Ideas
Gurdjieff claimed that people cannot perceive reality in their current states because they do not possess consciousness but rather live in a state of a hypnotic "waking sleep."
"Man lives his life in sleep, and in sleep he dies." As a result of this condition, each person perceives things from a completely subjective perspective. He asserted that people in their typical state function as unconscious automatons, but that one can "wake up" and become a different sort of human being altogether.
Read more about this topic: George Gurdjieff
Famous quotes containing the word ideas:
“Things perceived by the senses are immediately perceived by the senses; and things immediately perceived by the senses are ideas; and ideas cannot exist without the mind, their existence therefore consists in being perceived; when therefore they are actually perceived, there can be no doubt of their existence.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)
“As usual the Liberals offer a mixture of sound and original ideas. Unfortunately none of the sound ideas is original and none of the original ideas is sound.”
—Harold MacMillan (1894–1986)
“...I knew I wanted to be permanently self-supporting and I vaguely thought I might work somewhere in the realm of ideas. I felt that I had within me an undeveloped fount of ideas. I did not know exactly what my ideas were, but whatever they were I wanted to convert people to them.”
—Rheta Childe Dorr (1866–1948)