“If you’re not doing some things that are crazy, then you’re doing the wrong things.”
“Companies fail because they do the wrong things or they aren’t ambitious, not because of litigation or competition.”
“Governments are now afraid of the Internet because of the Middle East stuff, and so they’re a little more willing to listen to what I see as a lot of commercial interests that just want to make money by restricting people’s freedoms.”
Larry Page
“The idea that humans are special, that they are singled out by the gift of consciousness above all other creatures, stems from the deeply held Judeo-Christian belief that we occupy a privileged place in the order of things, a belief with a biblical but no empirical basis. We are not special. We are just one species among uncountable others.”
“Imagine a construction set of a thousand different types of LEGO bricks of distinct colors, shapes, and sizes. The human cerebral cortex has sixteen billion bricks chosen from these types, assembled according to fantastically elaborate rules, such as a red 2×4 brick is linked to a blue 2×4 but only if it is near a yellow 2×2 roof tile and a green 2×6 piece. From this is born the vast interconnectedness of the brain.”
“It is not the nature of the stuff that the brain is made out of that matters for mind, it is rather the organization of that stuff – the way the parts of the system are hooked up , their causal interactions.”
— Consciousness by Christof Koch
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.” — Martha Graham
Kevin Kelly thinks we’ve reached a point where “rather than be surrounded by ordinariness we’ll float in extraordinariness.”
“The internet is like a lens which focuses the extraordinary into a beam, and that beam has become our illumination. It compresses the unlikely into a small viewable band of everyday-ness. As long as we are online – which is almost all day many days — we are illuminated by this compressed extraordinariness. It is the new normal.”
“That light of super-ness changes us. We no longer want mere presentations, we want the best, greatest, the most extraordinary presenters alive, as in TED. We don’t want to watch people playing games, we want to watch the highlights of the highlights, the most amazing moves, catches, runs, shots, and kicks, each one more remarkable and improbable than the other.”
A few paragraphs from an inspiring and thought-provoking post by the always-brilliant Kevin Kelly:
“These homes have no running water, no grid electricity, and no toilets. They don’t even have outhouses. But the farmers and their children who live in these homes all have cell phones, and they have accounts on the Chinese versions of Twitter and Facebook, and recharge via solar panels.”
“The farmers in rural China have chosen cell phones and twitter over toilets and running water. You can go to almost any African village to see this. And it is not because they are too poor to afford a toilet. As you can see from these farmers’ homes in Yunnan, they definitely could have at least built an outhouse if they found it valuable. But instead they found the intangible benefits of connection to be greater than the physical comforts of running water.”
“The 3rd Industrial Revolution is not really computers and the internet, it is the networking of everything. We have only begun to connect everything to everything and to make little network minds everywhere. It may take another 80 years for the full affect of this revolution to be revealed.”
“Humans are more than just conscious; they are also self-aware. Scientists differ on how they distinguish between consciousness and self-awareness, but here is one common distinction: consciousness is awareness of your body and your environment; self-awareness is recognition of that consciousness—not only understanding that you exist but further comprehending that you are aware of your existence. Another way of considering it: to be conscious is to think; to be self-aware is to realize that you are a thinking being and to think about your thoughts.”
— Scientific American
One of my favorite bits of dialogue in Carl Hiaasen’s Skin Tight:
“But I don’t want to many you,” she said. “I promise. Even if you ask me afterwards, I’ll say no—no matter how great it was. Besides, I’m not a waitress. You said all the others were waitresses.”
He groaned and said, “Tina, I’m sorry. It just won’t work.”
“How do you know it won’t work?” she said to Stranahan
“I’m too old.”
“Bullshit.”
“And you’re too young.”
”Double bullshit.”
“Okay,” he said. “Then name the Beatles.”
“What?” Tina forced a caustic laugh. “Are you serious?”
“Dead serious” Stranahan said, addressing her from the edge of the roof. “If you can name all the Beatles, I’ll make love to you right now. ”
“I don’t believe this,” Tina said. “The fucking Beatles.”
Stranahan had done the math in his head: She was nineteen, which meant she had been born the same year the band broke up.
‘Well, there’s Paul,” Tina said.
“Last name? Come on! Let’s hear it.”
“McCartney, okay? I don’t believe this.”
Stranahan said, “Go on, you’re doing fine.”
“Ringo,” Tina said. “Ringo Starr. The drummer with the nose.”
“Good.”
“And then there’s the guy who died. Lennon.”
“First name?”
“I know his son is Julian.”
“His son doesn’t count.”
Tina said, “Yeah, well, you’re an asshole. It’s John. John Lennon.”
Stranahan nodded appreciatively. “Three down, one to go. You’re doing great.”
Tina folded her arms and tried to think of the last Beatle. Her lips were pursed in a most appealing way, but Stranahan stayed on the roof. “I’ll give you a hint,” he said to Tina. “Lead guitar.”
She looked up at him, triumph shining in her gray eyes. “Harrison,” she declared. ”Keith Harrison!
