fantasy

"A society that cannot distinguish reality from illusion dies."
- Chris Hedges

"We must step beyond this world of everyday, illusory thinking for our own good and for the good of our loved ones." - Andrew M. Lobaczewski

"We have taken the unreal to be real, and then tried as hard as possible to live in the unreality we have created." - Charles Eisenstein

The Alterverse Of Willful Ignorance

"Whatever is the reality of the present circumstances, we do not find them satisfactory.

Our fantasy keeps creating images of future situations that appear more fulfilling than the present one. It seems that, until we reach these imagined goals, life will be only preparation for a better future, not yet "the real thing."

This results in a life pattern of a "treadmill" type of existence (illustrated by the image of a hamster running inside a rotating wheel) or a "rat-race" way of life.

The existentialists talk about "auto-projecting" into the future – always imagining oneself in some more satisfying situation in the future and attempting to create it.

This strategy is a basic fallacy of human life.

It is essentially a loser strategy, since it does not deliver the satisfaction that is expected from it.

From this perspective, it is irrelevant whether or not it brings fruit in the material world.

In Joseph Campbell's words, it means "getting to the top of the ladder and finding out that it stands against the wrong wall."

This fallacious pattern applied on a large scale is responsible for reckless irrational pursuits of various grandiose goals that result in much suffering and many problems in the world.

It can be played out on any level of importance and affluence - it never brings true satisfaction."
- Stanislav Grof

"The cultural belief that we can make things happen by thinking, by visualizing, by wanting them, by tapping into our inner strength or by understanding that we are truly exceptional is magical thinking. We can always make more money, meet new quotas, consume more products and advance our career if we have enough faith. This magical thinking, preached to us across the political spectrum by Oprah, sports celebrities, Hollywood, self-help gurus and Christian demagogues, is largely responsible for our economic and environmental collapse, since any Cassandra who saw it coming was dismissed as "negative."

This belief, which allows men and women to behave and act like little children, discredits legitimate concerns and anxieties.

It exacerbates despair and indifference.

It fosters a state of self-delusion.

The purpose, structure and goals of the corporate state are never seriously questioned.

To question, to engage in criticism of the corporate collective, is to be obstructive and negative. And it has perverted the way we view ourselves, our nation and the natural world. The new paradigm of power, coupled with its bizarre ideology of limitless progress and impossible happiness, has turned whole nations, including the United States, into monsters." - Christopher Lynn Hedges

Fantasy is defined as:

an illusion

a hallucination

fantastic designs

to imagine; visualize

imagination unrestricted by reality

an unrealistic or improbable supposition

the creative imagination; unrestrained fancy

the ability to deal aesthetically with unusual problems

to have a fancy for; to be pleased with; to like; to fancy

something, such as an invention, that is a creation of the fancy

governed by laws of association which are remote, and arbitrary or capricious

a coin issued especially by a questionable authority and not intended for use as currency

applied principally to elaborate or extravagant product of the imagination given free rein

mental invention, characteristically well removed from reality, that is whimsical, capricious, playful and elaborate or extravagant

an imagined event or sequence of mental images, such as a daydream, usually fulfilling a wish or psychological need

actuating emotional feelings of a lively, gay, and versatile character; it seeks to please by unexpected combinations of thoughts, startling contrasts, flashes of brilliant imagery

cold reading

{also known as having psychic abilities or paranormal powers}

"The smooth tricks of scoundrels are evil." - Isaiah 32:7

A talented and charismatic cold reader will bully a subject into admitting a connection, demanding over and over that they acknowledge a particular statement as having some relevance and maintaining that they just aren't thinking hard enough, or are repressing an important memory.

Forer effect/Barnum statements

Cold readers use the Forer effect/Barnum statements which seem personal, yet apply to many people. Such statements are often open-ended or give the reader the maximum amount of "wriggle room" in a reading. They are designed to elicit identifying responses. The Forer effect/Barnum statements can then be developed into longer and more sophisticated paragraphs and seem to reveal great amounts of detail about a person. The success of the Forer effect relies heavily on the eagerness of people to fill in details and make connections between what is said and some aspect of their own lives.

Statement of this type might include:

"I sense that you are sometimes insecure, especially with people you don't know very well."

"You have a box of old unsorted photographs in your house."

"You had an accident when you were a child involving water."

"You're having problems with a friend or relative."

"Your father passed on due to problems in his chest or abdomen."

If the subject is old enough, his or her father is quite likely to be dead, and this statement would easily apply to a number of conditions such as heart disease, pneumonia, diabetes, most forms of cancer, and in fact to a great majority of causes of death.

shotgunning

"Shotgunning" is a commonly-used cold reading technique, used by purported television "psychics" and "spiritual mediums": Edgar Cayce, Sylvia Browne, James Van Praagh, Colin Fry and John Edward in particular have all used shotgunning techniques in their stage and television shows.

