Quotes about Consciousness

We meandered through Billy’s ritzy neighborhood in the general direction of Jefferson Street. In the lamplight the houses looked identical, grand façade after grand façade of pale gray with black windows, as if for all their monumentality they were nothing but wallpaper, black-and-white prints, two-dimensional murals similar in their deceptive insubstantiality to the gossamer buildings of New Age City. I was struck by the idea that Billy and I, to the extent we existed only in our imaginations, were just as shallow, just as superficial—and equally susceptible to being erased without a trace.

Ever since learning I wasn’t the only unreal person in the world, I’d developed an annoying habit of studying people to determine their true ontological status. I studied people in class, the library, the cafeteria, my dorm, around campus, while running the Gargoyle Castle Loop. Now, under the influence of acid, I began to suspect everyone was unreal. That behind all the masks and makeup, the smiles and laughter, the quips and repartees, there was a good chance of finding absolutely nothing.

I felt exceedingly small, but also exceedingly large, and the things that had once seemed so important now appeared trifling. Actually, those things had never even existed. I’d imagined every last one of them. Nothing ever really existed. Somehow, just then, navigating that cosmic ocean of sky, this was everything I needed to know.

Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,
and dismiss whatever insults your own soul... 
It is also not consistent with the reality of the soul to admit that there is anything
in the known universe more divine than men and women.
The master knows that he is unspeakably great and that all are unspeakably great. 
There will soon be no more priests... They may wait awhile, perhaps a generation or two,
dropping off by degrees. A superior breed shall take their place.
A new order shall arise and they shall be the priests of man,
and every man shall be his own priest.

...there's a disconnect between public and private morality. What corporations and governments do (ruining people's retirement funds, killing an enemy en masse) is unthinkable for the individual. Few societies have successfully bridged this gap. The only answer I can come up with is that only consciousness can prevail. When you find yourself having to make a difficult moral choice, your choice comes intuitively. One person automatically resorts to violence, another automatically resists violence. In the larger scheme this doesn't mark the difference between good and bad. It marks the stages of evolution that consciousness has always gone through and will continue to.

It's the same with all the thoughts and feelings and other experiences that arise in the ocean of ourselves. The ocean never resists them, it never creates a negative reference point saying "Damn , that seaweed is still there. There must be something terribly wrong with me".  When they arise, the ocean just sees them for what they are and they pass away naturally.

These eyes see the incredible benevolence of the universe, which is completely trustworthy in all respects. There is nothing to fear. Everything in each moment is so well taken care of - and always has been.

Behind most spiritual practices is the belief that you have to get someplace you're not- a destination called realization or enlightenment. But realization isn't someplace else; it's the naturally occurring human state. It doesn't belong to anybody. It's who we all are. Spiritual practices also set up many pictures of what this state looks like. For example, when I described how much fear was present, people told me the fear meant that something must be wrong, because fear was an indication that I wasn't in the proper state. But fear is just what it is, and it's there too in the vastness of who we are.

There was a part of the mind - perhaps what we call the self-reflective or introspective function - that kept turning to look and, finding emptiness, kept sending the message that something was wrong. It was a reflex that had developed during the years of living in the illusion of individuality, a reflex we commonly consider necessary to our selves. We "look within" repeatedly to determine what we think and feels, to make a study of ourselves and track our states of mind and heart. Now that there was no longer an "in" to look "into", the self-reflective reflex was adrift, but persisted. It kept turning in and turning in, unable to come to terms with the fact that there was no in anymore, only emptiness.

Suffering occurs when something is taken for what it's not , rather than for what it is.

I moved down the street like a cloud of awareness following a body that seemed simultaneously familiar and foreign. There was an incomprehensible attachment to that body, although it no longer felt like "mine". It continued to send out signals of its sensory perception, yet how or where those signals wwere being received was beyond comprehension.

Instead of experiencing through the physical senses, I was now bobbing behind the body like a buoy at sea, cut loose from sensory solidity, separated from and witnessing the body from a vast distance.

