Disillusionment

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

“ 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? ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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! ”

“ Like sick men in hospitals, we change only from bed to bed, from one folly to another; and it cannot signify much what becomes of such castaways, — wailing, stupid, comatose creatures, — lifted from bed to bed, from the nothing of life to the nothing of death.
In this kingdom of illusions we grope eagerly for stays and foundations. There is none but a strict and faithful dealing at home, and a severe barring out of all duplicity or illusion there. Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Though the process of disillusion, of the overshadowing of her happiness, had been a gradual one, this fresh knowledge had the effect of reviving with intolerable poignancy the memory of the early sunshine, the early sense of being blessed above all women. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lurking under the delusion lies the faint-hearted apprehension that to-morrow would be, and must be, just the same as to-day, a fear of the future that underlies every wilful suicide, and is at once the most disastrous and deplorable frame of the human mind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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 ”

“ The natural propensity to cherish pleasing illusions, especially in the uncertain prospect of life or death, more frequently gives birth to the aggravated disappointment of the inevitable close, than any real change in the condition of the sufferer. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But there is, in truth, as little of affected as of actual madness in his behaviour in her presence. When he comes before her pale and trembling, speechless and with staring eyes, it is with no simulated insanity, but in the agonized hope, scarce distinguishable from despair, of finding, in the testimony of her visible presence, an assurance that the doubts ever tearing his spirit and sickening his brain, are but the offspring of his phantasy. ”

“ 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? ”

“ They impress the soul with a certain mark, and sail forthwith out of vision. Your hold upon your own mind is at this time very insecure, and you flutter with the flames in and out of sanity. For to feel and to be unable to refer your feeling to its components is to verge on madness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What, but a disposition to indulge in all sorts of delusions and alarms, could create such extraordinary flights of imagination? Can such things be, and overcome us, like a summer's cloud, without our special wonder? ”

“ Had I not seen men and women go down to despair under some fixed hallucination, conjured from the combination of overwork and a steamed atmosphere—transforming happy, normal humans into fear-haunted creatures, ever pursued by an unseen foe? ”

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

“ We observed in transports of delight the dear delusion, and saw them, as it were, in bodily form pass in review before us; as the fabled hero views the region of præexistant spirits, and beholds a race of men yet to be born. ”

“ The great region for the illustration of these active illusions is that of the moral and religious life. With respect to our real motives, our dominant aspirations, and our highest emotional experiences, we are greatly liable to deceive ourselves. ”

“ In the moment of delusion, the connections are formed which are to stamp existence with happiness or misery in the extreme. A blind impulse overpowers deliberation, and the heart expands itself for the reception of inmates, whose value it has not for a moment paused to ascertain. ”

“ Discreet and reticent as we have all been, and careful in our criticisms of so bizarre an event, there still must be many to question the reality of such superstitious fears, and some to ask if such a sound could be without human agency, and a very guilty agency, too. ”

“ Never mind if the next moment delusion comes and says, "I am bound." ”

“ Yes, and consequently you drag about with you through life such a heap of old, dusty, battered illusions that I really cannot see where you find the strength to hold fast to one healthy vital sensation. ”

“ Through delusion you are perceiving yourself as a bundle of flesh and bones, which at best is a nest of troubles. {FN35-12} Meditate unceasingly, that you may quickly behold yourself as the Infinite Essence, free from every form of misery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Where there has been conscious, or even involuntary, deception, an unreal position or exaggerated idealisation on either side, the pain of disillusion will be poignant, and its effect permanent. Things can be sorrowfully and bravely patched up for mere outward use, but there will be a smart under the smile, and a blank in the life that should have been so full. ”

“ Is all blind chance, is all the clash of unconscious forces, or are we the sentient toys of an Almighty Power that sports with our agony, whose peals of awful mockery of laughter ring back answer to the wailings of our despair? ”

“ Now this is more or less the constant, natural state of all mankind; who are by bodily impressions, and the agitations of the blood and spirits, in the same kind of delusion, as men that are drunk, or in a passion, tho’ not always in the same degree. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nor do delusions make their entry unheralded into a well ordered mental life. Delusions slumber in all of us and wait for their prey. The quiet normal being is just as subject to them as the raving maniac with rolling congested eyes. ”

“ Lying commonly in what is known as the sub-conscious region of mind, undiscriminated, vague, and ill-defined, these sensations, when they come to be specially attended to, readily get misapprehended, and so lead to illusion, both in waking life and in sleep. ”

“ Thus oppressed at once by love, jealousy, and disappointment, her spirits sunk, a settled melancholy preyed upon her heart, which with a natural tendency to a decay, impaired her health to such a degree, as to give the most alarming symptoms of an approaching dissolution. ”