“The world is as neutral as a mirror. We perceive in it only what we put before it.”

—  Teal Swan

Last update Feb. 2, 2025. History

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Teal Swan photo
Teal Swan 226
American spiritual teacher 1984

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Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 6: "The Little Apocrypha", p. 72
Context: We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is. We are seaching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, of a civilisation superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don't like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don't leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us — that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence — then we don't like it any more.

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“What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.”

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Earliest instance of this quote found on google books is the 1989 book Forest primeval: the natural history of an ancient forest by Chris Maser, but there it appears to be Maser's own thought (see p. 230 http://books.google.com/books?id=8EAHQM54E5gC&q=%a+mirror% followed by a different supposed Gandhi quote http://books.google.com/books?id=8EAHQM54E5gC&q=gandhi).
Disputed

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“The world which we perceive is a tiny fraction of the world which we can perceive, which is a tiny fraction of the perceivable world, you see.”

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Variant: The world which we perceive is a tiny fraction of the world which we can perceive, which is a tiny fraction of the perceivable world...
Context: Because the fact is, what blinds us to the presence of alien intelligence is linguistic and cultural bias operating on ourselves. The world which we perceive is a tiny fraction of the world which we can perceive, which is a tiny fraction of the perceivable world, you see. We operate on a very narrow slice based on cultural conventions. So the important thing, if synergizing progress is the notion to be maximized (and I think it's the notion to be maximized), is to try and locate the blind spot in the culture — the place where the culture isn't looking, because it dare not — because if it were to look there, its previous values would dissolve, you see. For Western Civilization that place is the psychedelic experience as it emerges out of nature.

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Max Tegmark book Our Mathematical Universe

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