Altered States

Eddie Jessup:
The purpose of our suffering is only more suffering.

Arthur Rosenberg:
The way I feel, I don't expect to go to sleep for a year. I'm on f***ing fire!

Eddie Jessup:
What dignifies the Yogic practices is that the belief system itself is not truly religious. There is no Buddhist God per se. It is the Self, the individual Mind, that contains immortality and ultimate truth.

Emily Jessup:
What the hell is not religious about that? You've simply replaced God with the Original Self.

Eddie Jessup:
Yes, but we've localized it. Now I know where the Self is. It's in our own minds. It's a form of human energy. Our atoms are six billion years old. We've got six billion years of memory in our minds.

Eddie Jessup:
Memory is energy! It doesn't disappear - it's still in there. There's a physiological pathway to our earlier consciousnesses. There has to be; and I'm telling you it's in the goddamned limbic system.

Mason Parrish:
You're a whacko!

Eddie Jessup:
What's whacko about it, Mason? I'm a man in search of his true self. How archetypically American can you get? We're all trying to fulfill ourselves, understand ourselves, get in touch with ourselves, face the reality of ourselves, explore ourselves, expand ourselves. Ever since we dispensed with God we've got nothing but ourselves to explain this meaningless horror of life.

Eddie Jessup:
You saved me. You redeemed me from the pit. I was in it, Emily. I was *in* that ultimate moment of terror that is the beginning of life. It is nothing. Simple, hideous nothing. The final truth of all things is that there is no final Truth. Truth is what's transitory. It's human life that is real. I don't want to frighten you, Emily, but what I'm trying to tell you is that moment of terror is a real and living horror, living and growing within me now, and the only thing that keeps it from devouring me is you.

Eddie Jessup:
Emily's quite content to go on with this life. She insists she's in love with me - whatever that is. What she means is she prefers the senseless pain we inflict on each other to the pain we would otherwise inflict on ourselves. But I'm not afraid of that solitary pain. In fact, if I don't strip myself of all this clatter and clutter and ridiculous ritual, I shall go out of my f***ing mind. Does that answer your question, Arthur?

Arthur Rosenberg:
What question was that?

Eddie Jessup:
You asked me why I was getting divorced.

Arthur Rosenberg:
Oh, listen, it's your life. I'm sorry I even asked.