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Thought for the day - October 12, 2006

Oct 12, 2006 03:17 AM
by Bill Meredith


"The greatness of a true and living philosophy of life is not that it answers the problems of life, but that it does /not/ answer them; did it answer them it would but show that it was born of illusion even as they are. Its greatness lies in the fact that it is able to /transcend /the problems and questions, which are rooted in illusion, and, in the experience of living reality, forget these futile playthings.

The man who has experienced truth returns from his experience in awe and reverence; he is filled with the greatness of the mystery he has beheld, which is now part of his very being. When confronted by the unreal questions which have haunted philosophy and religion for so many centuries he does not descend to their level and fulfill their unsound demand by an equally unsound and empty satisfaction; rather does he speak words of reality in the power of which the questions fade away and are destroyed. To the intellect, bound in illusion, it will ever seem that he evades the questions which it has asked; it demands an answer corresponding point for point to these questions, made up though they are of the fabric of illusion. And when the true philosopher fails, or even refuses, to answer illusion by illusion, but waves aside the products of the unreal and speaks with the voice of reality, then the intellect in its blindness shrugs the shoulders and with a contemptuous smile turns away towards its own empty speculations."
-- J. J. Van der Leeuw, THE CONQUEST OF ILLUSION, 1928, pp89-90





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