C. S. Lewis Quotes

How hard is it, when everything encourages us to sleep, though we may look about us with conscious, clinging eyes, to wake and yet look about us as in a dream, with eyes that no longer know their function and whose gaze is turned inward.

Once you wake up thought in a man, you can never put it to sleep again.

That which is not present in deep dreamless sleep is not real

You won’t have to watch what you say if you watch what you think.

Man ordinarily is a robot. He lives apparently awake, but not really. He walks, he talks, he acts, but it is all as if in sleep - not conscious of what he is doing, not conscious of what he is saying, not conscious of all that surrounds him. He moves surrounded in a dark cloud of unawareness. According to Gautama the Buddha, this is the original sin: to live unconsciously, to act out of unconsciousness. In fact, the word 'sin' comes from a root which means forgetfulness. Sin simply means that we are not conscious, aware, alert, that we don't have any inner light to guide us.

While one is asleep one cannot do anything that is good. Virtue is impossible in unconsciousness, only sin is possible. Unconsciousness is the source of sin.

Awareness takes over from thinking. Instead of being in charge of your life, thinking becomes the servant of awareness.

We have been so blinded by thinking and feeling that we have never seen the World.

Evil is not a thing. It cannot take possession of you. It's the opposite; it's a void, an absence of goodness. The only thing you can be frightened of here is yourself.

Actually, the ability to choose presence depends on the degree of presence that's emerging in you. Ultimately, you are not choosing, there's nobody there to choose. When you think you are choosing, presence is simply emerging in that moment.

There is no evil and there are no evil forces in the world. There are only people of awareness, and there are people who are fast asleep - and sleep has no force. The whole energy is in the hands of the awakened people. And one awakened person can awaken the whole world. One lighted candle can make millions of candles lighted without losing it's light.

Death is the black backing on the mirror that allows us to see anything at all.

We are not conscious of most things until we ask ourselves questions about them.

Mind only thinks, meditation lives.

Most men are not wicked... They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers.

The best indicator of your level of consciousness is how you deal with life's challenges when they come. Through those challenges, an already unconscious person tends to become more deeply unconscious, and a conscious person more intensely conscious. You can use a challenge to awaken you, or you can allow it to pull you into even deeper sleep. The dream of ordinary unconsciousness then turns into a nightmare.

It's very interesting to think about the distinction with mind, which I just made in very general terms, but it can be made more profound when we think that there are many species, many creatures on earth that are very likely to have a mind, but are very unlikely to have a consciousness in the sense that you and I have.

Every man has to learn the points of the compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction.

Sin is to a nature what blindness is to an eye. The blindness of an evil or defect which is a witness to the fact that the eye was created to see the light and, hence, the very lack of sight is the proof that the eye was meant... to be the one particularly capable of seeing the light. Were it not for this capacity, there would be no reason to think of blindness as a misforture.

The thinking mind is a useful and powerful tool, but it is also very limiting when it takes over your life completely, when you don't realize that it is only a small aspect of the consciousness that you are.

Our consciousness, a startling outgrowth of the universe, is possibly its most important part, the fraction of existence that can think, feel, marvel at itself.

The body sleeps, the heart sleeps, the mind sleeps - but you remain alert because you are nothing else but alertness. Everything else is a false identification. Awareness is your nature. The body is your abode. The mind is your computer. Awareness;s you, is your very being.

Life in the true sense is perceiving or thinking.

It seems to me that the real problem is the mind itself and not the problem which the mind has created and tries to solve.

Some day, the world will discover that, without thought, there can be no love.