He’s a fanatic and you know it; he identifies so fully with his public image as a savior of lives that he’s simply had to make a psychological break with reality.

Philip K Dick, The Crack in Space [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher]

Hermetic quote Dick Crack in Space fanatic public image savor psychological break reality

Consider also:

  1. “Christians have their Cross – fetish ov guilt and shame. Christ on thee Cross – symbol ov martyrdom/sacrifice for thee sinfulness ov thee human race. unworthy, godless slaves. We repudiate – have our own fetish/symbol for thee immense possibilities and dimensions ov thee human mind and vessel in life. Thee Psychick Cross – an alchemical symbol for (magickally) dangerous material/knowledge. Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth is ‘danger’ to dogmatic/streamlined thought, that is to thee stability/status quo in present society/culture: thee seed to a new science/way ov living.”
  2. “Did our ancestors go peeping about with dark lanterns, and do we walk at our ease in broad sunshine? Where is the manifestation of our light? By what symptoms do you recognise it? What are its signs, its tokens, its symptoms, its symbols, its categories, its conditions? What is it, and why? How, where, when is it to be seen, felt, and understood? What do we see by it which our ancestors saw not, and which at the same time is worth seeing?”
  3. “It has naturally been objected by economists that our Law, in declaring every man and every woman to be a star, reduces society to its elements, and makes hierarchy or even democracy impossible. The view is superficial. Each star has a function in its galaxy proper to its own nature. Much mischief has come from our ignorance in insisting, on the contrary, that each citizen is fit for any and every social duty. But also our Law teaches that a star often veils itself from its nature. Thus the vast bulk of humanity is obsessed by an abject fear of freedom; the principal objections hitherto urged against my Law have been those of people who cannot bear to imagine the horrors which would result if they were free to do their own wills.”
  4. “Why did we go and perform that ritual around that other oak tree? How does that help us become better human beings?” “Precisely because most people don’t perform rituals around oak trees anymore, and because by performing apparently absurd rituals, you get in touch with something deep in your soul, in the oldest part of yourself, the part closest to the origin of everything.”
  5. “The supreme spirit which pervades, embraces, and penetrates everything, being the very essence, soul, and life of all things in the universe, from the atom up to the whole solar system, is beyond all mental conception.”