The fact that one can lose one's sense of self in an ocean of tranquility does not mean that one's consciousness is immaterial or that it presided over the birth of the universe.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the relationship between consciousness and existence, emphasizing that losing oneself in tranquility does not diminish the essence of consciousness.
Sam Harris highlights that even in deep states of peace or tranquility, there is an important distinction between the experience of consciousness and the nature of reality. The quote suggests that while one may feel a loss of individual identity in moments of calm, this does not imply that consciousness is insignificant or that it solely created the universe; instead, it points to a more profound understanding of existence and awareness.
In practice
In a meditation workshop, this quote can be shared to illustrate the depth of consciousness during mindful practices.
Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness. We form friendships so that we can feel certain emotions, like love, and avoid others, like loneliness. We eat specific foods to enjoy their fleeting presence on our tongues. We read for the pleasure of thinking another person's thoughts.
What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives.
The core of science is not a mathematical modeling--it is intellectual honesty. It is a willingness to have our certainties about the world constrained by good evidence and good argument.
It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.
It is taboo in our society to criticize a persons religious faith... these taboos are offensive, deeply unreasonable, but worse than that, they are getting people killed. This is really my concern. My concern is that our religions, the diversity of our religious doctrines, is going to get us killed. I'm worried that our religious discourse- our religious beliefs are ultimately incompatible with civilization.
It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.
To understand the power of the priesthood, we must know its limitations.
By the time you read this, you'll be older than you remember.
It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.
Ugly is attractive, ugly is exciting. Maybe because it is newer. The investigation of ugliness is, to me, more interesting than the bourgeois idea of beauty. And why? Because ugly is human.
A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.
There is nothing less to our credit than our neglect of the foreigner and his children, unless it be the arrogance most of us betray when we set out to "Americanize" him.
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