Truth begins as a strategy in the game of survival. The game itself, of natural selection, continues to disturb life and cause it to adjust, complicate and expand its capabilities of representation, responding with ever greater subtlety to the world. The movement toward objectivity is paid for with an overhead of complexity, separate selfhood, and self-consciousness. Once its picture of the world is complete enough to include itself, mind is able to model its situation and to grasp that it lives in a context of illusion. This awareness is the price to be paid for the privilege of self-conscious existence.
Mind becomes capable of touching truth, even though it was designed merely for advantage.
In de-realizing the world , as in splitting the atom, an energy, or potential, is released and at the disposal of the subject. This energy was formerly locked within the bond between experience and behavior, in an atom of compulsive response. As experience is subjectified, the power given to the world to determine the flow of one's mental-emotional processes is taken back within the psyche and experienced as conscious choice. The little man takes himself off automatic pilot and resumes personal responsibility for interpreting his instrument panel and choosing a course of action. It is only the belief in the external significance of events that compels particular response.