This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
As long as we, in philosophy, ask questions concerning reality, while we are bound in the illusion of our relative standpoint, and then try to deal with these faculty questions by means of the intellect, which is the mind functioning in the realm of relativity, it is quite impossible to come to a realization of living truth.
Illusion | Means | Mind | Philosophy | Reality | Truth | Wisdom |
Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be.
For boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson in your life--...the lesson of your utter insignificance. It is valuable to you, as well as to those you are to rub shoulders with. 'You are finite,' time tells you in a voice of boredom, 'and whatever you do is, from my point of view, futile.' As music to your ears, this, of course, may not count; yet the sense of futility, of limited significance even of your best, most ardent actions is better than the illusion of their consequence and the attendant self-satisfaction.
Better | Illusion | Language | Lesson | Life | Life | Music | Sense | Teach | Time |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
The common element of most fears is that they are based on the illusion that happiness is dependent on externals and therefore vulnerable… Cessation of fear is the result of learning that the source of happiness and joy is from within. It stems from recognizing that its source is the joy of one’s own existence, which is continuous and not dependent on externals. This results from surrendering expectations and demands on one’s self, the world, and others. The thought “I can only be happy if I win or get what I want” is a guarantee of worry, anxiety, and unhappiness.
Anxiety | Anxiety | Existence | Fear | Guarantee | Happy | Illusion | Joy | Learning | Self | Thought | Unhappiness | World | Worry | Happiness | Thought |
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
If the goal of life is to do the very best one can do at each unfolding moment of existence, then, through spiritual work, one has already escaped the primary cause of suffering. In the stop-frame of the radical present, there is no life story to react to or edit. With this one-pointedness of mind, it soon becomes obvious that everything merely `is as it is’ without comment or adjectives. The illusion of `Now’ is replaced by the reality of `Always’.
Cause | Existence | Illusion | Life | Life | Mind | Present | Reality | Story | Suffering | Work |
Do you have the courage of your desires, or have you always considered your yearnings as idle and unproductive? Do you feel the wonder of existence, your own and that of everything? Does it truly do justice to that wonder to see it as an illusion or as a product of chance?
Chance | Courage | Existence | Illusion | Justice | Wonder | Yearnings |
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
Desire is fueled by the illusion of lack and that the source of happiness is outside oneself and therefore has to be pursued or acquired.
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
Security is almost an illusion (or superstition). It does not exist in nature, nor does humankind as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Adventure | Danger | Daring | Experience | Illusion | Life | Life | Nature | Nothing | Security | Danger |
Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham
Happiness – the joy of living – comes in the experience of gratitude that flows forma vision of one’s life as a reality received, a gift given freely and spontaneously. Such a vision removes self from the center, thus healing self-centeredness by revealing the folly of the illusion of control.
Control | Experience | Folly | Gratitude | Illusion | Joy | Life | Life | Reality | Self | Vision |
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
The Master gives himself up to whatever the moment brings. He knows that he is going to die, and he has nothing left to hold on to: no illusion in his mind, no resistances in his body. He doesn’t think about his actions; they flow from the core of his being. He holds nothing back from life; therefore he is ready for death, as a man is ready for sleep after a good day’s work.
Body | Day | Death | Good | Illusion | Life | Life | Man | Mind | Nothing | Work | Think |
Proximity to death wakes us up. Death dispels the most potent illusion about life – that it belongs to us, and that we have all the time to we need to arrange it the way we want. But in many ways it is a gift that our life is limited, impermanent. We hold it more dear because this is so.
Françoise Sagan, born Francoise Quoirez
The illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but the exact opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.
Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen
A great illusion of lovers is to believe that the intensity of their sexual attraction is the guarantee of the perpetuity of their love. It is because of this failure to distinguish between the glandular and the spiritual… that marriages are so full of deception.
Distinguish | Failure | Guarantee | Illusion | Love | Failure |
Time and again, the passion for understanding has led to the illusion that man is able to comprehend the objective world rationally, by pure thought, without any empirical foundations - in short, by metaphysics.
Illusion | Man | Metaphysics | Passion | Thought | Time | Understanding | World |