“Time if the inner form of animal sense that animates events-the still frames-of the spatial world. The mind animates the world like the motor and gears of a projector. Each weaves a series of still pictures-a series of spatial states-into an order, into the 'current' of life. Motion is created in our minds by running "film cells" together. Remember that everything you perceive-even this page-is actively, repeatedly, being constructed inside your head. It's happening to you right now. Your eyes cannot see through the wall of the cranium; all experience including visual experience is an organized whirl of information in your brain. If your mind could stop its "motor" for a moment, you'd get a freeze frame, just as the movie projector isolated the arrow in one position with no momentum. In fact, time can be defined as the inner summation of spatial states.”
“The really important facts were that spatial relationships had ceased to matter very much and that my mind was perceiving the world in terms of other than spatial categories. At ordinary times the eye concerns itself with such problems as where? — how far? — how situated in relation to what? In the mescaline experience the implied questions to which the eye responds are of another order. Place and distance cease to be of much interest. The mind does its perceiving in terms of intensity of existence, profundity of significance, relationships within a pattern.”
“The world around you is a function of YOUR state of mind. It is YOUR reality. This is why each of us has our own perception of the world, situations and events. You actively live your belief system every day.”
“Our sense of justice depends on our sense of time. Justice is a phenomenon only of consciousness, because time spread out in a spatial succession is its very essence. And this is possible only in a spatial metaphor of time.”
“You perceive the world with your five senses. When your mind perceives the world, then the world exists before you. But if we are born without any senses, then how could we perceive the world except as a dream in our minds? But then...dreams often seem as real as the world we see now. Look...If I touch you with this hand, I can remember touching you, but I can't ever prove I did. If reality is nothing more than what is in our mind, then what is the difference between this world and a dream?”
“Have you ever dreamt? At night, with your eyes closed?... Then you know that even with eyes closed, even in complete darkness, your mind can fill a frame for you, your soul, to observe and experience – a stage with color and atmosphere are as realistic as the visions you perceive while awake. This is how we Elders and the undead see, for we look at the world through an astral plane congruent with physical reality, where emotions are tangible shapes, and hopes, fears, and regrets collect themselves into transparent auras.”