“Luc Saunders: “What do you think happens to individual consciousness after the death of a body?”
Adyashanti: “The question presumes that there is such a thing as individual consciousness. Awakening shows you that there isn’t. The mind creates the illusion of individual consciousness to convince us that this awareness is ours, that it belongs to us. I imagine that, after the death of the body, it’s very difficult to maintain the illusion of individual consciousness. But who knows? We’ll see. I’ll give you a phone call if I can. [Laughs. ]””

“The evolution of our individual consciousness paves the way toward the evolution of our collective consciousness. This individual-collective evolution, more than anything else, can and must change this world.”

“The consciousness of being betrayed is to the collective consciousness of a sacred group what a certain form of schizophrenia is to the individual…it is a form of madness.”

“Through the prevailing social consciousness, social relations give shape to the individual who is born and educated in a specific society. In this sense, social relations create the individual.”

“Apparently the rise of consciousness is linked to certain kinds of privation. It is the bitterness of self-consciousness that we knowers know best. Critical of the illusions that sustained mankind in earlier times, this self-consciousness of ours does little to sustain us now. The question is: which is disenchanted, the world itself or the consciousness we have of it?”

“Group consciousness is something that is not widely understood, yet it is extremely powerful and can, if you are not careful, often overcome individual consciousness. If you cannot find a group whose consciousness matches your own, be the source of one. Others of like consciousness will be drawn to you.”

“And what is death? It is the change in the living process of a particular body. Integration ends and disintegration sets in. (…) In death only the body dies. Life does not, consciousness does not, reality does not. And the life is never so alive as after death.”

“The question of consciousness has always intrigued me. It starts with the question, 'Are we our bodies or are we our consciousness? What are we made up of?”

“But the innermost and actually religious level of Hindu culture is an individual affair. And it could not have been otherwise. Action and ritual may be community affairs, but the basis of real religion is a culture of consciousness, and consciousness is individual.”

“(…) Bodies are born and bodies die, but what is it to me? Bodies come and bodies go in consciousness and consciousness itself has its roots in me. I am life and mine are mind and body.”