This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The word shaman in the original Tungus language refers to a person who makes journeys to nonordinary reality in an altered state of consciousness ... Although the term is from Siberia, the practice of shamanism existed on all inhabited continents. After years of extensive research, Mircea Eliade, in his book, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, concluded that shamanism underlays all the other spiritual traditions on the planet, and that the most distinctive feature of shamanism—but by no means the only one—was the journey to other worlds in an altered state of consciousness.
Consciousness | Journey | Language | Means | Practice | Reality |
Miguel de Unamuno, fully Miguel de Unamuno y Jogo
To say that everything is idea or that everything is spirit, is the same as saying that everything is matter or that everything is energy, for if everything is idea or spirit, just as my consciousness is, it is not plain why the diamond should not endure forever, if my consciousness, because it is idea or spirit, endures forever.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Control of consciousness determines the quality of life.
Miguel de Unamuno, fully Miguel de Unamuno y Jogo
Everything that exalts and expands consciousness is good, while that which depresses and diminishes is evil.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Pain and pleasure occur in consciousness and exist only there.
Miguel de Unamuno, fully Miguel de Unamuno y Jogo
There is in me a principle which thinks, wills and feels... Now this implies a begging of the question. For it is far from being an immediate truth that there is in me such a principle; the immediate truth is that I think, will and feel. And I — the I that thinks, wills and feels — am immediately my living body with the states of consciousness which it sustains. It is my living body that thinks, wills and feels.
Body | Consciousness | Truth | Will | Wills |
Miguel de Unamuno, fully Miguel de Unamuno y Jogo
Consciousness (conscientia) is participated knowledge, is co-feeling, and co-feeling is com-passion. Love personalizes all that it loves. Only by personalizing it can we fall in love with an idea. And when love is so great and so vital, so strong and so overflowing, that it loves everything, then it personalizes everything and discovers that the total All, that the Universe, is also a person possessing a Consciousness, a Consciousness which in its turn suffers, pities, and loves, and therefore is consciousness. And this Consciousness of the Universe, which a love, personalizing all that it loves, discovers, is what we call God.
Consciousness | Love |
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
I am a fanatical lover of truth and freedom which I consider the only surroundings in which intelligence, consciousness and happiness develop and increase.
Consciousness | Freedom | Truth | Happiness |
Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais
The aim is a body that is organized to move with minimum effort and maximum efficiency, not through muscular strength but increased consciousness of how it works.
Body | Consciousness | Effort | Strength |
Behind the repudiation of the ceremonial by the reformers lay a radically different conceptual world, a world in which text was everything, sign nothing... would take centuries for the Church of England to acknowledge and try to recover what it had lost... its place text ('the word') became in its own way a different sort of worshipped image, one which sometimes excluded feeling and the deep movements of the unconscious mind which ritual had faithfully fed. It is not, of course, that poetry or powerful preaching cannot express feeling, but that part of our human consciousness is pre-literate, both historically and in our personal childhood experience, and the whole of our experience cannot necessarily be captured by words. It may be important to lay wordless experiences alongside the wordy ones, as in music, colour, form, movement and smell.
Childhood | Church | Consciousness | Experience | Important | Mind | Poetry | World |
Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais
The aim [of the Feldenkrais Method] is a person that is organized to move with minimum effort and maximum efficiency, not through muscular strength, but through increased consciousness of how movement works.
Consciousness | Effort |
Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
Anger (being hostile) is a quality which to some, is like a religion. How can we kill it? It can only be killed by a sharpened intellect (koorvaputhi). Anger is like an elephant, - heavy, burdensome, which obliterates everything on its path, and cannot be killed easily. A very sharp intellect is the only weapon with which you can kill it. In folklore, it is said that if you are able to kill it, you are likened to a 'dev muni' (a petty god in tamil folklore). To us, it means that one could realise the Truth (Haqq) which is Allah. Further we have arrogance, which is the "I" in me, and everything else that is associated with the "I". It is also said in Tamil folklore, that so long as the pride and arrogance remains as the "I" in me, they will slaughter me. That "I" consciousness will unerringly drag my mind down to abysmal depths of degradation. Like a mote in your eye which affects your vision, it blocks the power of the mind. Whilst the arrogance of the "I" infects the mind, and whilst the greed of "mine" envelops the mind, then you are under the fatal stranglehold. Then your eyes are dazzled by the visions portrayed, and you succumb to that stranglehold. So the constant intention and inward prayer should be - "Oh Allah, the Almighty Power, let the arrogance that is "I", and the greed that is called "mine" be cast asunder, that I shall see Thee in all thy Majesty". That is the priceless effulgent Thing. That is why we always say, annihilate the "I", because that is the cause of your disease of misery, (thoonbam). Your pride, your arrogance, your greed, your lust, your attachments, all have the "I", your base ego being the generator. The idea of "I" and "mine" permeates your entire being and taints your every thought and action, your conduct and behaviour. Therefore, if and when you come to possess the knowledge to cross this abyss of the "I" and "mine" then that knowledge you must have before you can pursue your religion, whatever it may be.
