When I say that consciousness is an illusion I do not mean that consciousness does not exist. I mean that consciousness is not what it appears to be. If it seems to be a continuous stream of rich and detailed experiences, happening one after the other to a conscious person, this is the illusion.Susan Blackmore
About This Quote
This is a profound statement from the Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Sir John Eccles about the human sense of self. I believe that what he meant to say is that consciousness itself is not a continuous stream of rich and detailed experiences, happening one after the other to a conscious person. The word “illusion” is a bit too strong, though. It seems to be a very complicated idea that still has a lot of debate today.
Some Similar Quotes
- The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.
- Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We...
- The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.
- He suddenly recalled from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split then in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.
- It does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have gathered or how much attention you have received. It is the amount of positive vibration you have radiated in life that matters,