by one's own concession, contains the supernatural, the miraculous, and the causeless, a universe in which one is at
the mercy of ghosts and demons, in which one must deal, not with the unknown, but with the unknowable; no
control is possible if man proposes, but a host disposes, no control is possible if the universe is a haunted house.
- His life and self-esteem require that the object and concern of man's consciousness be reality and this earth—but
morality, men are taught, consists of scorning this earth and the world available to sensory perception, and of
contemplating, instead, a "different" and "higher" reality, a realm inaccessible to reason and incommunicable in
language, but attainable by revelation, by special dialectical processes, by that superior state of intellectual lucidity
known to Zen-Buddhists as "No-Mind," or by death.
There is only one reality—the reality knowable to reason. And if man does not choose to perceive it, there is
nothing else for him to perceive; if it is not of this world that he is conscious, then he is not conscious at all.
The sole result of the mystic projection of "another" reality is that it incapacitates man psychologically for this one.
It was not by contemplating the transcendental, the ineffable, the undefinable—it was not by contemplating the
nonexistent—that man lifted himself from the cave and transformed the material world to make a human existence
possible on earth.
If it is a virtue to renounce one's mind, but a sin to use it; if it is a virtue to approximate the mental state of a
schizophrenic, but a sin to be in intellectual focus; if it is a virtue to denounce this earth, but a sin to make it livable;
if it is a virtue to mortify the flesh, but a sin to work and act; if it is a virtue to despise life, but a sin to sustain and
enjoy it—then no self-esteem or control or efficacy are possible to man, nothing is possible to him but the guilt and
terror of a wretch caught in a nightmare universe, a universe created by some metaphysical sadist who has cast man
into a maze where the door marked "virtue" leads to self-destruction and the door marked "efficacy" leads to self-
damnation.
- His life and self-esteem require that man take pride in his power to think, pride in his power to live—but
morality, men are taught, holds pride, and specifically intellectual pride, as the gravest of sins. Virtue begins, men
are taught, with humility: with