This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The secret of our self-love is just the same as that of our liberality and candor. Wee prefer ourselves to others only because we have a more intimate consciousness and confirmed opinion of our own claims and merits than of any other person’s.
Candor | Consciousness | Love | Opinion | Self | Self-love |
Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
You become spiritually rich when you discover the riches of the kingdom within: when you have a consciousness of the oneness of all life; when you experience kinship with nature; when you are open to the buoyant spiritual life of being in tune with the Infinite; when you know the power of meditation and prayer.
Consciousness | Experience | Life | Life | Meditation | Nature | Oneness | Power | Prayer | Riches | Riches |
The soul apparently needs amorous sadness. It is a form of consciousness that brings its own unique wisdom.
Consciousness | Sadness | Soul | Unique | Wisdom |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
The necessity of saying something, the embarrassment produced by the consciousness of having nothing to say, and the desire to exhibit ability, are three things sufficient to render even a great man ridiculous.
Ability | Consciousness | Desire | Man | Necessity | Nothing |
There is a field of energy that permeates the universe. This is understood by science, and now what we're beginning to discover is that field of energy is alive. One of its qualities is sentience or consciousness, and we can interact with that field. We're not just closed off in our physical bodies. We have the capacity to interact with the larger field of consciousness; it permeates our lives and touches us day-in and day-out. If there is needless suffering happening in the world, it tinges and colors the ocean of consciousness that we swim in, and we imbibe this daily. So, if we can create a world without undue suffering--one where we're not killing off all of these species and harming one another--it will change the atmosphere of our lives.
Beginning | Capacity | Change | Consciousness | Day | Energy | Qualities | Science | Suffering | Universe | Will | World |
I think the collective unconscious is actually becoming the Collective Consciousness. With the mass media, every time we watch some event, whether it's a mass sporting event or it's the president speaking about one thing or another, we are tuning in with our collective consciousness to a happening in the world. In the past, we didn't have that ability. And so in a way, we have been awakening a capacity for reflective consciousness at a social level unbeknownst to humanity. It's an almost invisible process of bio-osmosis; we are developing a new capacity for witnessing, for being an observing species, and this is transformative.
Ability | Awakening | Capacity | Consciousness | Humanity | Past | Time | World | Think |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
To become conscious of what is unconscious and thus to enlarge one's consciousness means to get in touch with reality, and - in this sense - with truth (intellect-ually and affectively). To enlarge consciousness means to wake up, to lift a veil, to leave the cave, to bring light into the darkness. Could this be the same experience Zen Buddhists call "enlightenment?"
Consciousness | Experience | Light | Means | Sense | Truth | Zen |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
The average person's consciousness is mainly "false consciousness," consisting of fictions and illusion, while precisely what he is not aware of is reality.
In the conservative view human communication and interaction is limited to our sensory channels ... [but] we are linked by more subtle and encompassing connections as well...The connections that bind 'my' consciousness to the consciousness of others... are rediscovered today in controlled experiments with thought and image transference, and the effect of the mind of one individual on the body of another... Native tribes seem able to communicate beyond the range of eye and ear... In the laboratory also, modern people display a capacity for spontaneous transference of impressions and images, especially when they are emotionally close to each other... transpersonal contact includes the ability to transmit thoughts and images, and ... it is given to many if not all people... this is the finding of recent experiments... Reliable evidence is becoming available that the conscious mind of one person can produce repeatable and measurable effects on the body of another... [also] Intercessory prayer and spiritual healing, together with other mind- and intention-based experiments and practices, yield impressive evidence regarding the effectiveness of telepathic and telesomatic information- and energy-transmission. The pertinent practices produce real and measurable effects on people, and they are more and more widespread. But mainstream science has no explanation for them. Could it be that our consciousness is linked with other consciousnesses through an interconnecting Akashic Field, much as galaxies are linked in the cosmos, quanta in the microworld, and organisms in the world of the living?
Ability | Body | Capacity | Consciousness | Display | Evidence | Individual | Mind | People | Prayer | Science | Thought | World | Thought |
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.
Consciousness | Experience | Question | Reality | Spirit | World |
Underlying the diversified and localized gross layers of ordinary consciousness there is a unified, nonlocalized, and subtle layer: pure consciousness.
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.
Consciousness | Individual | Joy | Life | Life | Mind | Paradox | Sorrow | World | Happiness |
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.
Body | Change | Consciousness | Crime | Force | Mind | People | Suicide |
Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
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.
Consciousness | Wisdom |
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.
Change | Consciousness | Empathy | Evolution | Society | Society |
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
Attention | Consciousness | Experience | Individual | Present | Progress |