“Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought”

—  Eckhart Tolle

Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does no…" by Eckhart Tolle?
Eckhart Tolle photo
Eckhart Tolle251
German writer 1948

Related quotes

Karl Marx photo

“Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical, real consciousness that exists for other men as well, and only therefore does it also exist for me; language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men.”

Karl Marx book The German Ideology

Source: Karl Marx. The German Ideology. 1845

C.G. Jung photo

“Without consciousness there would, practically speaking, be no world, for the world exists as such only in so far as it is consciously reflected and considered by a psyche. Consciousness is a precondition of being.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

p 48
The Undiscovered Self (1958)

Terry Eagleton photo

“All consciousness is consciousness of something: in thinking I am aware that my thought is 'pointing towards' some object.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Source: 1980s, Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), Chapter 2, p. 48

Sigmund Freud photo

“The most complicated achievements of thought are possible without the assistance of consciousness.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Voltaire photo

“Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Meher Baba photo

“Infinite consciousness being infinite includes every aspect of consciousness. Unconsciousness is one of the aspects of infiniteconsciousness.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

44 : God Alone Is, p. 72.
The Everything and the Nothing (1963)
Context: Infinite consciousness is infinite. It can never lessen at any point in time or space. Infinite consciousness being infinite includes every aspect of consciousness. Unconsciousness is one of the aspects of infiniteconsciousness. Thus infinite consciousness includes unconsciousness. It sustains, covers, pierces through and provides an end to unconsciousness — which flows from, and is consumed by, infinite consciousness.

“To be conscious is to be consciousness: Consciousness, the knower in you, cannot be known, although it can be experienced. You can experience consciousness now by experiencing the fact that you exist.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

Max Planck photo

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

Interview in 'The Observer' (25 January 1931), p.17, column 3

Ernesto Che Guevara photo

“Socialism cannot exist without a change in consciousness resulting in a new fraternal attitude toward humanity”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Afro-Asian Conference (1965)
Context: Socialism cannot exist without a change in consciousness resulting in a new fraternal attitude toward humanity, both at an individual level, within the societies where socialism is being built or has been built, and on a world scale, with regard to all peoples suffering from imperialist oppression.

Adam Schaff photo

“When in accordance with the materialistic analysis of the cognitive process we consider thought and human consciousness as linguistic thought, as thought made of language (Marx maintained that language is “my consciousness and that of others”), it is evident that any analysis of the cognitive process must also be the analysis of the linguistic process, without which thought is simply impossible.”

Adam Schaff (1913–2006) Polish Marxist philosopher and theorist

Source: Essays in the Philosophy of Language, 1967, p. 20-21

Related topics