Quotes About Consciousness

Our society values alert, problem-solving consciousness, and it devalues all other states of consciousness. Any kind of consciousness that is not related to the production or consumption of material goods is stigmatized in our society today. Of course we accept drunkenness. We allow people some brief respite from the material grind. A society that subscribes to that model is a society that is going to condemn the states of consciousness that have nothing to do with the alert problem-solving mentality.

The student should bear in mind that the very essence of consciousness is constantly to identify itself with the Not-Self, and as constantly to re-assert itself by rejecting the Not-Self. Consciousness, in fact, consists of this alternating assertion and negation - "I am this" - "I am not this." Hence consciousness is, and causes in matter, the attracting and repelling that we call a vibration.

I believe consciousness is non-local and a big part of what we experience with near death and past lives. It's the consciousness that has come into us from other experiences and our consciousness that we remain aware of when we leave our bodies and they communicate with us through dreams, and even through drawings which I do a lot of work with myself.

After death the soul possesses self-consciousness, otherwise, it would be the subject of spiritual death, which has already been disproved. With this self-consciousness necessarily remains personality and the consciousness of personal identity.

When I find that I am more conscious, it's because I'm in tune with a higher reality. When I'm less conscious, it's because I've cut off that entunement to some extent. Maybe through drinking, through anger, through whatever. And I realized then that God has to be an infinite consciousness, and that I had to be an expression of that consciousness. And that the goal of life then must be to become more and more in tune with that consciousness. And I decided to give my life to God. And around that time, to make a long story short, I found Autobiography of a Yogi.

Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought

One can study what exists and how consciousness functions; but one cannot analyze (or “prove”) existence as such, or consciousness as such. These are irreducible primaries. (An attempt to “prove” them is self-contradict ory: it is an attempt to “prove” existence by means of nonexistence, and consciousness by means of unconsciousness .)

Many quantum physics are realizing or hypothesizing that consciousness is not a byproduct of evolution as has been suggested. Or for that matter, an expression of our brains, although it expresses itself through our brains. But consciousness is the common ground of existence that ultimately differentiates into space, time, energy, information and matter. And the same consciousness is responsible for our thoughts, for our emotions and feelings, for our behaviors, for our personal relationships, for our social interactions, for the environments that we find ourselves in, and for our biology.

The basis and firm groundwork of the material, and its primary contribution, lies in the concept that consciousness itself indeed creates matter, that consciousness is not imprisoned by matter but forms it, and that consciousness is not limited or bound by time or space; time and space in your terms being necessary distortions, or adopted conditions, forming a strata for physical existence.

I think it's so important to have a practice, because the consciousness isn't perfection or enlightenment or any of that bullshit. The consciousness is, "Oh, I'm walking down the street and I'm doing nothing."

Not just any talk is conversation; not any talk raises consciousness. Good conversation has an edge: it opens your eyes to something, quickens your ears. And good conversation reverberates: it keeps on talking in your mind later in the day; the next day, you find yourself still conversing with what was said. That reverberation afterward is the very raising of consciousness; your mind's been moved. You are at another level with your reflections.

It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

Our very essence is Absolute Consciousness; without an I, without the consciousness of every individual, nothing really exists.

If psychedelics are, on any level, to be taken seriously as catalyzers or expanders of consciousness, then we need them, because it's an absence of consciousness that is making this historical transition so excruciating.

The consciousness of the seer, is a greater power for knowledge than the consciousness of the thinker. The perceptual power of the inner sight is greater and more direct than the perceptual power of thought.

Consciousness is much more of the implicate order than is matter... Yet at a deeper level [matter and consciousness] are actually inseparable and interwoven, just as in the computer game the player and the screen are united by participation.

In the consciousness of eternity, time is not, neither is space. In man's consciousness there appears so much mercy, so much love, that these have been called time and space.

I feel that the change, the mutation in consciousness, will occur spontaneously once certain pressures now in operation are removed. I feel that the principal instrument of monopoly and control that prevents expansion of consciousness is the word lines controlling thought, feeling and apparent sensory impressions of the human host.

When enough electrons within an atom get aligned and a critical mass is reached - as soon as you hit that hundredth monkey, as soon as you hit the one - you have phase transition, and all the rest of the electrons automatically make the change. My mission - what I teach and what I believe in - is that you just get yourself aligned with God-consciousness. If we teach enough people to do it - if enough of us ultimately get there - then we'll start electing leaders with this kind of consciousness. We'll start seeing kinds of shifts taking their place.

Every revolution begins as consciousness because some group of people has to imagine change. You have to have the idea of change or at least have a hope before you can proceed. And that stage goes very quickly because a contagion of consciousness is within your control. But when you get to the stage of institutional change, it becomes a much slower process.

And when you realize that you form the events of your life in the same way, you will learn to take hold of your entire consciousness in whatever aspect it shows itself in this life. Through all of this you must realize that you are not powerless. Remember, also, that this life is a dimension of experience and reality even if it is, in contrast, a dream in a higher level of reality in which you have your larger consciousness.

Consciousness is the inner spark or inner link in us, the golden link within us that connects our highest and most illumined part with our lowest and most unillumined part. Consciousness is the connecting link between Heaven and earth.

Very often pessimistic people speak against their own desire. They want to undertake some work, and they say, 'I will do this, but I don't think I shall succeed in it.' Thus they hinder themselves in their path. Man does not know that every thought makes an impression on the consciousness and on the rhythm with which the consciousness is working. According to that rhythm that reflection will come true and happen; and a man proves to be his own enemy by his ignorance of these things.

