"In the province of the mind what one believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits. These limits are to be found experimentally and experientially. When so found these limits turn out to be further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind there are no limits." – John C. Lilly

from xkcd. (subject line from edgar allen poe.)

To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. - Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd. –William Shakespeare - To be, or not to be (from Hamlet 3/1)

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o'er-sways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out Against the wreckful siege of battering days, When rocks impregnable are not so stout, Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays? O fearful meditation! where, alack, Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid? Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back? Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid? O, none, unless this miracle have might, That in black ink my love may still shine bright. –Shakespeare's Sonnet 65

Go without, 'Til the need seeps in, You're low anymore, Collect your novel petals for the stem, And glow, Glow, Melt and flow, Eviscerate your fragile frame, And spill it out in the ragged floor, A thousand different versions of yourself, And if the old guard still offend, They got nothing left on which you depend, So enlist every ounce, Of your bright blood, And off with their heads, Jump from a book, You're not obliged to swallow anything you despise, See, those unrepenting buzzards want your life, And they got no right, As sure as you have eyes, They got no right, Just put yourself in my new shoes, And see that I do what I do, Because the old guard still offend, We got nothing left on which we depend, So we waste every ounce, Of your bright blood, And off with their heads, Jump from a book, And you're not obliged, To swallow anything that you despise

–The Shins, “Sleeping Lessons”