“Our whole past experience is continually in our consciousness, though most of it sunk to a great depth of dimness.”

— Charles Sanders Peirce

Vol. VII, par. 547
Collected Papers (1931-1958)
Context: Our whole past experience is continually in our consciousness, though most of it sunk to a great depth of dimness. I think of consciousness as a bottomless lake, whose waters seem transparent, yet into which we can clearly see but a little way.

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Charles Sanders Peirce 121

American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist 1839–1914

Max Velmans (1942) British psychologist

Susan Schneider and Max Velmans (2008). "Introduction". In: Max Velmans, Susan Schneider. The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. Wiley.

“For the most part, these are not new lessons, but lessons learned in different circumstances and surroundings. The fact that they are not new is of course a lesson in itself — we must continually strive to benefit from past experiences and structure our management so that past related experience can be brought to bear on current problems.”

John H. Disher (1921–1988) American aeronautical engineer and NASA manager

"Skylab Lessons Learned" (22 September 1975) at NASA Office of Logic Design http://klabs.org/richcontent/Misc_Content/AGC_And_History/Skylab/Skylab_Disher.htm

“Thus when Plotinus speaks of "the flight of the alone to the Alone," and the positivist or the empiricist asserts that these words are meaningless, he is right. Yet this does not import that the words are nonsense locutions, mere senseless noises which a man makes like a cough or a sneeze though it is possible that this is what the positivist intends. If this were so, it would be impossible to explain why generations of men have quoted those famous words. The explanation is that the words evoke in us a measure of the same experience which the author of them had. Our experience may be but a dim reflection of what was in him bright and clear. Our spirits vibrate faintly in unison with the soul of the great mystic, as a tuning fork vibrates faintly in response to the sound of the clear bell. But it is our own spontaneous experience which is evoked; it is not his experience which is communicated to us. His words are as grappling irons let down into the depths of our subconsciousness, which draw our own inner experiences nearer to the conscious threshold. But they are not, for most of us, drawn above the threshold. They remain below the surface faintly visible. Therefore they appear at the upper levels of our consciousness as faint hints, glimpses, and sometimes as mere vague feelings.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p. 91-92.

“I try to encourage people to look at our past in a critical way because as our education, we have a great, great history. But in reality we are poorest in ethics and philosophy, so I try to raise people’s consciousness on how we deal with our past.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei, interview by Christiane Amanpour, 2010

“Because our entire universe is made up of consciousness, we never really experience the universe directly we just experience our consciousness of the universe, our perception of it, so right, our only universe is perception.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

The Believer interview (2013)
Context: Yeah, our view of reality, the one we conventionally take, is one among many. It’s pretty much a fact that our entire universe is a mental construct. We don’t actually deal with reality directly. We simply compose a picture of reality from what’s going on in our retinas, in the timpani of our ears, and in our nerve endings. We perceive our own perception, and that perception is to us the entirety of the universe. I believe magic is, on one level, the willful attempt to alter those perceptions. Using your metaphor of an aperture, you would be widening that window or changing the angle consciously, and seeing what new vistas it affords you.

“Streams of ideals that originated in the summit of our past, flowing underground in the depth of India’s soul, the ideals of simplicity of life, clarity of spiritual vision, purity of heart, harmony with the universe and consciousness of the infinite personality in all creation and the urge to bring these to the surface of our daily use and purification.”

Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India

Source: Uniqueness of Zakir Husain and His Contributions (1997), p. 25.

“The past is our cradle, not our prison, and there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition.”

Israel Zangwill (1864–1926) British writer

The Voice of Jerusalem, Macmillan, 1921, p. 270

“… our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding.”

Helen Keller book The Story of My Life

Source: The Story of My Life

“A dim consciousness of infinite mystery and grandeur lies beneath all the commonplace of life. There is an awfulness and a majesty around us, in all our little worldliness.”

Albert Pike book Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. XXII : Grand Master Architect, p. 190

“A constructive work is an embodiment of freedom itself, and is unconsciously perceived, even by those who are consciously against it. The desire to live is the strongest universal emotion, it springs from the depths of our unconscious sensibility – and the desire to give life is our most potent, constructive, conscious expression of this intuition.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

1932 - 1946
Source: 'Circle', 1937; as quoted in Voicing our visions, - Writings by women artists, ed. by Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York 1991, p. 279

“Our whole past experience is continually in our consciousness, though most of it sunk to a great depth of dimness.”

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Charles Sanders Peirce 121

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