The progressive growth of the finite consciousness of man towards this Self, towards the universal , the eternal, the infinite, in a word his growth into spiritual consciousness by the development of his ordinary ignorant natural being into an illumined divine nature, this is for Indian thinking the significance of life and the aim of human existance.

There is only consciousness. There is no individual apart from consciousness who is conscious.

How is it to be explained that something inside me revolts against the playing of obvious moves? Perhaps we may perceive the underlying reason in the fact that I derive satisfaction from seeking to reveal the concealed meaning of a position by means of maneuvering play and therefore I do not wish to see this satisfaction curtailed by a banal, more or less fortuitous decision. Naturally, this phenomenon is played out beneath the threshold of consciousness. The waking consciousness will, of course, in each individual case, give preference to the more rapid means of deciding the game.

If it is the quality of your consciousness at this moment that determines the future, then what is it that determines the quality of your consciousness? Your degree of presence. So the only place where true change can occur and where the past can be dissolved is the Now.

Contemplation is an alternative consciousness that refuses to identify with or feed what are only passing shows. It is the absolute opposite of addiction, consumerism or any egoic consciousness.

My view is that consciousness, the seat of "personalness," is the ultimate reality, and is also scientifically impenetrable. In other words, there is no scientific test one can postulate that would definitively prove its existence in another entity. We assume that other biological human persons, at least those who are at least acting conscious, are indeed conscious. But this too is an assumption, and this shared human consensus breaks down when we go beyond human experience (e.g., the debate on animal consciousness, and by extension animal rights).

The basic philosophy of stoicism is that you have nothing real external to your own consciousness, that the only thing real is in fact your consciousness.

From the standpoint of our spiritual development, it might be important for us to realize that we came from an unknown somewhere; we brought with us an attained state of consciousness; and while we are here, we are expanding that consciousness. From some perspectives, it may seem that we are making giant strides, but from the greater overview, our quantity of spiritual knowledge is smaller than Ptolemy's knowledge of astronomy!

We're still really in catch-up mode in terms of alerting people to the risks of social media, to the kind of consciousness that you need to have when you do publish something. It used to be such a deliberate and elaborate process to get to publication with many steps and phases and editors and you know, now it's instantaneous and it's wonderful, you know, the immediacy and the power of that but it also can be dangerous.

LSD should be treated as a sacred drug and receive corresponding preparation, preparation of quite a different kind than other psychotropic agents. It is one kind of thing if you have a pain-relieving substance or some euphoriant and (another to) have an agent that engages the very essence of human beings, their consciousness.

The world consists of images on a screen, and consciousness is the steady light that emanates from the projector.

Your suffering is something you choose. Experience it fully. Without it you will not achieve personal growth and higher consciousness.

It is when one begins to lose the consciousness of freedom, and when the idea of necessity enters the world at all, when there is any hurry or strain anywhere, a letter to be written or a train to catch, when you have got to work, to make the horses of the dream gallop, or to make the rifles go off, that the dream is declining, and turning into the nightmare, which belongs to the poorest and most vulgar class of dreams.

The only way to give finality to the world is to give it consciousness.

The mission of the theatre, after all, is to change, to raise the consciousness of people to their human possibilities.

if you don't keep and guard and mature your force, and above all, have time and quiet to perfect your work, you will be writing things not much better than you did five years ago. ... you must write to the human heart, the great consciousness that all humanity goes to make up. Otherwise what might be strength in a writer is only crudeness, and what might be insight is only observation; sentimemnt falls to sentimentality - you can write about life, but never write life itself.

Museums are managers of consciousness. They give us an interpretation of history, of how to view the world and locate ourselves in it. They are, if you want to put it in positive terms, great educational institutions. If you want to put it in negative terms, they are propaganda machines.

It used to be that if someone was to get involved in feminism, it was probably because they were already interested. They were already interested in feminism; they were already interested in being an activist, and they found their way to like a NOW meeting or to a consciousness-raising group or something like that.

An artist paints, dances, draws, writes, designs, or acts at the expanding edge of consciousness. We press into the unknown rather than the known. This makes life lovely and lively.

But I owe something to Vincent, and that is, in the consciousness of having been useful to him, the confirmation of my own original ideas about painting. And also, at difficult moments, the remembrance that one finds others unhappier than oneself.

We need to participate directly in the evolution of consciousness, which, at its core, is the evolution of love.

To rail and rant against tyranny is to manifest inferiority, for there is no tyranny but ignorance; to be conscious of one's powers is to lose consciousness of tyranny. Self government is not a remote aim. It is an intimate and inescapable fact. To govern oneself is a natural imperative, and all tyranny is the miscarriage of self government. The first requisite of freedom is to accept responsibility for the lack of it.

You can't deny Eros. Eros wills trike, like lightning. Our human defenses are frail, ludicrous. Like plasterboard houses in a hurricane. Your triumph is in perfect submission. And the god of Eros will flow through you, as Lawrence says, in the 'perfect obliteration of blood consciousness.

Through all ages, great saints have remained as living proof that this non-temporary, permanent state of God consciousness can be revived in all living souls.

The ideological are individuals ultimately swamped by the complexities of modern life and political and economic relations; they have deliberately attached themselves to some caricatural maven like Falwell or Limbaugh who speaks to their manipulable pathos. The gulf between such individuals' education or intellectual competence or information and the actual issues of our times is simply too great. They were bred to be culture-media for false consciousness, junkies who crawl on their bellies across broken glass for another hit of "clarifying wisdom" from some ideological Pope.