Quotes About Consciousness

There is an urgent need for a radical revision of our current concepts of the nature of consciousness and its relationship to matter and the brain.

Consciousness after death demonstrates the possibility of consciousness operating independently of the body.

Coming to terms with the fear of death is conducive to healing, positive personality transformation, and consciousness evolution.

The experiences associated with death were seen as visits to important dimensions of reality that deserved to be experienced, studied, and carefully mapped.

If consciousness can function independently of the body during one's lifetime, it could be able to do the same after death.

I believe it is essential for our planetary future to develop tools that can change the consciousness which has created the crisis that we are in.

An important consequence of freeing oneself from the fear of death is a radical opening to spirituality of a universal and non-denominational type.

Dying before dying has two important consequences: It liberates the individual from the fear of death and influences the actual experience of dying at the time of biological demise.

A radical inner transformation and rise to a new level of consciousness might be the only real hope we have in the current global crisis brought on by the dominance of the Western mechanistic paradigm.

Whether or not we believe in survival of consciousness after death, reincarnation, and karma, it has very serious implications for our behavior.

Research challenges the materialistic understanding of death, according to which biological death represents the final end of existence and of all conscious activity.

The elimination of the fear of death transforms the individual's way of being in the world.

There is no fundamental difference between the preparation for death and the practice of dying, and spiritual practice leading to enlightenment.

The study of consciousness that can extend beyond the body is extremely important for the issue of survival, since it is this part of human personality that would be likely to survive death.

Consciousness does not just passively reflect the objective material world; it plays an active role in creating reality itself.

The renaissance of interest in Eastern spiritual philosophies, various mystical traditions, meditation, ancient and aboriginal wisdom, as well as the widespread psychedelic experimentation during the stormy 1960s, made it absolutely clear that a comprehensive and cross-culturally valid psychology had to include observations from such areas as mystical states; cosmic consciousness; psychedelic experiences; trance phenomena; creativity; and religious, artistic, and scientific inspiration.

In mapping out the transpersonal realm, I found it useful to think in terms of the following three experiential regions: (1) an expansion or extension of consciousness within the everyday concept of time and space; (2) an expansion or extension of consciousness beyond the everyday concept of time and space; and (3) "psychoid" experiences.

The key experiential approach I now use to induce non-ordinary states of consciousness and gain access to the unconscious and superconscious psyche is Holotropic Breathwork, which I have developed jointly with Christina over the last fifteen years. This seemingly simple process, combining breathing, evocative music and other forms of sound, body work, and artistic expression, has an extraordinary potential for opening the way for exploring the entire spectrum of the inner world.

Materialistic scientists have not been able to produce any convincing evidence that consciousness is a product of the neurophysiological processes in the brain.

My consciousness expanded at an inconceivable speed and reached cosmic dimensions. I lost the connection with my everyday identity. There were no more boundaries or difference between me and the universe. I felt that my old personality was extinguished and that I ceased to exist. And I felt that by becoming nothing, I became everything.

the potential for a mystical experience is the natural birthright of all human beings

Very few people, including most scientists, realize that we have absolutely no proof that consciousness is actually produced by the brain and not even a remote notion of how something like that could possibly happen. In spite of it, this basic metaphysical assumption remains one of the leading myths of Western materialistic science and has a profound influence on our entire society.

Experiences of BPM II are best characterized by the triad: fear of death, fear of never coming back, and fear of going crazy.

Denial may be neither a matter of telling the truth nor intentionally telling a lie. There seem to be states of mind, or even whole cultures, in which we know and don't know at the same time.