Meaning in Absurdity Quotes

“Nature is as fluid and elusive as a thought. Indeed, it is a thought: an unfathomable, compound thought we live in and contribute to. Reality is a shared ‘dream.’ In it, as in a regular dream, the dreamer is himself the subject and the object; the observer and the observed.”
― Bernard Kastrup, Meaning in Absurdity: What Bizarre Phenomena Can Tell Us About the Nature of Reality

“Our consensus world-instantiation is a metaphor of mind for mind; a self-referential ‘strange loop.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Meaning in Absurdity: What Bizarre Phenomena Can Tell Us about the Nature of Reality

“It seems that wherever we look - quantum physics, major world events, the foundations of logic, analytic philosophy, and now the history of science - we see the subtle footprints of a dreamed-up reality; a reality where logic is itself constructed through a self-imposed reduction in the degrees of freedom of the absurd; a world constructed through coherent mental procedures; a world where empirical observation is a mirror of the subjects’ implicit worldview.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Meaning in Absurdity: What Bizarre Phenomena Can Tell Us about the Nature of Reality

“I believe we must keep on creating myths – scientific and otherwise – for these myths may be the color and substance of life and the world.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Meaning in Absurdity: What Bizarre Phenomena Can Tell Us About the Nature of Reality

“If the desacralization of logic pulls the rug of truth from under our feet, we still have beauty to guide our way. Aesthetics transcends logic; it comes from deep within the bowels of the mountain chain. The foundations of our future may be aesthetical: that which inspires and feeds the soul; that which is conducive to happiness and harmony.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Meaning in Absurdity: What Bizarre Phenomena Can Tell Us about the Nature of Reality

“Aiming for closure is a (very human) misunderstanding of the game we are all unwittingly playing.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Meaning in Absurdity: What Bizarre Phenomena Can Tell Us about the Nature of Reality

“The ultimate technology is the leveraging of mind: the fountainhead of the world; the origin of all logic and physics. If only we could learn to gain mastery of our own mind, conscious and unconscious, unfathomable new possibilities would open up before us.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Meaning in Absurdity: What Bizarre Phenomena Can Tell Us about the Nature of Reality

“Rejoice for your ability to forget, for it endows you with the colors of life. But bear this in mind: you will once again remember. And when you do, you will again be home. In the interim, live out your myths - imaginatively.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Meaning in Absurdity: What Bizarre Phenomena Can Tell Us about the Nature of Reality

“Your life is a patchwork of projected concepts; a thin conceptual crust around an unfathomable core of the amorphous substance of existence.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Meaning in Absurdity: What Bizarre Phenomena Can Tell Us about the Nature of Reality

“Our ordered, logical, comprehensible world may, in a way, be the highest achievement of ego-consciousness: it embodies a coherent, shared creation out of the raw material of the mind; a well-defined work of art carefully sculpted out of chaos. At the same time, this creation inherently imposes limits on our thoughts and worldviews. The very work of art we have every reason to be proud of is also a straitjacket that restricts us to bivalent logic and linear, causal reasoning. If we are to progress in our quest for understanding the world and our condition within it - for understanding the nature of time, space, energy, matter, life, and death - we may have to transcend the boundaries imposed by our art. We may have to shatter the hollow sculpture of our own creation, for we find ourselves imprisoned within it. We may have to acknowledge the formless foundation of chaos, of pure potential, upon which our thoughts and world rest. And then we may be able to re-sculpt the formless potentials into broader, richer, more beautiful, meaningful, and transcendent art.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Meaning in Absurdity: What Bizarre Phenomena Can Tell Us about the Nature of Reality

“It seems that we must always have a story - a myth - or the world itself would vanish before our eyes.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Meaning in Absurdity: What Bizarre Phenomena Can Tell Us about the Nature of Reality

“There is something perennial about the idea that any literal view of nature, when pursued to its ultimate ramifications, destroys itself from within. It is as though every literal model carried within itself the seeds of its own falsification; as if nature resisted attempts to be limited or otherwise boxed in. Whatever we say it is, it indicates it is not; whatever we say it is not, it shows it might just be. These are built-in mechanisms of growth and renewal in nature that we ignore at our own peril. Nature is as fluid and elusive as a thought. Indeed, it is a thought: an unfathomable, compound thought we live in and contribute to. The world is a shared ‘dream.’ In it, as in a regular dream, the dreamer is himself the subject and the object; the observer and the observed.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Meaning in Absurdity: What Bizarre Phenomena Can Tell Us about the Nature of Reality

“The most exciting discoveries always entail the loss of previously held certainties.”
― Bernardo Kastrup, Meaning in Absurdity: What Bizarre Phenomena Can Tell Us about the Nature of Reality