Quotes About Consciousness

But what so different of eating plants? Everything has it's life. If you are so pure, why not just stop eating? So you can have no shit?

What do you mean by wu-wo?' you asked. 'It's like no self. No I. Non-existence,' I answered. 'My body is here, but I don't feel I am here, right now. I don't feel my existence in this environment.

Dreams are more real than reality itself, they're closer to the self.

If, while observing the boundless universe, the writer is able to scrutinize his own self as well as others, the resulting incisiveness of his observations will far surpass objective descriptions of reality.

No matter how hard I listened, there was never any sign of someone living under the floor, and yet this silence made me all the more conscious of his existence.

La conciencia es un fenómeno en medio de un océano de fenómenos que escapan a su control, de manera que no creo que podamos ejercer una completa supervisión de todo lo que pasa por nuestra mente.

No one actually witnessed the first numbers come into being-when we first became aware of them, they'd already been around for a long time.

Hur tomt ett hjärta än är försöker det ändå förnimma något.

At that moment, the thing Knut had been perceiving as "time" melted away. Because starting with this moment, he no longer had any time to think about time.

It is the very mind itself that leads the mind astray.

It is the Mind, That is the Mind, Confusing the Mind. Do not leave the Mind, O Mind, To the Mind.

Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you'll always find despair.

It is wrong to bear children out of need, wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, wrong to provide purpose in life by reproducing another copy of oneself. It is wrong also to seek immortality by spewing one's germ into the future as though sperm contains your consciousness.

Where I am, death is not; where death is, I am not.

Heidegger makes the distinction between being absorbed in the way things are in the world and being aware that things are in the world. And if you do the latter, you're not so worried about the everyday trivialities of life, for example, petty concerns about secrecy or privacy.

Death, however, does itch. It itches all the time. It is always with us, scratching at some inner door. Mirroring, softly, barely audibly, just under the membrane of consciousness. Hidden in disguise, leaking out in a variety of symptoms. It is the wellspring of many of our worries, stresses, and conflicts.

Qui rêve trop oublie de vivre.

Is there a life outside oneself? Is there a reality outside oneself?

Consciousness is the chronic pain of life, and all higher organisms suffer it every waking moment.

What a mistake that had been, to create a construct [AI] that could suffer. He knew that now. Life, pain, death, they were no playthings. Biology was serious business, not for amateurs and foolish gods.

To live (as I understand it) is to exist within a conception of time. But to remember is to vacate the very notion of time. Every memory, no matter how remote its subject, takes place 'Now,' at the moment it's called to the mind. The more something is recalled, the more the brain has a chance to refine the original experience. Because every memory is a re-creation, not a playback.

What if reality (as perceived) were simply an extension of the self? Wouldn't that color the way each individual experiences the world?

To live as I understand it is to exist within a conception of time. But to remember is to vacate the very notion of time.

Surely you're not saying that the life of a human and the life of an animal are of the same value?' he ventured. 'As humans we have much greater potential, of course,' His Holiness replied. 'But the way we all want very much to stay alive, the way we cling to our particular experience of consciousness-in this way human and animal are equal.