“They are just ghosts, immortal gods of the modern mythos which appear to us to be real because we are in that mythos. But in reality they are just as much an artistic creation as the anthropomorphic Gods they replaced.”
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29
Context: What is essential to understand at this point is that until now there was no such thing as mind and matter, subject and object, form and substance. Those divisions are just dialectical inventions that came later. The modern mind sometimes tends to balk at the thought of these dichotomies being inventions and says, "Well, the divisions were there for the Greeks to discover," and you have to say, "Where were they? Point to them!" And the modern mind gets a little confused and wonders what this is all about anyway, and still believes the divisions were there.
But they weren't, as Phædrus said. They are just ghosts, immortal gods of the modern mythos which appear to us to be real because we are in that mythos. But in reality they are just as much an artistic creation as the anthropomorphic Gods they replaced.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Robert M. Pirsig 164
American writer and philosopher 1928–2017Related quotes

Source: The Sacred Depths of Nature (1998), p. 174
Context: Humans need stories — grand compelling stories — that help to orient us in our lives in the cosmos. The Epic of Evolution is such a story, beautifully suited to anchor our search for planetary consensus, telling us of our nature, our place, our context. Moreover, responses to this story — what we are calling religious naturalism — can yield deep and abiding spiritual experiences. And then, after that, we need other stories as well, human-centered stories, a mythos that embodies our ideals and our passions. This mythos comes to us, often in experiences called revelation, from the sages and the artists of past and present times.

Playing Pastor Michael Curtis in the Lifetime movie "Christmas Child," 2003 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0346750/

“God is the only reality, and we are real only so far as we are in His order, and He is in us.”
Magna Moralia XXII, p. 172.
The Rod, the Root, and the Flower (1895)

Picasso quoted in 'TIME'; quoted in: The Atlantic, Vol. 214 (1964), p. 97.
Picasso commented on his ambiguous style, or use of multiple styles.
1960s
“The subject is not just the theory of evolution, the subject is the reality of God.”
Hank Hanegraaf's "Bible Answer Man" radio program (19 December 2001)
2000s

De Abaitua interview (1998)