The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, pg 44

“…there are several stages of creative thought: first, a stage of preparation in which the problem is consciously worked over; then a period of incubation without any conscious concentration upon the problem; and then the illumination which is later justified by logic. …Indeed, it is sometimes almost as if the problem had to be forgotten to be solved.”

The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, pg 27-28

“…consider the following problems: Does the door of your room open from the right or the left? Which is your second longest finger? At a stoplight, is it the red or the green that is on top? How many teeth do you see when brushing your teeth? What letters are associated with what numbers on a telephone dial? If you are in a familiar room, without turning around, write down all the items on the wall just behind you, and then look.

I think you will be surprised how little you can retrospect in consciousness on the supposed images you have stored from so much previous attentive experience. If the familiar door suddenly opened the other way, if another finger suddenly grew longer, if the red light were differently placed, or you had an extra tooth, or the telephone were made differently, or a new window latch had been put on the window behind you, you would know it immediately, showing that you all along ‘knew‘, but not consciously so. Familiar to psychologists, this is the distinction between recognition and recall. What you can consciously recall is a thimbleful to the huge oceans of your actual knowledge.”

To Have or to Be?

“Our understanding of the quality of knowing in the being mode of existence can be enhanced by the insights of such thinkers as the Buddha, the Hebrew prophets, Jesus, Master Eckhart, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx. In their view, knowing beings with the awareness of the deceptiveness of our common sense perceptions, in the sense that our picture of physical reality does not correspond to what is ‘really real’ and, mainly, in the sense that most people are half-awake, half-dreaming, and are unaware that most of what they hold to be true and self-evident is illusion produced by the suggestive influence of the social world in which they live. Knowing, then, begins with the shattering of illusions, with disillusionment. Knowing means to penetrate through the surface, in order to arrive at the roots, and hence the causes; knowing means to ‘see’ reality in its nakedness.”

The Symposium

“Someone is said to be the same person from childhood till old age. Although he is called the same person, he never has the same constituents, but is always being renewed in some respects and experiencing loss in others, for instance, his hair, skin, bone, blood and his whole body. This applies not only to the body but also to the mind: attributes, character-traits, beliefs, desires, pleasures, pains, fears – none of these ever remain the same in each of us, but some are emerging while others are being lost. Still more remarkable is the fact that our knowledge changes too, some items emerging, while others are lost, so we are not the same person as regards our knowledge; indeed, each individual item of knowledge goes through the same process.”

Mere Christianity

“Suppose someone asked me, when I see a man in a blue uniform going down the street leaving little paper packets at each house, why I suppose that they contain letters? I should reply, ‘Because whenever he leaves a similar little packet for me I find it does contain a letter.’ And if he then objected, ‘But you’ve never seen all these letters which you think the other people are getting,’ I should say, ‘Of course not, and I shouldn’t expect to, because they’re not addressed to me. I’m explaining the packets I’m not allowed to open by the ones I am allowed to open.’ It is the same about this question. The only packet I am allowed to open is Man. When I do, especially when I open that particular man called Myself, I find that I do not exist on my own, that I am under a law; that somebody or something wants me to behave in a certain way.”

The Origins and History of Consciousness, pg 329

“Pure existence in the unconscious, which primitive man shares with the animal, is indeed nonhuman and prehuman.  The fact that the dawn of consciousness and the creation of the world are parallel processes which throw up the same symbolism indicates that the world actually ‘exists’ only to the degree that it is cognized by an ego.  A differentiated world is the reflection of a self-differentiating consciousness.  The multiple archetypes and symbol groups split off from a primordial archetype are identical with the ego’s greater range of experience, knowledge, and insight.  Under the total impact of experience in the dawn period no particularized forms could be recognized, for the tremendous force of it extinguished the ego in a sort of numinous convulsion.  But a more informed human consciousness can experience, in the multiplicity of religions and philosophies, theologies and psychologies, the innumerable facets and meanings of the numinous, now anatomized into image and symbol, attribute and revelation.  That is to say, although the primal unity can only be experienced fragmentarily, it has at least come within range of conscious experience, whereas for the undeveloped ego it was utterly overwhelming.”

Hot, Flat, and Crowded

“‘Today we can substitute knowledge for raw materials in so many more ways.’  No, you can’t build a building with computer bits and bytes like cement bricks and mortar, but with smarter materials and smarter designs you can build a building with a lot fewer bricks and a lot less mortar.  You can build a building with tighter windows and a lot better insulation.  You can make steel with so much less iron ore and so much less heat.  You can make buildings that retain heat or cooling so much more efficiently.  You can grow more food per acre. All it takes is knowledge.”

The Art of Loving

“The teachers of paradoxical logic say that man can perceive reality only in contradictions, and can never perceive in thought the ultimate reality-unity, the One itself.  This led to the consequence that one did not seek as the ultimate aim to find the answer in thought.  Thought can only lead us to the knowledge that it cannot give us the ultimate answer.  The world of thought remains caught in the paradox.  The only way in which the world can be grasped ultimately lies, not in thought, but in the act, in the experience of oneness.  Thus, paradoxical logic leads to the conclusion that the love of God is neither the knowledge of God in thought, nor the thought of one’s love of God, but the act of experiencing the oneness with God.”  

The Art of Loving

“Sadism is motivated by the wish to know the secret, yet I remain as ignorant as I was before.  I have torn the other being apart limb from limb, yet all I have done is to destroy him.  Love is the only way of knowledge, which in the act of union answers my quest.  In the act of loving, of giving myself, in the act of penetrating the other person, I find myself, I discover myself, I discover us both, I discover man.”  

The Art of Loving

“Beyond the element of giving, the active character of love becomes evident in the fact that it always implies certain basic elements, common to all forms of love.  These are care, responsibility, respect and knowledge.”