How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Socrates waved his arm in a sweeping gesture, taking in the palms high above our heads that nearly touched the Plexiglas canopy of the geodesic dome. "You now see everything through a veil of associations about things, projected over a direct, simple awareness. You've "seen it all before": it's like watching a movie for the twentieth time. You see only memories of things, so you become bored, trapped in your mind. This is why you have to "lose your mind" before you can come to your senses." (6.27)
Thoughts, concepts, names, memories—all these things dull sensory experience like grime on a window, according to Socrates. You gotta wax on, wax off that grime.
Quote #8
"But the mind is like a phantom that lives only in the past or future. Its only power over you is to draw your attention out of the present." (6.80)
The mind takes your attention away from its current job and over to the memory of that time in middle school when the buttoned-up Latin teacher suddenly quit his job and became a biker metalhead and—what were we saying?
Quote #9
I realized now that the Grim Reaper, the Death Dan Millman had so feared, had been his great illusion. And so his life, too, had been an illusion, a problem, nothing more than a humorous incident when Consciousness had forgotten itself. (8.67)
According to Dan near the end of the book, death and our lives are just temporary little illusions not to fret over; what we actually are is Consciousness, an eternal awareness that is forever changing. Compared to that, everything in this mortal life is unimportant.