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"The mode of consciousness of nonhuman species is quite different from human consciousness."
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"We can tell a lot about a creature's level of consciousness by understanding their perception of death."

"The universe perceives itself through us, or to be more specific, through our neurons."

"Consciousness is a magic of our brain and an illusion of our mind."

"Various fascinating psychological elements are involved in the transcendental state of human consciousness. One may lose the ability to distinguish one's self from the rest of the world in transcendence, but still it is the human brain that constructs that state of mind. Hence, even in that altered state of consciousness one is not totally devoid of one's beliefs, conjectures, ideas and fantasies. In fact, these ideas fill up the transcendental experience with all kinds of fanatic stories that happen to be unique, based on the person's inner urges and drives."

"When I tried to understand consciousness, I found out how simple it was, but we try to make it so complicated."

"Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be?"

"In your usual state of consciousness, there is a separate quale experience of everything you observe. But when you transcend into the domain of absolute divinity, all your qualia get mixed up."

"One can ask why the I has to appear in the cogito {Descartes' argument "I think therefore I am.}, since the cogito, if used rightly, is the awareness of pure consciousness, not directed at any fact or action. In fact the I is not necessary here, since it is never united directly to consciousness. One can even imagine a pure and self-aware consciousness which thinks of itself as impersonal spontaneity."

"My experience of that liberation, what Buddha had called Nirvana, set me off in the path of scientific investigation of that Oneness, the thing people call, meeting with God. And that meeting triggered an unquenchable thirst in me to develop a proper scientific method to understand and further explore that apparently bizarre domain of Universal Consciousness."

"The spark of consciousness is reflected in the river, where a dance of infinite faces lined in profane lights."
Explore more quotes by J. M. Coetzee

"In its conception the literature prize belongs to days when a writer could still be thought of as, by virtue of his or her occupation, a sage, someone with no institutional affiliations who could offer an authoritative word on our times as well as on our moral life."

"The writers who have the deepest influence on one are those one reads in ones more impressionable, early life, and often it is the more youthful works of those writers that leave the deepest imprint."

"As you see, I do not treat the creation of fiction, that to say the invention and development of fantasies, as a form of abstract thought. I dont wish to deny the uses of the intellect, but sometimes one has the intuition that the intellect by itself will lead one nowhere."

"There are works of literature whose influence is strong but indirect because it is mediated through the whole of the culture rather than immediately through imitation. Wordsworth is the case that comes to mind."

"The most important of all rights is the right to life, and I cannot foresee a day when domesticated animals will be granted that right in law."

"I see no marks of Wordsworths style of writing or style of thinking in my own work, yet Wordsworth is a constant presence when I write about human beings and their relations to the natural world."

"That has always seemed to me one of the stranger aspects of literary fame: you prove your competence as a writer and an inventor of stories, and then people clamour for you to make speeches and tell them what you think about the world."

"The idea of writer as sage is pretty much dead today. I would certainly feel very uncomfortable in the role."
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