This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Consciousness evolution is from the ego-bound to the transpersonal form. If this is so, it is a source of great hope. Transpersonal consciousness is open to more of the information that reaches the brain than the dominant consciousness of today. This could have momentous consequences. It could produce greater empathy among people, and greater sensitivity to animals, plants, and the entire biosphere. It could create subtle contact with other parts of the cosmos. It could change our world. A society hallmarked by transpersonal consciousness is not likely to be materialistic and self-centered; it would be more deeply and widely informed." - Ervin László
"Our experience of the core consciousness of the world is ultimately an experience of the universal domain of consciousness Western religions call God. The experience itself, if not its interpretation, is the same in all religions, and in all religions it inspires a sense of oneness and belonging. " - Ervin László
"But how does science's answer to the question regarding the fundamental significance of the spiritual experience relate to the answer given by religion? For the world's religions the larger and deeper reality to which the spiritual experience connects us is a numinous, divine reality. It's either a spirit or consciousness that infuses the natural world (the "immanentist" view), or a spirit or consciousness that's above and beyond it (the "transcendentalist" claim). Traditional polytheistic religions were leaning toward the former, while the Abrahamic monotheistic religions (with some exceptions) embraced the latter." - Ervin László
"Evolving our consciousness is not something we do only for ourselves - it is something we also do for others...for all others, and for the earth. Because we open up and let our body and mind feel the ties with others and with nature, we change ourselves, and change others around us. When a sufficient number of people pray or meditate together, or find another path to evolve their consciousness, other people are affected as well. More sick people heal, divorce and suicide rates drop, crime and violence diminish. When many people open up, a powerful force develops - a leap of consciousness takes place." - Ervin László
"Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world. If I say that there cannot be more than one consciousness in the same mind, this seems a blunt tautology — we are quite unable to imagine the contrary." - Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
"There is no kind of framework within which we can find consciousness in the plural; this is simply something we construct because of the temporal plurality of individuals, but it is a false construction... The only solution to this conflict insofar as any is available to us at all lies in the ancient wisdom of the Upanishad... Vedanta teaches that consciousness is singular, all happenings are played out in one universal consciousness and there is no multiplicity of selves." - Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
"Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else." - Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
"The consciousness of the individual person unfolds as the experience of his own inner history. Every single moment is a phase in his historical becoming. Everything coming into consciousness in a specific moment is determined by how it fits into the course of this becoming or how it arrests or runs counter to it. Everything attention lays hold of, is present and is now. But this Now is the Now of the inner life-history, whose progress in becoming is not measurable by the standard of objective time" - Erwin Straus
"Happiness is the soul’s joy in the possession of the intangible. Absolute, perfect, continuous happiness in life is impossible for the human. It would mean the consummation of attainments, the individual consciousness of a perfectly fulfilled destiny. Happiness is a paradox because it may coexist with trial, sorrow and poverty. It is the gladness of the heart, rising superior to all conditions… Man might possess everything tangible in the world and yet not be happy, for happiness is the satisfying of the soul, not of the mind or the body." - William George Jordan
"The deepest cause of the present devastation is found in a mode of consciousness that has established a radical discontinuity between the human and other modes of being and the bestowal of all rights on the humans... All human activities, professions, programs, and institutions must henceforth be judged primarily by the extent to which they inhibit, ignore, or foster a mutually enhancing human/Earth relationship." -
"The great basic thought that the world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of processes, in which the things apparently stable no less than their mind-images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away, in which, in spite of all seeming accidents and of all temporary retrogression, a progressive development asserts itself in the end—this great fundamental thought has, especially since the time of Hegel, so thoroughly permeated ordinary consciousness that in this generality it is scarcely ever contradicted. " - Friedrich Engels
"Speaking generally, punishment hardens and numbs, it produces concentration, it sharpens the consciousness of alienation, it strengthens the power of resistance." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"Why should the peculiarities of human consciousness be the narrow standard by which other creatures are judged?" - Gary Snyder
