A Quote by Edward Boyden

I worry that we don't have a very good definition of consciousness yet which makes it hard to tackle. — © Edward Boyden
I worry that we don't have a very good definition of consciousness yet which makes it hard to tackle.
We're wealthy people. We're sitting here in New York, Washington. We live in a fantastically wealthy country. We don't have to worry about food. We don't have to worry about clothing. We wore the same shirt. We don't have to worry about our safety. It's very easy for us to be environmentalists. It's very easy for me to be an environmentalist. It's very easy for me to care about making sure that we protect the forests and the whales, and all that stuff. It's very hard for someone who makes $1,000 a year or some who makes less than $1 a day to care about the environment.
Consciousness is the ground of all being; everything is consciousness. Beyond that, definition is impossible because any way we may attempt to define it would limit consciousness.
Jainism is the first religion that has made vegetarianism a fundamental necessity for transforming consciousness. And they are right. Killing just to eat makes your consciousness heavy, insensitive; and you need a very sensitive consciousness - very light, very loving, very compassionate. It is difficult for a non-vegetarian to be compassionate; and without being compassionate and loving you will be hindering your own progress.
The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive — a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence. The good, say the mystics of muscle, is Society — a thing which they define as an organism that possesses no physical form, a super-being embodied in no one in particular and everyone in general except yourself.... The purpose of man's life, say both, is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question.
There are two distinct visits to tackle-shops, the visit to buy tackle and the visit which may be described as Platonic when, being for some reason unable to fish, we look for an excuse to go in, and waste the tackle dealer's time.
Humanity starts at the level of the human consciousness and makes its deliberate way to the summit, which is God Consciousness.
Consciousness is anything you define it as. I tell people instead of waiting, just take any definition that you like, and use that, and run with it! So I don't think the issue is that we don't know what consciousness is. The issue is we don't have a consensus on what consciousness is. Far from it.
What is a good definition? For the philosopher or the scientist, it is a definition which applies to all the objects to be defined, and applies only to them; it is that which satisfies the rules of logic. But in education it is not that; it is one that can be understood by the pupils.
Of course, mysticism is very hard to isolate because, given the kind of consciousness that I was sort of instructed in as religious consciousness; that borders on mysticism so closely that it's hard to know whether you qualify or not, or whether mysticism is artificially isolated when it is treated as a separate thing from experience. Obviously, mysticism can be a form of madness, but then consciousness can be a form of madness.
The very definition of news is something that hardly ever happens. If an incident is in the news, we shouldn't worry about it. It's when something is so common that its no longer news - car crashes, domestic violence - that we should worry.
In my definition of consciousness, consciousness is the same thing as life. What wisdom traditions also call spirit.
The one real irritant is that my young children - they also adapt. They adapt to being without their father. That's a hard, hard adaption which they didn't ask for. I worry about them; I worry about their mother.
I have a very simple definition of a good movie: a good movie makes you forget you're watching a movie.
Working with kids is always hard because you have to have very limited hours. They have to have breaks, and they have to have a tutor, and they have to have a lot of - good things! But it makes it hard to shoot.
Being happy is the cornerstone of all that you are! Nothing is more important than that you feel good! And you have absolute and utter control about that because you can choose the thought that makes you worry or the thought that makes you happy; the things that thrill you, or the things that worry you. You have the choice in every moment.
Aging on camera is just very hard. I love my age. I feel good about myself but high definition television is not kind. You don't even look like yourself in high-def. It just makes every little line on your face more exaggerated so it ends up aging you. It's like you're watching yourself seven years older.
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