Jay Nelson > Jay's Quotes

“Consciousness is a dance between perception and memory.”
― Jay Nelson, Consciousness in a Nutshell: A Psychonautical Odyssey

“In the ancient Indian Upanishads, the answer to the question “Who am I?” is “Tat tvam asi.” This succinct Sanskrit sentence means literally: “Thou art That,” or “You are Godhead.” It suggests that we are not namarupa—name and form (body/ego), but that our deepest identity is with a divine spark in our innermost being (Atman) that is ultimately identical with the supreme universal principle (Brahman). And Hinduism is not the only religion that has made this discovery. The revelation concerning the identity of the individual with the divine is the ultimate secret that lies at the mystical core of all great spiritual traditions. The name for this principle could thus be the Tao, Buddha, Cosmic Christ, Allah, Great Spirit, Sila, and many others.”
― Stanislav Grof, Holotropic Breathwork

“Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.
Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.

Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.”
― Rumi

“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”
― Carl Sagan

“The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore, we've learned most of what we know. Recently, we've waded a little way out, maybe ankle-deep, and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return, and we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one. ”
― Martin Heidegger

“Nature shall be the visible spirit, and spirit, invisible nature.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

“We are the cosmos made conscious and life is the means by which the universe understands itself.”
― Brian Cox

“To achieve great things we must be self-confined...mastery is revealed in limitation.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

“The I think, I am, is, since Descartes, the basic mistake of all knowledge; thinking is not my thinking, and being is not my being, for everything is only of God or of the totality.”
― Friedrich Schelling

“Those, then, who want to find themselves at the starting point of a truly free philosophy, have to depart even from God. Here the motto is: whoever wants to preserve it will lose it, and whoever abandons it will find it. Only those have reached the ground in themselves and have become aware of the depths of life, who have at one time abandoned everything and have themselves been abandoned by everything, for whom everything has been lost, and who have found themselves alone, face-to-face with the infinite: a decisive step which Plato compared with death. That which Dante saw written on the door of the inferno must be written in a different sense also at the entrance to philosophy: ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’ Those who look for true philosophy must be bereft of all hope, all desire, all longing. They must not wish anything, not know anything, must feel completely bare and impoverished, must give everything away in order to gain everything. It is a grim step to take, it is grim to have to depart from the final shore.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

“Without contradiction, there would be no life, no movement, no progress, a deadly slumber of all forces.”
― Schelling

“This is not the time to reawaken old oppositions, but rather to seek what lies above and beyond all opposition.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

“1."All rules for study are summed up in this one: learn only in order to create."

2"The human brain is the highest bloom of the whole organic metamorphosis of the earth."

3 "The failure to invest in civil justice is directly related to the increase in criminal disorder. The more people feel there is injustice the more it becomes part of their psyche."

4."Architecture in general is frozen music."

~ Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

“You are not IN the universe, you ARE the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself. What an amazing miracle.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

“To him who has had the experience no explanation is necessary, to him who has not, none is possible.”
― Ram Dass, Be Here Now

“Its the not the Destination, It's the journey.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series

“Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“Religions are founded by what mystics say when they come back; but what the mystics say is not the same as what HAPPENED to them.”
― Ram Dass

“In all spiritual practice, the strategy is the same: to identify the thing that frightens you and come as close to it as you can before you freak out.”
― Ram Dass, Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying

“Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.”
― Ram Dass

“The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”
― Brad Pitt