Consciousness States Quotes

As a longtime practitioner of yoga and a person who's been involved in physical fitness my whole life, I can tell you, yoga helps you achieve altered states of consciousness. It is not just stretching. The only way you can say that it's stretching is if you haven't done it, or that you haven't done it rigorously for a long period of time.

The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist.

I read a book called 'The Tao of Physics' by Fritjof Capra that pointed out the parallels between quantum physics and eastern mysticism. I started to feel there was more to reality than conventional science allowed for and some interesting ideas that it hadn't got round to investigating, such as altered states of consciousness.

In a special sense... the three great natural states of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep contain an entire spectrum of spiritual enlightenment.

Apart from thoughts, there is no independent entity called the world. In deep sleep there are no thoughts, and there is no world. In the states of waking and dream, there are thoughts, and there is a world also. Just as the spider emits the thread (of the web) out of itself and again withdraws it into itself, likewise the mind projects the world out of itself and again resolves it into itself.

Time is only an illusion produced by the succession of our states of consciousness as we travel through eternal duration, and it does not exist where no consciousness exists in which the illusion can be produced; but "lies asleep."

Pursuit and possession are accompanied by states of consciousness so wide apart that they can never be united.

The Buddhists say there are 121 states of consciousness. Of these, only three involve misery or suffering. Most of us spend our time moving back and forth between these three.

Warm water rebirthing has a tendency to regress people to birth memories and prenatal states of consciousness.

All Christian religions are outer-directed. "Who can I convert?" "Let's go to this country and make them Christians." "Wear this." "Do that." "No, don't worship that way. Worship this way or I'll kill you - for the good of your soul, of course." Meanwhile, followers of Eastern religions are sitting in the middle of their minds, experiencing a bliss and a level of consciousness that Western man can't begin to approach.

As the practical value of altering consciousness becomes recognized, procedures to effect these alterations will become increasingly ordinary and unremarkable. The whole concept of changing states of consciousness will cease to have a threatening or exotic aspect.

The states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to exist; but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is superfluous.

I don’t mean to make a big deal out of sobriety, by the way. Of all the modes of human consciousness available to the modern consumer I consider it to be the most overrated.

Ritual use of psychedelic plants and substances has been a particularly effective technology for inducing holotropic states of consciousness.