The "psychic", cold reader, quickly offers a huge quantity of very general information, often to an entire audience (some of which is very likely to be correct, near correct or at the very least, provocative or evocative to someone present), observes their subjects' reactions (especially their body language), and then narrows the scope, acknowledging particular people or concepts and refining the original statements according to those reactions to promote an emotional response.

This technique is named after a shotgun, as it fires a spray of small projectiles in the hope that one or more of the shots will strike the target. A majority of people in a room will, at some point for example, have lost an older relative or known at least one person with a common name like "Mike" or "John".

Shotgunning might include a series of vague statements such as:

"I see a heart problem with a father-figure in your family, a father, a grandfather, an uncle, a cousin... I'm definitively seeing chest pain here for a father-figure in your family."

"I see a woman that isn't a blood relative. Someone around when you were growing up, an aunt, a friend of your mother, a step-mother with blackness in the chest, lung cancer, heart disease, breast cancer..."

"I sense an older male figure in your life, who wants you to know whilst you may have had disagreements in your life, he still loved you."

rainbow ruse

The rainbow ruse is a crafted statements which simultaneously awards the subject with a specific personality trait, as well as the opposite of that trait. With such a phrase, a cold reader can "cover all possibilities" and appear to have made an accurate deduction in the mind of the victim, despite the fact that a rainbow ruse statement is vague and contradictory. This technique is used since personality traits are not quantifiable, and also because nearly everybody has experienced both sides of a particular emotion at some time in their lives.

Statements of this type might include:

"Most of the time you are positive and cheerful, but there has been a time in the past where you were very upset."

"You are a very kind and considerate person, but when somebody does something to break your trust, you feel deep-seated anger."

"I would say that you are mostly shy and quiet, but when the mood strikes you, you can easily become the center of attention."

A cold reader can choose from a variety of personality traits, think of its opposite, and then bind the two together in a phrase, vaguely linked by factors such as mood, time, or potential.

People who are naturally good at personal observations can unwittingly conduct readings demonstrably based on cold reading without a deliberate attempt at deception.

Cold reading, in this context, could also simply be "knowledge of reality." Consider the case of a taxi driver in Las Vegas, where innumerable professional conventions have provided him with the opportunity to gauge the characteristic group style and demeanor of entire occupations. Knowing the six big conventions on at the moment, as a party of five enters his cab, he can tell followers of "The Call" from the scuba divers, the phytopathologists from the pilots, the doctors from the police detectives, without recourse to anything but his personal experience.

After a person has done hundreds of cold readings their skills may improve to the point where they may start to believe they can actually read minds. When someone questions their own natural talent, a good psychological understanding of human nature learned through careful observation coupled with good natural intuition based upon prior experience, and begins to believe that they actually have "special psychic abilities" then they fall into the trap of "transcendental temptation".

"Transcendental temptation" in this context is defined as the belief that one has supernatural power - power above and beyond those of ordinary men - special favors bestowed by a supernatural being or god. Those that deceive themselves with the "transcendental temptation" believe they have become "little gods"- they actually believe they have been granted supernatural powers.

"I will eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, that I may rule all things by my own power; and be of myself a lord on earth, and do what I will, as God himself doth." - Jakob Böhme

Jakob Böhme's mentor, Balthasar Walther, had travelled to the Holy Land in search of magical, kabbalistic and alchemical wisdom. Balthasar Walther introduced kabbalistic ideas into Böhme's thought.

When any religious teacher comes to believe that he or she is blessed by the supernatural above his or her followers then that religious teacher has fallen into the spiritual corruption of the sin of pride.

Magic historian and occult investigator Milbourne Christopher warned that this form of "transcendental temptation" may lead one unknowingly and unwittingly into belief in the occult and a deterioration of reason. The lives of cult figures such as L. Ron Hubbard, Anton Szandor LaVey, Jim Jones, Marshall Applewhite, Eugene Scott, David Koresh, Pat Robertson, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, William Essek Kenyon, Aimee Semple McPherson, William Marrion Branham, Rodney Howard-Browne, etcetera.

A human that believes a fantasy is not just a imaginative concept of the mind but believes such fantasy to be truth in reality is said to have been deceived, to have been bewitched or to have been enchanted.

In reality the only magic that can truly be performed is the magic men use to fool others into believing whatever specious concept they have recently put forward with the intent to delude or deceive.

"Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fantastic. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. Reality is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations. Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. " - Henry David Thoreau

"In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first." - Charles Mackay

war on reality

"The concept of waiting for the big score is as ingrained in most of us as the concept of hope itself. We in California should understand that more than anyone. We are Pipedream Central." - Meghan Daum

Do you live in reality or do you live in a fantasy?

