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)
“A religion, that is, a true religion, must consist of ideas and facts both; not of ideas alone without facts, for then it would be mere Philosophy;Mnor of facts alone without ideas, of which those facts are symbols, or out of which they arise, or upon which they are grounded: for then it would be mere History.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“When the precipitancy of a man’s wishes hurries on his ideas ninety times faster than the vehicle he rides in—woe be to truth!”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)