I lifted my right foot to step up into the bus and collided head on with an invisible force that entered my awareness like a silently exploding stick of dynamite blowing the door of my usual consciousness open and off its hinges, splitting me in two. In the gaping space that appeared, what I had previously called "me" was forcefully pushed out of its usual location inside me into a new location that was approximately a foot behind and to the left of my head. "I" was now behind my body, looking out at the world without using the body's eyes.

In the Oneness / Awakened state the insights and experience of all arising in and as the Divine, and the Divine being everywhere and everything (beyond consciousness, the Self, and the mindbody package) has been obvious. This has been consistently tested by life and the obviousness, and the freedom which this brings, fluctuated accordingly.

Despite the freedom of the Oneness state I was aware that the mind was still going, I was still buying into it and really when I felt into it I was still suffering in a way that I thought would have finished many years before. There felt to be lots of changes but essentially I was still the same mess that I had always been, albeit with a more mature stance and view of things.

"Trust your hunches.... Hunches are usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level." - Dr Joyce Brothers

Please… tell me who you are and what you want. And if you think those are simple questions, keep in mind that most people live their entire lives without arriving at an answer.

We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.

We should try to be the parents of our future rather than the offspring of our past.

The truth of the matter is that none of it is the truth of the matter.

When awareness is brought to an emotion, power is brought to your life.

"The thought of both East and West (philosophies) can indeed be integrated into a higher truth. They show us that the West is correct in maintaining that life is about progress about evolving toward something higher. Yet the East is also correct in emphasizing that we must let go of control with the ego. We can't progress by using logic alone. We have to attain a fuller consciousness, an inner connection with God, because only then can our evolution toward something better be guided by a higher part of ourselves."

"Looking at why people treat each other so violently. We've always known that this violence comes from the urge humans fell to control and dominate one another, but only recently have we studied this phenomenon from the inside, from the point of view of the individual's consciousness. We have asked what happens inside a human being that makes him want to control someone else. We have found that when and individual walks up to another person and engages in a conversation, which happens billions of times each day in the world, one of two things can happen. That individual can come away felling string or feeling weak depending on what occurs in the interaction."

"We humans always seem to take a manipulative posture. No matter what the particulars of the situation, or the subject matter, we prepare ourselves to say whatever we want in order to prevail in the conversation. Each of us seeks to find some way to control and thus to remain on top in the encounter. If we are successful, or our viewpoint prevails, then rather than feel weak, we receive a psychological boost."

"In other words we humans seek to outwit and control each other not just because of some tangible goal in the outside world that we're trying to achieve, but because of a lift we get psychologically. This is the reason we see so many irrational conflicts in the world both at the individual level and the level of nations."

"The consensus in this matter is now emerging into public consciousness. We humans are realizing how much we manipulate each other and consequently we're reevaluating our motivations. We're looking for another way to interact. I think this reevaluation will be part of the new world view."

It's common to say that trees come from seeds. But how can a tiny seed create a huge tree? Seeds do not contain the resources need to grow a tree.  These must come from the medium or environment within which the tree grows.  But the seed does provide something that is crucial : a place where the whole of the tree starts to form.  As resources such as water and nutrients are drawn in, the seed organizes the process that generates growth.  In a sense, the seed is a gateway through which the future possibility of the living tree emerges.

As this era of masculine dominance comes to an end and a feminine understanding of life’s wholeness is included, we are beginning to experience a different world in which physical, mental, and spiritual well-being are interdependent. We see the signs of this in the new age movement. But the new age movement is often limited by its focus on individual well-being. Our real concern is the well-being of the planet and the whole of humanity. Central to this is the understanding that the physical world cannot be healed from a solely physical perspective, but requires a shift to an attitude that contains a multi-dimensional approach.

"Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment"

The transcendental impulse to connect with God and the spiritual world represents one of the most basic and powerful forces in Homo sapiens sapiens. Religious-spiritual-mystical experiences (RSMEs) point to a fundamental dimension of human existence and represent the heart of the world's great religions. This process of self-transcendence awakens one to one's transcendental or spiritual self.

The Brain Mediates but Does Not Produce RSMEs
There is no scientific evidence showing that delusions or hallucinations produced by a dysfunctional brain can induce the kind of long-term positive changes and psychospiritual transformation that often follow RSMEs. In fact, delusions and hallucinations usually constitute negative experiences fom a subjective perspective.