Just exactly what do you believe?

In America today it is hard to know what to accept as fact
and what to have reason to believe is a partial truth or an outright lie.

Politicians ‘spin' the truth to create favorable public opinions for their pet projects
and to obtain government decrees to enrich their friends and buddies.

Religious leaders neglect to mention the doubts that they themselves hold as they spout their brand of dogma while practicing their favorite sins.

Popular American culture suggests that we worship ourselves but to do so we must dive head first into the cult of materialistic consumerism, ‘the one with the most toys wins!'

All these paths are mired in spiritual corruption because fantasy replaces reality.

This is reality: humans are smart mammals with a sense of empathy and compassion;
an understanding of that which is evil or harmful to life and that which is good and beneficial;
and a realization of a future existence.

The Earth's environment is a closed system which supports all the life on Earth.

Spewing toxins into the water is like pissing and shitting in your drinking water.

Spewing toxins into the air is like sitting in an airtight room with a burning tire as you hyperventilate.

All humans have limited knowledge and those who are ‘specialists' have a limited perception due to their lack of a broad depth of knowledge.

Mass media exists, not to enlighten and inform, but to sell product.

The 'product' may be a consumer good, an individual running for office or an idea espoused by a ‘think tank'. (Think tank is a misnomer as 'think tank' are really just partisan public opinion generating entities.)

Government institutions practice social control in an attempt to get the populace to conform to ‘Big Brother's' idea of how people should live and behave.

The Earth is a beautiful and wonderful place that would be much nicer if humanity did not find nature offensive.

Nature, in and of itself, is perfect.

Humanities desire for living in a fantasy as opposed to living in reality is the one major thing that threatens to annihilate humanity. Those that hold fantasy positions will make incorrect decisions based on faulty data.

I suggest that humanity stop the war against reality and declare a new war - a war on fantasy.

"We have fed the heart on fantasies and the heart has grown brutal from the fare."
- William Butler Yeats

"For the truth is that life on the face of it is a chaos in which one finds oneself lost. The individual suspects as much, but is terrified to encounter this frightening reality face to face, and so attempts to conceal it by drawing a curtain of fantasy over it, behind which he can make believe that everything is clear." - Jose Ortega y Gasset

fancy

"Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave?"
- Mary Wollstonecraft

To love.

Of superior grade; fine.

Amorous or romantic attachment; love.

Executed with skill; complex or intricate.

Bred for unusual qualities or special points.

Something many humans believe that is false.

A capricious notion; a whim; liking or inclination.

An image or a fantastic invention created by the mind.

To believe without sufficient evidence or proof; to imagine.

That which pleases or entertains the taste or caprice without much use or value.

Inclination; liking, formed by caprice rather than reason; as, to strike one's fancy.

An image or representation of anything formed in the mind; conception; thought; idea; conceit.

The mental faculty through which whims, visions, and fantasies are summoned up;
imagination, especially of a whimsical or fantastic nature.

superstition

"Superstition never solved a single problem." - Kevin T. Freeman

" Among the Romans not a bird,
Without a prophecy was heard;
Fortunes of empires ofttimes hung
On the magician magpie's tongue,
And every crow was to the state,
A sure interpreter of fate.
Prophets embodied in a college,
(Time out of mind your seats of knowledge,)
Infallible accounts would keep,
When it was best to watch or sleep,
To eat, or drink, to go, or stay,
And when to fight, or run away,
When matters were for action ripe,
By looking at a double tripe;
When emperors would live or die,
They in an ass' skull could spy;
When generals would their stations keep,
Or turn their backs in hearts of sheep."
- THE GHOST

The Greeks and Romans frequently formed their opinion
of the success of any enterprize in which they were about to engage,
from the flight, or from the chattering, or singing of birds.

The Augur, whose office it was to expound to the people the meaning of the omens,
is supposed to have derived the name, or title of the office, from avis garritus, the chattering of birds.

"Superstition, from the Latin word "superstes," surviving, is the symbol surviving the idea which it represents; it is the form preferred to the thing, the rite without reason, faith become insensate through isolating itself. It is in consequence the corpse of religion, the death of life, stupefaction substituted for inspiration.

Fanaticism is superstition become passionate, its name comes from the word "fanum," which signifies "temple," it is the temple put in place of God, it is the human and temporal interest of the priest substituted for the honor of priesthood, the wretched passion of the man exploiting the faith of the believer.

