Quotes About Consciousness

But today I'm all medulla oblongata and I can't concentrate.

Moral deliberation has to be somewhere in the brain, after all. It's not going to be in the foot or the stomach, and it's certainly not going to reside in some mysterious immaterial realm. So who cares about precisely where?

pain can relieve anxiety by distracting you from your consciousness.

And so one of the joys of immersing yourself in certain activities, such as hard exercise or a difficult puzzle or being whipped, is that you lose the feeling of being conscious of yourself. You just are.

Gopnik compares baby consciousness to that of an adult dumped into the middle of a foreign city, totally overwhelmed, constantly turning to see new things, struggling to make sense of it all. Things are even worse for a baby, actually, because even the most stressed-out adult can choose to think of something else: we can look forward to getting back to the hotel; imagine how we would describe our trip to friends; fantasize, daydream, or pray. The baby just is, trapped in the here and now.

We have gut feelings, but we also have the capacity to override them, to think through issues, including moral issues, and to come to conclusions that can surprise us. I think this is where the real action is. It's what makes us distinctively human, and it gives us the potential to be better to one another, to create a world with less suffering and more flourishing and happiness. There

The duration of felt experience—our feeling of right now—is between two and three seconds, about how long it takes Paul McCartney to sing the words "Hey Jude." Everything before this is memory; everything after is anticipation. So what about a life dedicated entirely to improving this moving window of two to three seconds?

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones," writes Richard Dawkins. After all, we're the ones who got to exist in the first place.

He awoke, opened his eye. The room meant very little to him; he was too deeply immersed in the non-being from which he had just come. If he had not the energy to ascertain his position in time and space, he also lacked the desire. ... In utter comfort, utter relaxation he lay absolutely still for a while, and then sank back into on the the light momentary sleeps that occur after a long, profound one.

Paradoxically, pain seems like something done to us, though in reality we have done it to ourselves, manufacturing the sensation. Whatever we might conceive of as "pain" occurs in the mind.

From a neuroscience perspective we are all divided and discontinuous. The mental processes underlying our sense of self-- feelings, thoughts, memories-- are scattered through different zones of the brain. There is no special point of convergence. No cockpit of the soul. No soul-pilot. They come together in a work of fiction. A human being is a story-telling machine. The self is a story.

When we see the brain we realize that we are, at one level, no more than meat; and, on another, no more than fiction.

This is the left hemisphere confabulating. It does this for all of us, every waking moment. It edits our conscious experiences, makes them comprehensible and palatable. It's the brain's spin-doctor.

Every test successfully met is rewarded by some growth in intuitive knowledge, strengthening of character, or initiation into a higher consciousness.

The source of wisdom and power, of love and beauty, is within ourselves, but not within our egos. It is within our consciousness. Indeed, its presence provides us with a conscious contrast which enables us to speak of the ego as if it were something different and apart: it is the true Self whereas the ego is only an illusion of the mind.

The ordinary man is aware of his surroundings, first, by naming and labelling them; second, by linking them with past memory of them; and third, by relating them to his own personal self. The illumined egoless man is simply aware of them, without any of these other added activities.

It may be considered folly by common opinion but this refusal to destroy life unnecessarily, this reverence for it, must become a deeply implanted part of his ethical standard.

Whoever wants the "I" to yield up its mysterious and tremendous secret must stop it from looking perpetually in the mirror, must stop the little ego's fascination with its own image.

Among the values of meditation is that it carries consciousness down to a deeper level, thus letting man live from his centre, not his surface alone. The result is that the physical sense-reactions do not dominate his outlook wholly, as they do an animal's. Mind begins to rule them. This leads more and more to self-control, self-knowledge, and self-pacification.

The succession of thoughts appears in time, but the gap between two of them is outside time. The gap itself is normally unobserved. The chance of enlightenment is missed.

Pursue the enquiry 'Who am I?' relentlessly. Analyse your entire personality. Try to find out where the I-thought begins. Go on with your meditations. Keep turning your attention within. One day the wheel of thought will slow down and an intuition will mysteriously arise. Follow that intuition, let your thinking stop, and it will eventually lead you to the goal.

There is really nothing to be achieved here; only something to be accepted-the fact of your own divinity.

The study of the self will one day prove the master-key to open all philosophical doors, all scientific conundrums, all life's locked problems. Self is the ultimate—it is the first thing we know as babes; it will be the last thing we shall know as sages. The greatest certainty in knowledge comes only in the sphere of self. We

The world suddenly vanished from view like a morning mist. I was left alone with Reality.