Quotes About Consciousness

However, to say that I could have done otherwise is merely to think the thought "I could have done otherwise" after doing whatever I in fact did. This is an empty affirmation.

I cannot decide what I will next think or intend until a thought or intention arises. What will my next mental state be? I do not know—it just happens. Where is the freedom in that?

From the contemplative point of view, being lost in thoughts of any kind, pleasant or unpleasant, is analogous to being asleep and dreaming. It's a mode of not knowing what is actually happening in the present moment. It is essentially a form of psychosis.

From the contemplative point of view, being lost in thoughts of any kind, pleasant or unpleasant, is analogous to being asleep and dreaming. It's a mode of not knowing what is actually happening in the present moment. It is essentially a form of psychosis. Thoughts themselves are not a problem, but being identified with thought is. Taking

It is generally argued that our experience of free will presents a compelling mystery: On the one hand, we can't make sense of it in scientific terms; on the other, we feel that we are the authors of our own thoughts and actions.

Our habitual failure to recognise thought as thought, our habitual identification with discursive thought, is the primary source of human suffering.

There's certainly no unchanging self that is carried through from one moment to the next. Its a processes; it's not a thing. You're a verb more than you're a noun (from the point of view of neuroscience).

Most people who believe they are meditating are merely thinking with their eyes closed. By practicing mindfulness, however, one can awaken from the dream of discursive thought and begin to see each arising image, idea, or bit of language vanish without a trace. What remains is consciousness itself, with its attendant sights, sounds, sensations, and thoughts appearing and changing in every moment.

I can attest that when one goes into silence and meditates for weeks or months at a time, doing nothing else—not speaking, reading, or writing, just making a moment-to-moment effort to observe the contents of consciousness—one has experiences that are generally unavailable to people who have not undertaken a similar practice.

there is an alternative to simply identifying with the next thought that pops into consciousness. And glimpsing this alternative dispels the conventional illusion of the self.

the truth is that most people are simply too distracted by their thoughts to have the selflessness of consciousness pointed out directly.

Free will is an illusion.

While sitting alone in his uncle's study, Ramana suddenly became paralyzed by a fear of death. He lay down on the floor, convinced that he would soon die, but rather than remaining terrified, he decided to locate the self that was about to disappear. He focused on the feeling of "I"—a process he later called "self-inquiry"—and found it to be absent from the field of consciousness.

Happiness and suffering, however extreme, are mental events. The mind depends upon the body, and the body upon the world, but everything good or bad that happens in your life must appear in consciousness to matter.

The mind is a bundle of thoughts. The thoughts arise because there is the thinker. The thinker is the ego. The ego, if sought, will automatically vanish.

Our wills are simply not of own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have

It is perfectly obvious that I, as the conscious witness of my experience, am not the deep cause of it.

Our interests in life are not always served by viewing people and things as collections of atoms—but this doesn't negate the truth or utility of physics.

looking for a path back to the present:

During the normal course of events, your mind will determine the quality of your life.

to the experience of being fully immersed in a film and then suddenly realizing that you are sitting in a theater watching a mere play of light on a wall.

How can we make sense of our lives, and hold people accountable for their choices, given the unconscious origins of our conscious minds?

Either consciousness is epiphenomenal or it's outside a physical system but somehow playing a role in physics. That's a more traditional, dualist possibility. Or there's a third possibility: Consciousness is somehow built in at the fundamental level of physics.

It solves the problem of "free will" by ignoring it. How can we be "free" as conscious agents if everything