Source: The Amazing Mr. Lutterworth (1958), p. 211
Source: Society of the Spectacle (1967), Ch. 1, sct. 4.
Source: The Society of the Spectacle
Source: Liber Kaos (1992), p. 87
Context: The Conscious mind is a maelstrom of fleeting thoughts, images, sensations, feelings, conflicting desires, and doubts; barely able to confine its attention to a single clear objective for a microsecond before secondary thoughts begin to adulterate it and provoke yet further trains of mental discourse. If you do not believe this, then attempt to confine your conscious attention to the dot at the end of this sentence without involving yourself in any other form of thinking, including thinking about the dot.
“Collect impressions. Don’t be in a hurry to write them down.”
Debussy in a letter to his pupil Raoul Bardac (1906)
Context: Collect impressions. Don’t be in a hurry to write them down. Because that’s something music can do better than painting: it can centralise variations of colour and light within a single picture — a truth generally ignored, obvious as it is.
Collected Poems (1954) "Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour"
Source: 1970s, Meditations (1979), p. 105
Context: Meditation is the emptying of the mind of all thought, for thought and feeling dissipate energy. They are repetitive, producing mechanical activities which are a necessary part of existence. But they are only part, and thought and feeling cannot possibly enter into the immensity of life. Quite a different approach is necessary, not the path of habit, association and the known; there must be freedom from these. Meditation is the emptying of the mind of the known. It cannot be done by thought or by the hidden prompting of thought, nor by desire in the form of prayer, nor through the self-effacing hypnotism of words, images, hopes, and vanities. All these have to come to an end, easily, without effort and choice, in the flame of awareness.
