Jose Gonzalez Quotes

Consciousness is indeed always with us. Everyone knows 'I am!' No one can deny his own being.

The self is known to every one but not clearly. You always exist.

We live our lives based on who we think we are.

I suppose identity depends on memory. And if my memory is blotted out, then I wonder if I exist - I mean, if I am the same person. Of course, I don't have to solve that problem. It's up to God, if any.

The Self has turned out to mean so many things, to mean them so ambiguously, and to be so wavering in its application, that we do not feel encouraged.

How can you be that which you possess? You cannot be the horse and rider at the same time. Herein lies the secret of mortality and immortality.

The self is the modern substitute for the soul.

You are what you is, you is what you am, you ain't what you're not. So see what you got?

It is in your act that you exist, not in your body. Your act is yourself, and there is no other you.

Identity is this incredible invisible force that controls your whole life. It's invisible, like gravity is invisible, but it controls your whole life.

How could I have been anyone other than me?

At times I think and at times I am.

You know, I am who I am.

I--this thought which is called I--is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax.

You are -- your life, and nothing else.

A self is a frightening thing to waste, it's the lens through which one's whole life is viewed, and few people are willing to part with it, in death, or even imaginatively, in art.

Your duty is to Be, and not to be this or that.

Maybe I don't want to be defined by what I do. Maybe I'd like to be defined by what I am.

What I am is what I am. Are you what you are - or what?

What thou art, that thou art.

I'm fascinated by what makes up a self, how one becomes a self, how much is it an answer to others and how much is it an essence of self.

All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness [...] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find [...] a being which immediately recognises itself, [...] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action.

Listen,” F. Jasmine said. “What I’ve been trying to say is this. Doesn’t it strike you as strange that I am I, and you are you? I am F. Jasmine Addams. And you are Berenice Sadie Brown. And we can look at each other, and touch each other, and stay together year in and year out in the same room. Yet always I am I, and you are you. And I can’t ever be anything else but me, and you can ever be anything else but you. Have you ever thought of that? And does it seem to you strange?

If the will did not exist, neither would there be that centre of the world, which we call the I.

Your duty is to be, and not to be this or that. I Am That I Am sums up the whole truth; the method is summarized in Be Still.