“For in the Spirit-World there is Reality; as the process of differentiation proceeds, illusion is produced, and it is this mind, this growing mind, that makes the illusion. It is this growing mind that has endless images and pictures, that has the image-making faculty which we speak of as imagination, that has the reasoning faculty which builds on the airy picture that it has made— it is this which is the real creator of illusion, it is this which slays the Real, so far as the disciple is concerned, and his first work as disciple will be to slay the slayer.”

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), Conclusion : Don Quixote in the Contemporary European Tragi-Comedy
Context: The philosophy of Bergson, which is a spiritualist restoration, essentially mystical, medieval, Quixotesque, has been called a demi-mondaine philosophy. Leave out the demi; call it mondaine, mundane. Mundane — yes, a philosophy for the world and not for philosophers, just as chemistry ought to be not for chemists alone. The world desires illusion (mundus vult decipi) — either the illusion antecedent to reason, which is poetry, or the illusion subsequent to reason, which is religion. And Machiavelli has said that whosoever wishes to delude will always find someone willing to be deluded. Blessed are they who are easily befooled!

Source: Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality

45
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Curiopticals (2009).

New millennium

What Baba Means by Real Work (1954)
Context: The time is very near for the breaking of my silence and then, within a short period all will happen — my humiliation, my glorification, my manifestation, and the dropping of my body. All this will happen soon and within a short period. So, from this moment love me more and more.
Do not propagate what you do not feel. What your heart says and your conscience dictates about me, pour out without hesitation. Be unmindful of whether you are ridiculed or accepted in pouring out your heart for me, or against me, to others.
If you take "Baba" as "God-Incarnate," say so; do not hesitate.
If you think "Baba" is "the devil," say it; do not be afraid.
I am everything that you take me to be, and I am also beyond everything. If your conscience says that "Baba" is the Avatar, say it even if you are stoned for it. But if you feel he is not, then say that you feel "Baba" is not the Avatar. Of myself I say again and again, I am the Ancient One — the Highest of the High.
If you had even the tiniest glimpse of my Divinity, all doubts would vanish and love — Real Love — would be established. Illusion has such a tight grip on you that you forget Reality. Your life is a Shadow. The only Reality is Existence Eternal — which is GOD.

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 96.

As translated at Gallery of Russian Thinkers … selected by Dmitry Olshansky (2005)&lt;!-- by Richard Schain --&gt; http://www.isfp.co.uk/russian_thinkers/nikolay_berdyaev.html <br class="br">Dream and Reality (1949) <br class="br">Context: There is no objective reality. But there is only an illusion of consciousness, there is only an objectivication of reality, which was created by the spirit. The origin of life is creativity, freedom; and the personality, subject, and spirit are the representatives of that origin, but not the nature, not the object.