The Necessity of Our Illusions: Oliver Sacks on the Mind as an Escape Artist from Reality

“We need detachment… as much as we need engagement in our lives… transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear.”

“Our normal waking consciousness,” William James wrote in his pioneering work on transcendent experiences, “is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different… No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these othe...