"An intention is a quality of consciousness that you bring to an action." - Gary Zukav
"The first spiritual law of success is the law of pure potentiality. This law is based on the act that we are, in our essential state, pure consciousness. Pure consciousness is pure potentiality; it is the field of all possibilities and infinite creativity. Pure consciousness is our spiritual essence. Being infinite and unbounded, it is also pure joy. Other attributes of consciousness are pure knowledge, infinite silence, perfect balance, invincibility, simplicity, and bliss. This is our essential nature. Our essential nature is one of pure potentiality." - Deepak Chopra
"The great thing however is, in the show of the temporal and the transient to recognize the substance which is immanent and the eternal which is present. For the work of Reason (which is synonymous with the Idea) when considered in its own actuality, is to simultaneously enter external existence and emerge with an infinite wealth of forms, phenomena and phases — a multiplicity that envelops its essential rational kernel with a motley outer rind with which our ordinary consciousness is earliest at home. It is this rind that the Concept must penetrate before Reason can find its own inward pulse and feel it still beating even in the outward phases. But this infinite variety of circumstances which is formed in this element of externality by the light of the rational essence shining in it — all this infinite material, with its regulatory laws — is not the object of philosophy....To comprehend what is, is the task of philosophy: and what is is Reason." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
"Two things must be distinguished in consciousness; first, the fact that I know; secondly, what I know. In self consciousness these are merged in one; for Spirit knows itself. It involves an appreciation of its own nature, as also an energy enabling it to realise itself; to make itself actually that which it is potentially. According to this abstract definition it may be said of Universal History, that it is the exhibition of Spirit in the process of working out the knowledge of that which it is potentially. And as the germ bears in itself the whole nature of the tree, and the taste and form of its fruits, so do the first traces of Spirit virtually contain the whole of that History." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
"The whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought. In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it… Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. " - George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair
"Everything which is, is thought, but not conscious and individual thought. The human intelligence is but the consciousness of being. It is what I have formulated before: Everything is a symbol of a symbol, and a symbol of what? of mind." - Henri Frédéric Amiel
"The solution to the problem of the day is the awakening of the consciousness of humanity to the divinity within." - Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
"As there must be moderation in other things, so there must be moderation in self-criticism. Perpetual contemplation of our own actions produces a morbid consciousness, quite unlike that normal consciousness accompanying right actions spontaneously done; and from a state of unstable equilibrium long maintained by effort, there is apt to be a fall towards stable equilibrium, in which the primitive nature reasserts itself. Retrogression rather than progression may hence result." - Herbert Spencer
"The evil of our time is the loss of consciousness of evil. " - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"Desire means you are dragged out of the moment; that creates a tension, that creates anxiety, that creates hope. And then finally hope turns sour, becomes frustration. Each hope leads you into anguish. Buddha calls it the only impurity. Cut the roots of desire, live in the moment so totally, pull yourself out of the past and don't project yourself into the future. Let this moment be all and all. And your life will have such a purity, such a crystal-clear consciousness that right now you cannot imagine." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
"Remember, character is not of much value. What is valuable is consciousness -- not conscience but consciousness. Conscience is created by the society. The more foolish you are, the more the society is able to create a conscience in you. It gives you an idea how to live your life. It manipulates you in a very subtle way. It hypnotizes you and conditions you. And the conditioning is so long that you forget completely that these are not your ideas." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
"The great secret both of health and successful industry is the absolute yielding up of one's consciousness to the business and diversion of the hour--never permitting the one to infringe in the least degree upon the other." - Jean Charles Sismondi, fully Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi
"Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom." - Jean-Paul Sartre
"The objective of skilled agency and collaboration in the study of the human condition is to achieve not unanimity, but more consciousness. And more consciousness always implies more diversity." - Jerome Bruner, fully Jerome Seymour Bruner
