Consciousness is Certain...

Nobody can arrive at the slightest comprehension of any object unless and until it enters his thinking, that is unless it is known as an idea.

Yet when we reduce things to their final terms as mental constructions, the result seems so alien to our sense of what Nature is that few will grant it!

Nothing is so self evident as the primacy and reality of consciousness, yet unfortunately nothing carries less conviction when first propounded!

But we cannot legitimately doubt its existence whatever else we may doubt.

We may fall into illusions about it but even illusions depend upon our being aware of them.

Hence, when we rise to the full stature of our reason, we must finally admit that consciousness is the one thing of whose reality we are most certain and of whose existence we are least doubtful.



The Wisdom of the Overself, Chapter V, The Metaphysics of Sleep, "From the Conscious to the Unconscious”. Paul Brunton