Superstition is religion interpreted by stupidity; fanaticism is religion serving as a pretext to fury. Those who intentionally and maliciously confound religion itself with superstition and fanaticism, borrow from stupidity its blind prejudices, and would borrow perhaps in the same way from fanaticism its injustices and angers. "

Eliphas Levi

Chinese charater for vampire

the truth about vampires

There really are vampires. Vampires do not literally physically suck blood. Vampires suck the life from an individual soul. Vampires have sold themselves to spiritual corruption and must suck life from other human's souls to sustain the corrupt fantasy they have placed in their own imaginations in place of reality.

the truth about zombies

There really are zombies. Zombies are not literally physically dead. Zombies walk around in a haze and are unable to 'see' reality because they live in a fantasy reality. Zombies suck the life from other human's souls. Zombies have sold their souls to spiritual corruption and must suck life from those around them to sustain the corrupt fantasy they have placed in their own imaginations in place of reality.

Physically 'zombies' actually do exist. Individuals that have been deprived of salt and have undergone hypnosis through Voodoo in the Carribean actually do behave like the ‘zombies' in The Night of the Living Dead.

Chinese charater for magician

the truth about magicians

"Magic involves making the improbable possible. It's learning how even the slightest change you make can have a radical effect on the internal system of your psychology/spirituality, and the external system of the environment and universe you live in." - Edward Wilson & Wes Unruh

A magician is a practitioner of magic, sometimes considered to be equivalent to an enchanter; a necromancer; a sorcerer or sorceress; a conjurer; witch or wizard; one who practices the black art (of deception).

The name "magician" derives from the magus, an ancient Persian priest, and the cognate maghdim, a Chaldean term meaning wisdom and philosophy.

Magicians perform "magic tricks"(deception) to amuse, entertain and divert the attention of an audience.

The word magician is sometimes used in a complimentary way to describe an individual whose formidable skill or art seems to be magical: a magician with words.

the truth about wizards

The word wizard may come from the Persian word wazir. The wazirs belonged to the ruling classes of the civizations of Central Asia. Wazirs were also called Tajik, men of the pen or wise men. The term wizard is a bastard child of wazir brought to the West by the knights of the First Crudsade and was typically bestowed upon men of learning, the Alchemists.

See A False Reality

See thought image

See Separation from Nature

back to stacks contents

This web site is not a commercial web site and is presented for educational purposes only.

This website defines a new religious ideology to which its author adheres. The author feels that the falsification of reality outside personal experience has created a populace unable to discern propaganda from reality and that this has been done purposefully by an international corporate cartel through their agents who wish to foist a corrupt version of reality on the human race. Religious intolerance occurs when any group refuses to tolerate religious practices, religious beliefs or persons due to their religious ideology. This web site marks the founding of the religion aptly named The Truth of the Way of Life - a rational religion based on reason which requires no leap of faith, accepts no tithes, has no supreme leader, no church buildings and in which each and every individual is encouraged to develop a personal relation with God through the pursuit of the knowledge of reality in the hope of curing the spiritual corruption that has enveloped the human spirit. The tenets of The Truth of the Way of Life are spelled out in detail on this web site by the author. Violent acts against individuals due to their religious beliefs in America is considered a “hate crime.”

This web site in no way condones violence. To the contrary the intent here is to reduce the violence that is already occurring due to the international corporate cartels desire to control the human race. The international corporate cartel already controls the world central banking system, mass media worldwide, the industrial military entertainment complex of America and is responsible for the collapse of morals, the elevation of self-centered behavior and the destruction of global ecosystems. Civilization is based on cooperation. Cooperation does not occur at the point of a gun.

American social mores and values have declined precipitously over the last century as the corrupt international cartel has garnered more and more power. This power rests in the ability to deceive the populace in general through mass media by pressing emotional buttons which have been preprogrammed into the population through prior mass media psychological operations. The results have been the destruction of the family and the destruction of social structures that do not adhere to the corrupt international elites vision of a perfect world. Through distraction and coercion the direction of thought of the bulk of the population has been directed toward solutions proposed by the corrupt international elite that further consolidates their power and which further their purposes.

All views and opinions presented on this web site are the views and opinions of individual human men and women that, through their writings, showed the capacity for intelligent, reasonable, rational, insightful and unpopular thought. All factual information presented on this web site is believed to be true and accurate and is presented as originally presented in print media which may or may not have originally presented the facts truthfully. Opinion and thoughts have been adapted, edited, corrected, redacted, combined, added to, re-edited and re-corrected as nearly all opinion and thought has been throughout time but has been done so in the spirit of the original writer with the intent of making his or her thoughts and opinions clearer and relevant to the reader in the present time.

Fair Use Notice This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of criminal justice, human rights, political, economic, democratic, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the United States Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information see: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

"A society that cannot distinguish reality from illusion dies." - Chris Hedges