Anger | Arrogance | Cause | Conduct | Consciousness | Disease | Ego | God | Greed | Intention | Kill | Knowledge | Means | Mind | Power | Prayer | Pride | Thought | Truth | Will | God | Intellect | Thought |
Nahmanides, aka Rabbi Moses ben Naḥman Girondi, Bonastruc ça Porta and by his acronym RaMBaN NULL
An individual should hold an awareness of God and His love All the time. He should not separate his consciousness from the Divine while he journeys on the way, nor when he lies down nor when he rises up.
Awareness | Consciousness | God | Individual | Love | God | Awareness |
Perhaps the most obvious of our systemic problems is uncontrollable growth. I use the word “uncontrollable” advisedly, in preference to “uncontrolled.” The growth of which I speak is not humanity’s colonization of the planet over millennia of history. It is rather an inexorable material reality that is unique to our era: namely, that unlimited economic growth is assumed to be evidence of human progress. We have taken this notion so much for granted over the past few generations that it is as immutably fixed in our consciousness as the sanctity of property itself.
Consciousness | Evidence | Growth | Past | Preference | Problems | Property | Reality | Unique |
Nachman of Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Bratslav, Nachman from Uman NULL
The Blessed Holy One constantly constricts his godliness from utmost infinity to the most finite center point of this physical world and he sends to each person thought, speech and deed according to the person and according to the time and place. He enclothes within the thought, speech and deed, hints, in order to bring the person close to his service. Therefore a person needs to delve his mind into this and expand his consciousness in order to understand what the hints are in their details which Hashem is sending to him in the thoughts, words, and deeds of this day according to the specific circumstances he finds himself in. In business or work and in everything that Hashem sends to him each day he needs to delve and expand his mind in it, in order to understand the hints of Hashem.
Business | Circumstances | Consciousness | Day | Deeds | Mind | Order | Speech | Time | Work | World | Deeds | Business | Blessed | Understand |
The natural inclination of a child is to take pleasure in the use of the mind no less than of the body. The child's primary business is learning. It is also the primary entertainment. To retain that orientation into adulthood, so that consciousness is not a burden but a joy, is the mark of the successfully developed human being.
Business | Consciousness | Inclination | Mind | Pleasure | Business | Child |
Faith is the commitment of one's consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof. When man rejects reason as his standard of judgement, only one alternative standard remains to him: his feelings. A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition. Faith is the equation of feelings with knowledge.
Commitment | Consciousness | Evidence | Faith | Feelings | Man | Reason |
Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
The extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains.
Ability | Consciousness | Love | Space |
The mythologies represent genuine reflection and not a little insight. They reveal man's simple, naïve consciousness busying itself with the explanation of things.
Consciousness | Little | Reflection |
From childhood I was compelled to concentrate attention upon myself. This caused me much suffering, but to my present view, it was a blessing in disguise for it has taught me to appreciate the inestimable value of introspection in the preservation of life, as well as a means of achievement. The pressure of occupation and the incessant stream of impressions pouring into our consciousness through all the gateways of knowledge make modern existence hazardous in many ways. Most persons are so absorbed in the contemplation of the outside world that they are wholly oblivious to what is passing on within themselves. The premature death of millions is primarily traceable to this cause. Even among those who exercise care, it is a common mistake to avoid imaginary, and ignore the real dangers. And what is true of an individual also applies, more or less, to a people as a whole.
Attention | Childhood | Consciousness | Contemplation | Death | Disguise | Existence | Individual | Knowledge | Means | Mistake | Occupation | People | Present | World | Contemplation | Value |