“There is no rest of life. Life is one. Without beginning, without middle, without ending. The concept: beginning middle and meaning comes from a sense of self which separates itself from what it considers to be the rest of life. But this attitude is untenable unless one insists on stopping life and bringing it to an end. That thought is in itself an attempt to stop life, for life goes on, indifferent to the deaths that are part of its no beginning, no middle, no meaning. How much better to simply get behind and push!” — John Cage
Excerpts from I Am That by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
All your problems are your body’s problems. All these lose their meaning the moment you realize that you may not be a mere body. You are nothing perceivable, or imaginable.#
Memory creates the illusion of continuity.
Time, space, causation are mental categories, arising and subsiding with the mind.
Nothing can happen unless the entire universe makes it happen. A thing is as it is, because the universe is as it is.
The world you can perceive is a very small world indeed. And it is entirely private. Take it to be a dream and be done with it.
Excerpts from The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi (Edited by David Godman)
There is a single immanent reality, directly experienced by everyone, which is simultaneously the source, the substance and the real nature of everything that exists.
The Self is not an experience of individuality but a non-personal, all-inclusive awareness.
Sri Ramana’s God is not a personal God, he is the formless being which ustains the universe. He is not the creator of the univers, the universe is merely a manifestation of his inherent power; he is inseparable from it.
The mind turned inward is the Self; turned outwards, it becomes the ego and all the world.
The thoughts are the content of the mind and they shape the universe.
To make room, it is enough that objects be removed. Room is not brought in from elsewhere.
Bliss is not added to your nature, it merely revealed as your true natural state.
Trouble and pleasure are only for the ego.
The state free from thoughts is the only real state.
It is the mind that veils our happiness.
Self-realisation could be brought about merely by giving up the idea that there is an individual self which functions through the body and the mind.
The aim of self-enquiry is to discover, by direct experience, that the mind is non-existent.
The mind and the ego are one and the same.
When the mind unceasingly investigates its own nature, it transpires that there is no such thing as mind. The mind is merely thoughts. The mind is only they thought ‘I’
The ego functions as the knot between the Self which is pure consciousness and the physical body which is inert and insentient.
The essence of mind is only awareness or consciousness. When the ego, however, dominates it, it functions as the reasoning, thinking or sensing faculty.
Realisation is nothing new to be acquired. It is already there, but obstructed by a screen of thoughts.
Reality is simply the loss of ego.
As the practice develops the thought ‘I’ gives way to a subjectively experienced feeling of ‘I’, and when this feeling ceases to connect and identify with thoughts and objects, it completely vanishes. What remains is an experience of being in which the sense of individuality has temporarily ceased to operate.
It is not an exercise in concentration, nor does it aim at suppressing thoughts; it merely invokes awareness of the source from which the mind springs. … From then on it is more a process of being than doing, of effortless being rather than an effort to be. … Ultimately, the Self is not discovered as a result of doing anything, but only by being.
If you are vigilant and make a stern effort to reject every thought when it arises you will soon find that you are going deeper and deeper into your own inner self.
You have to ask yourself question “Who am I?’ This investigation will lead in the end to the discovery of something within you which is behind the mind. Solve that great problem and you will solve all other problems.
One must be completely free of the idea that there is an individual person who is capable of acting independently of God.
(The) final destruction of the ‘I’ takes place only if the self-surrender has been completely motiveless.
If one surrenders oneself there will be no one to ask questions or to be thought of.
You must be satisfied with whatever God gives you and that means having no desires of your own. You can have no likes or dislikes after your surrender.
It is the higher power that does everything, and man is only a tool.
The Self does not move, the world moves in it.
Pleasure or pain are aspects of the mind only. Our essential nature is happiness. But we have forgotten the Self and imagine that the body or the mind is the Self.
So long as there is thought there will be fear. #
The ego is the source of thought. #
Because you identify yourself with the body, you think that work is done by you.
We must play our parts on the stage of life, but we must not identify ourselves with those parts. #
Many a man would be only too glad to be rid of his diseased body and all the problems and inconveniences it creates for him if continued awareness were vouchsafed to him. It is the awareness, the consciousness, and not the body, he fears to lose.
One first creates out of one’s mind and then sees what one’s mind itself has created.
Clearly the world is your thought. Thoughts are your projections. The ‘I’ is first created and then the world. The world is created by the ‘I’ which in its turn rises up from the Self. (We) must admit that the world is (our) own imagination.
The universe is real if perceived as the Self.
You do not know what you were before birth, yet you want to know what you will be after death. Do you know what you are now?
Experience takes place only in the present, and beyond experience nothing exists. Even the present is mere imagination, for the sense of time is purely mental. Space is similarly mental. Therefore birth and rebirth, which take place in time and space, cannot be other than imagination. Real rebirth is dying from the ego into the spirit.
Birth pertains to the ego, which is an illusion of the mind.
God never acts, he just is. He has neither will nor desire. … The totality of all lthings and beings constitutes God.
Whatever this body is to do and whatever experiences it is to pass through was already decided when it came into existance.
As long as individuality lasts there is free will. … Only the ego is bound by destiny and not the Self.
Surrender can never be regarded as complete so long as the devotee wants this or than from the Lord.