When one begins to explain the perception of the blackboard from sensory stimuli, one has indeed seen the blackboard. In this theory of sensory stimuli, where is [there a place for] what is meant by "is" [being] ? Even the greatest possible accumulation and intensity of stimuli will never bring forth the "is." [What is meant by it] is already presupposed in every [act of] being stimulated.
Even imagining can only be seen as directed into a world [in eine Welt hinein] and can only happen into a world. To imagine a golden mountain can always really only happen in such a way that even this [mountain] is somehow situated in a world. Even in such imagining there is more there than just the isolated golden mountain. I do not imagine a golden mountain within my consciousness or within my brain, but rather I relate it to a world, to a landscape, which in turn is again related to the world in which I exist bodily. The golden mountain is present as something imagined which is a specific mode of presence and which has the character of a world. It is related to men, earth, sky, and the gods.
The whole starting point within the psychic and the point of departure from a consciousness is an abstraction and a nondemonstrable construct [eine nicht ausweisbare Konstruktion]. The relationships of a thing to the surrounding world [Umwelt] do not require explanation; they must simply be seen [in a phenomenological sense].
P. 162