Quotes About Consciousness

That is the present: an emanation of memory bouncing on the illusion of the future

The exceptional status of each human being derives from the unique significance of suffering and flourishing in the context of our remembrances of the past and of the memories we have constructed of the future we incessantly anticipate.

mas quem dá por um eco na água se ela própria água feita de ecos também, aqueles que dizem sentir a água enganam-se, sentem a memória dela

Feelings are the mental expressions of homeostasis, while homeostasis, acting under the cover of feeling, is the functional thread that links early life-forms to the extraordinary partnership of bodies and nervous systems. That partnership is responsible for the emergence of conscious, feeling minds that are, in turn, responsible for what is most distinctive about humanity: cultures and civilizations. Feelings are at the center of the book, but they draw their powers from homeostasis.

This book is dedicated to presenting some facts behind the making of minds that think, create narratives and meaning, remember the past and imagine the future; and to presenting some facts behind the machinery of feeling and consciousness responsible for the reciprocal connections among minds, the outside world, and its respective life.

But we may well ask, who are the players in these imaginary orchestras, exactly? And here is the answer: the objects and events in the world around our organisms, actually present or recalled from memory, and the objects and events in the world inside.

In brief, images were advantageous even if an organism were not conscious of the images formed within it. The organism would not yet be capable of subjectivity and would be unable to inspect the images in its own mind, but still the images could automatically guide the execution of a movement; the movement would be more precise in terms of its target and succeed rather than fail.

Feelings accompany the unfolding of life in our organisms, whatever one perceives, learns, remembers, imagines, reasons, judges, decides, plans, or mentally creates.

No hay ser, en el sentido propio del término, sin una experiencia mental espontánea de la vida, sin una sensación de existencia.

This is not to say that human feelings are not more complex and layered and elaborate than those of animals. How could they not be? But as I see it, the distinction in humans has to do with the web of associations that feeling states establish with all sorts of ideas and especially with the interpretations we can make of our present moment and of our anticipated future.

It is an evanescent reference state, so continuously and consistently reconstructed that the owner never knows it is being remade unless something goes wrong with the remaking.

Language may not be the source of the self, but it certainly is the source of the "I.

The good news, however, is that the self also has made reason and scientific observation possible, and reason and science, in turn, have been gradually correcting the misleading intuitions prompted by the unaided self. Overcoming

The manifest ownership of mental contents by the integrated organism where they arise is the distinctive trait of a conscious mind.

We often end up learning that an emotion is happening not as the triggering situation unfolds but because the processing of the situation causes feelings; that is, it causes conscious mental experiences of the emotional event. After the feeling begins we may (or may not) realize why we are feeling a certain way.

The rise of human cultures should be credited to both conscious feeling and creative intelligence.

All mind is made of images

the process of consciousness itself relies on images.

What is the basic difference between saying 'I know that God exists' and saying 'I know that love exists'?

A thought is a screen, not a mirror; that is why you live in a thought envelope, untouched by Reality.

There are two ways to wash dishes: One is to wash them in order to make them clean; the other is to wash them in order to wash them.

To know reality you have to know beyond knowing.

What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you. You are always a slave to what you're not aware of. When you're aware of it, you're free from it. It's there, but you're not affected by it. You're not controlled by it; you're not enslaved by it. That's the difference.

What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you.