Richard Bach Quotes

What, concretely, is Enlightenment ?" "Seeing Reality as it is," said the Master. "Doesn't everyone see Reality as it is?" "Oh, no! Most people see it as they think it is." "What's the difference?" "The difference between thinking you are drowning in a stormy sea and knowing you cannot drown because there isn't any water in sight for miles around.

I think perception is important.

Our understanding is correlative to our perception.

Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing.

Things are NEVER what they seem, Pa, I thought. I used to think they were, but I was wrong or stupid or blind or something. Old folks are forever complaining about their failing eyesight, but I think your vision gets better as you get older. Mine surely was.

I feel that one of the most important lessons that can be learned is that what we "see" may be different than what is actually in front of us.

It's all real and it's all illusory: that's Awareness!

Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man's task.

Nothing, of course, begins at the time you think it did.

We can never be quite clear whether we are referring to the world as it is or to the world as we see it.

Your mind makes out the orange by seeing it, hearing it, touching it, smelling it, tasting it and thinking about it but without this mind, you call it, the orange would not be seen or heard or smelled or tasted or even mentally noticed, it's actually, that orange, depending on your mind to exist! Don't you see that? By itself it's a no-thing, it's really mental, it's seen only of your mind. In other words it's empty and awake.

Every human being relies on and is bounded by his knowledge and experience to live. This is what we call “reality”. However, knowledge and experience are ambiguous, thus reality can become illusion. Is it not possible to think that, all human beings are living in their assumptions?

Perception of a state is not the state.

Illusions only control you when you think they are real.

People think that they see, but they don't.

It seems to me that the real problem is the mind itself and not the problem which the mind has created and tries to solve.

We have ... dreamed so much and observed so little, that our imaginations have grown larger than the world we live in, and our judgments have dwindled down to a point.

If ignorance were enough to make things not exist, the world would be more like a lot of people think it is. But it's not. And it's not.

When you don't understand, you depend on reality. When you do understand, reality depends on you.

You think the world is what it looks like in fine weather at noon day; I think it is what it seems like in the early morning when one first wakes from deep sleep.

Not creating delusions is enlightenment.

Reality seems so simple. We just open our eyes and there it is. But that doesn't mean it is simple.

Life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves.

Reality is an acquired taste.

If you use your mind to study reality, you won't understand either your mind or reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you'll understand both.