence we speak of a delusion of the mind, an illusion of the senses. ”

“ In literary and popular use an illusion is an unreal appearance presented in any way to the bodily or the mental vision; it is often pleasing, harmless, or even useful.... A delusion is a mental error or deception, and may have regard to things actually existing, as well as to illusions. ”

“ Truth has appeared to my mental eye, like a vivid, yet small and trembling star in a storm, now appearing for a moment with a beauty that enraptured, now lost in such clouds, as, had I less faith, might make me suspect that the previous clear sight had been a delusion.”—Blanco White. ”

“ Finally, illusion may enter into that still wider collection of beliefs which make up our ordinary views of life and the world as a whole. Here there reflect themselves in the plainest manner the accidents of our individual experience and the peculiar errors to which our intellectual and emotional conformation disposes us. The world is for us what we feel it to be; and we feel it to be the cause of our particular emotional experience. ”

“ Any visible fact would be better than this impending horror of the imagination—this silent dread so much worse than any reality of failure—which encompassed them with the impalpable thickness and darkness of a cloud. ”

“ "It appears that we all labour under delusions. ”

“ These illusions may heat her brain, till she desperately braves every peril, overlooks every difficulty, and will draw down inevitable ruin on her own existence, while she leaves me to lament over my baffled hopes. ”

“ In prose and poetry alike, this illusion has been often sanctioned by the testimony of great names. But it is an illusion still, to be accounted for only by the natural effect of novelty upon a sensitive mind, and an ardent imagination. ”

“ You worldlings come and entice and sigh and kiss the hem of our robes, as long as the delusion of your excited imagination lasts, and your delusion infects us till we at last believe ourselves that we are gods--and then you thrust us headlong into the depths. ”

“ No doubt we should be, on the whole, much worse off than we are without our astonishing gift for illusion. ”

“ How much of human unhappiness has been caused, directly and indirectly, by opposite beliefs,—by the delusion of stability,—by the delusion that distinctions of character, condition, class, creed, are settled by immutable law,—and the delusion of a changeless, immortal, sentient soul, destined, by divine caprice, to eternities of bliss or eternities of fire! ”

“ Both delusions and illusions, too, are rapid breeders. Which of the two, I wondered—still wonder—was this old man's conviction,—the conviction, I mean, that one is likely to be more conscious of the spirit within when the body is suspended, as it were, from the lintel of Death's door. ”

“ Life is a loom, weaving illusion... ”

“ Had the illusions been painful, the body would have suffered, the patient died. Why did a painful shock produce pleasing illusions? Because, no matter how a shock on the nerves may originate, if it affects the reason, it does but make more vivid than impressions from actual external objects the ideas previously most cherished. Such ideas in the young student were ideas of earthly fame; such ideas in the young maiden are ideas of angel comforters and heavenly Edens. You miss her mind on the earth, and, while we speak, it is in paradise. ”

“ At times, it seems that you understand that I have a persistent and terrible idea, or that you suspect it, and endeavor to divine what it may be, and at times through my mind there passes the faney—strange, absurd, incredible—but still deludes for the duration of a flash of lightning, and which makes every nerve in my body quiver, this idea that you do know. ”

“ These terms should be used with discrimination. Delicious is correctly applied to pleasures of the senses; delightful to that which charms, gratifies, or gives pleasure. A dish may be delicious, but not delightful; an entertainment may be delightful, but is certainly not delicious.
delusion, illusion: Discriminate carefully between these terms. A delusion is a mental error arising from false views or an unbalanced state of mind; an illusion is an unreal image which is presented to the senses. ”

“ How large an opening for erroneous conviction here presents itself can only be understood by a reference to certain deeply fixed impulses and feelings connected with, the very consciousness of self, and favouring what I have marked off as active illusion. I shall try to show very briefly that each man's intuitive persuasion of his own powers, gifts, or importance—in brief, of his own particular value, contains, from the first, a palpable ingredient of active illusion. ”

“ The writer seemed to me much like one of those who are victims of that form of insanity of which the predominant symptom is 'fixed idea.' Those unhappy people are, in their lucid intervals, aware of their delusions; but, to soothe the comfortless horror of that consciousness, they strive to convince themselves that in those very delusions their highest and truest existence lives and moves. ”

“ The whole universe, deluded by these three states of mind, develops from the qualities, does not know me who am beyond them and inexhaustible; for this delusion of mine, ... is divine and difficult to transcend. ”