Timothy Leary Quotes

We cannot study the brain, the instrument for fabricating the realities we inhabit, using the mental constructs of the past.

Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a ‘real’ experience.

Knowing yourself now requires the understanding that the conscious you occupies only a small room in the mansion of the brain, and that it has little control over the reality constructed for you.

We live in condensations of our imagination

Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain. These events compete for attention, and as one process outshouts the others, the brain rationalizes the outcome after the fact and concocts the impression that a single self was in charge all along.

The brain constantly assures us, reassures us, that we are in control. But the closer you look, the more questions you have about it.

Reality doesn't bite, rather our perception of reality bites.

If you believe that your thoughts originate inside your brain, do you also believe that television shows are made inside your television set?

We pretend that the brain is binary, like a computer. But it's not. It's completely holographic.

In terms of the brain, you can in a crude way think of the human brain as a computer.

Reality is mind-made.

That’s what the human brain is there for—to turn the chaos of given experience into a set of manageable symbols. Sometimes the symbols correspond fairly closely to some of the aspects of the external reality behind our experience; then you have science and common sense. Sometimes, on the contrary, the symbols have almost no connection with external reality; then you have paranoia and delirium. More often there’s a mixture, part realistic and part fantastic; that’s religion.

We see with the eyes, but we see with the brain as well. And seeing with the brain is often called imagination.

So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?

Your brain is waiting for you to give it direction.

Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a 'real' experience. In either case, it reacts automatically to information which you give to it from your forebrain. Your nervous system reacts appropriately to what you THINK or IMAGINE to be 'true.

You simply cannot understand psychedelic drugs, which activate the brain, unless you understand something about computers.

The eye and brain are conspirators, and, like most conspiracies, theirs is negotiated behind closed doors, in the back room, outside of our awareness.

The senses don't just make sense of life in bold or subtle acts of clarity, they tear reality apart into vibrant morsels and reassemble them into a meaningful pattern.

The brain is the citadel of sense perception.

It is in the brain that the poppy is red, that the apple is odorous, that the skylark sings.

Awareness of your surroundings occurs only when sensory inputs violate expectations. When the world is successfully predicted away, awareness is not needed because the brain is doing its job well.

The human brain is like a memory system that records every thing that happens to us and makes intelligent predictions based on those experiences.

It is not so much that we, using our brains, spin our yarns, as that our brains, using yarns, spin us.

Some may be helped by images, some may not. Some require an image outside, others one inside the brain.