Materialist neuroscientists have not succeeded in providing a satisfactory neurobiological theory of how mind,consciousness, self, and RSMEs arise from the interaction between various brain regions, neural circuits, and neurotransmitters. In my view, this enterprise is doomed to failure. Why? Because of the immense epistemological gap between the psychological realm (psyche) and the physical realm (physis). Findings from NDEs and in particular the case of Pam Reynolds, suggest that mind and consciousness can continue when clinical criteria of death have been reached and the brain no longer functions. These findings also indicate that RSMEs can occur when the Brain is not functioning. Such findinds lead me to posit that the transformative power of RSMEs arises from an encounter with an objectively real spiritual force that exists independently from the individuals who have the experience.

This conclusion is compatible with William James's hypothesis that the brain does not generate but transmits and expresses mental processes/events. The brain can be compared with a television receiver that translates electromagnetic waves (which exist apart from the TV receiver) into picture and sound. Along similar lines Henri Bergson and Aldous huxley have proposed that our brains do not produce mind and consciousness, but rather acts as reducing valves, allowing us the experience of only a narrow portion of perceivable reality. Brain normally limits our experience of the spiritual world. Neuroimaging studies conducted with Carmelite nuns suggest that neuroelectric, neurochemical and nerometabolic changes are necessary for an RSME to take place. p290-292

This activity of consciousness-the establishment of control in the world of things through conceptualization, rational thought, and the development of discipline and the abstractive repression of emotions-is an utterly vital and indispensable phase of psychic development. It leads from psychic primitive infancy to adulthood. Mythological tradition likens this development to the creation of the world from the original chaos to the establishment of a foothold on dry land away from the threat of drowning in the flood waters. Yet it is not the "dry land" of rational consciousness that contains and supports the ocean but conversely: the waters of the ocean contain the dry continents, and life upon them depends upon the waters. Similarly, it it the unconscious psyche, that gives rise to and maintains the world of consciousness. Consciousness with its concepts is a relatively minor part of the total psychic functioning, and in terms of dynamics certainly not the most powerful one. It establishes fixed points of rational reference-but at the price of a loss of emotional connection. Images, on the other hand, constellate emotional and imaginative qualities and thus reconstitute a connection which the abstractive process has severed.

For all whose intention is a shift in focus of consciousness to a higher dimension, it is helpful to be aware that kindness to all of life (example: even one's pet dog) raises the overall level because the energy of love calibrates very high. To raise the level of the sea lifts all of the ships afloat effortlessly. Love itself is a transformative energy.

I spent many years trying to become conscious, but all that effort led merely to self-consciousness, which in turn generated guilt, anxiety, and ambition. I was told that higher consciousness was a worthy goal and that its opposite, unconsciousness, was the result of laziness and ignorance. Around the age of fifty my ideals and values began to change, so much so that many of them turned upside down and inside out. Now I see great value in laziness, understood as giving up both effort and the attempt to justify my life. I have come to appreciate the teaching I have found in many religions that praises holy ignorance. And I have been discovering how to live with little consciousness

Emerson once remarked that it is advisable to live without consciousness of the workings of the body, and I wonder if the same recommendation applies to the whole of life. Perhaps in some ways we do have to become conscious, and that may be the proper work of the first half of life. But then all our education and learning experiences may fade, not into oblivion, where they are simply lost, but by a process of absorption into us, so that they become us or we become them.
I have always thought that the most remarkable statement James Hillman ever made about the soul, and he has made many startling observations, is that the soul leads us into unconsciousness, and that for our own benefit. When we fall in love or become absorbed in work or are seized by a powerful depression, we lose control and perspective. The soul takes over and from a dimmer place takes the lead. We don't know exactly what we are doing or whether we should be doing it. By remaining in this psychic fog, we may end up in a place we have been searching for all our lives--with the right person, in a good job, with a new level of self-possession.

Only when your consciousness is totally focused on the moment you are in can you receive whatever gift, lesson, or delight that moment has to offer.