“As we read a text in our own language, the text itself becomes a barrier.”
The Translator As Reader, p. 276.
A History of Reading (1996)
Psychedelic Society (1984)
Context: The psychedelics are a red-hot social issue, ethical issue, whatever the term for it is, and it is precisely because they are a deconditioning agents: they will cast doubt in you if you are a Hasidic rabbi, a Marxist anthropologist, or an altar boy, because their business is to dissolve belief systems, and they do this very well and then they leave you with the raw datum of experience, what William James called in infants 'the blooming, buzzing experience.' And out of that you reconstruct the world, and you need to understand that it is a dialog where your decisions, the projection of your grammar onto the intellectual space in front of you, is going to gel into the mode of being. We actually create our own universe because we are all operating with our own private languages.
“As we read a text in our own language, the text itself becomes a barrier.”
The Translator As Reader, p. 276.
A History of Reading (1996)
From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, RACISM AND CIVIL RIGHTS
Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 86
Context: In our own inner selves, we find operating the same trio—ignorance, indifference, and carelessness. We are ignorant of our own latent capacities, of the degree of our likeness to God, of the possibilities of our lives. We are indifferent to the higher values and are content to the lower level of physical appetites and pleasures. Even when we recognize to some extent our possibilities and when we seek after a fashion to realize them, we grow careless, become swamped by the temporary, and lose sight of the eternal.... A lack of appreciation of the intrinsic worth and latent possibilities of every man we meet, indifference to his welfare, and carelessness as to his rights and privileges, prevent us from living on friendly terms with him.
“Because without our language, we have lost ourselves. Who are we without our words?”
Source: Finnikin of the Rock
Source: The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Twelve, Human Connections: Relationships Changing, p. 402
The Believer interview (2013)
Context: Yeah, our view of reality, the one we conventionally take, is one among many. It’s pretty much a fact that our entire universe is a mental construct. We don’t actually deal with reality directly. We simply compose a picture of reality from what’s going on in our retinas, in the timpani of our ears, and in our nerve endings. We perceive our own perception, and that perception is to us the entirety of the universe. I believe magic is, on one level, the willful attempt to alter those perceptions. Using your metaphor of an aperture, you would be widening that window or changing the angle consciously, and seeing what new vistas it affords you.
"A Foot Soldier for Evolution", p. 441
Eight Little Piggies (1993)