"Of course, even when you see the world as a trap and posit a fundamental separation between liberation of self and transformation of society, you can still feel a compassionate impulse to help its suffering beings. In that case you tend to view the personal and the political in a sequential fashion. "I'll get enlightened first, and then I'll engage in social action." Those who are not engaged in spiritual pursuits put it differently: "I'll get my head straight first, I'll get psychoanalyzed, I'll overcome my inhibitions or neuroses or my hang-ups (whatever description you give to samsara) and then I'll wade into the fray." Presupposing that world and self are essentially separate, they imagine they can heal one before healing the other. This stance conveys the impression that human consciousness inhabits some haven, or locker-room, independent of the collective situation -- and then trots onto the playing field when it is geared up and ready. " - Joanna Macy, fully Joanna Rogers Macy
"Do not press your young children into book-learning; but teach them politeness, including the whole circle of charities which spring from the consciousness of what is due to their fellow-beings." - Johann Spurzheim, fully Johann Gaspar Spurzheim or Kaspar or Caspar
"Pain has its own noble joy, when it starts a strong consciousness of life, from a stagnant one. " - John Sterling
"I think, here is your emblem to hang in the future sky; not the cross, not the hive, but this; bright power, dark peace;Fierce consciousness joined with final disinterestedness; Life with calm death; the falcon’s realist eyes and act married to the massive mysticism of stone, which failure cannot cast down nor success make proud." - Robinson Jeffers, fully John Robinson Jeffers
"No person among us deserves any other reward for performing a brave and worthy action, but the consciousness of having served his nation." - Joseph Brant, aka Thayendanegea
"The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie. " - Joseph Brodsky
"It was under a solemn consciousness of the dangers from ecclesiastical ambition, the bigotry of spiritual pride, and the intolerance of sects... that is was deemed advisable to exclude from the national government all power to act upon the subject." - Joseph Story
"God is a wider consciousness than we are, a pure intelligence, spiritual life and actuality. He is neither one nor many, neither man nor spirit. Such predicates belong only to finite beings." - Joseph Alexander Leighton
"Only those within whose own consciousness the sun rise and set, the leaves burgeon and wither, can be said to be aware of what living is." - Joseph Wood Krutch
"We have said that consciousness is an operation rather than a thing, a repository, or a function. It operates by way of analogy, by way of constructing an analog space with an analog ‘I’, that can observe that space, and move metaphorically in it. It operates on any reactivity, excerpts relevant aspects, narratizes and conciliates them together in a metaphorical space where such meanings can be manipulated like things in space." - Julian Jaynes
"Conscious mind is a spatial analog of the world and mental acts are analogs of bodily acts. Consciousness operates only on objectively observable things. Or, to say it another way with echoes of John Locke, there is nothing in consciousness that is not an analog of something that was in behavior first." - Julian Jaynes
"Behavior now must be changed from within the new consciousness rather than from Mosaic laws carving behavior from without. Sin and desire are now within conscious desire and conscious contrition, rather than in the external behaviors of the decalogue and the penances of temple sacrifice and community punishment. The divine kingdom to be regained is psychological not physical. It is metaphorical not literal. It is "within" not in extenso." - Julian Jaynes
"[Memory is] A strange echo, which stores its replicas according to some other acoustic than consciousness or expectation. " - Julio Cortázar
"In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material forces of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society — the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness." - Karl Marx
"Where speculation ends — in real life — there real, positive science begins: the representation of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of men. Empty talk about consciousness ceases, and real knowledge has to take place. When reality is depicted, philosophy as an independent branch of activity loses its medium of existence. " - Karl Marx
"Irony is a clear consciousness of an eternal agility, of the infinitely abundant chaos." - Karl Wilheim Friedrich Schlegel, later Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel
"All the masters tell us that the reality of life - which our noisy waking consciousness prevents us from hearing - speaks to us chiefly in silence. " - Karlfried Graf Von Dürckheim, fully Karl Friedrich Alfred Heinrich Ferdinand Maria Graf Eckbrecht von Dürckheim-Montmartin
"There is only one real computer - the universe - whose hardware is made up of non-spatial states of consciousness and software is made up of superhuman as well as non-superhuman thoughts." - Kedar Joshi
"My existence is such that "I" do not really exist. At the end of understanding so much I understand that I know nothing. I suffer for being surrounded by intense suffering and yet I'm deeply suspicious if first of all there is indeed any consciousness except me. I strive to find the artist who might have fathered this great universal art but feel myself to be too feeble to accomplish this seemingly unattainable mission. Yet I have every respect for life, and it is this sheer respect that makes me live." - Kedar Joshi
"The non-spatial nature of consciousness makes it possible for any apparently unconscious entity to be conscious, and vice versa." - Kedar Joshi