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Joseph P. Kauffman Quotes

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Famous Joseph P. Kauffman Quotes

“You are not limited to this body, to this mind, or to this reality—you are a limitless ocean of Consciousness, imbued with infinite potential. You are existence itself.”

“Every thought is a concept that divides reality in some way, and therefore is a mental abstraction that distorts the truth of what is. This is not to say that all thoughts are useless, though many of them seem to be, but it is clear that by being so consumed by this continuous stream of thoughts, we become disconnected from the reality of life that exists beyond our thinking minds.”

“If we can understand that all thought is based on memory, that it is conditioned by the past, then we can see that it is of no use in helping us understand the true reality of the present moment, for every thought we have about reality will only distort reality according to our conditioned way of thinking.”

“When I think about something that is happening in the moment, I am introducing my accumulation of the past into the immediate experience of the present. I am evaluating the situation based on my conditioned perspective, and projecting my internal workings onto the unconditioned reality of the present moment.”

“When we are not awake to reality, we are living in the dream of the mind. When we are in the dream state, we do not know what we are doing, and are unaware of what is happening within and around us. We are simply acting out of deep programming, behaving according to conditioned patterns, living as if on auto-pilot.”

“There are many ways that the dream state operates, but it is primarily characterized by a lack of awareness to what is actually happening in the present moment, and the consequent dwelling in the mind and its endless thinking, reacting and behaving from unconscious conditioning and programming.”

“The ego is not who we are, it is who we think we are. When we think of our name, our image, our history, and our life experiences as who we are, we become associated with an idea of ourselves, a mental image that is not at all who we are in reality.”

“We all have an image of who we are, how we think of ourselves, and how we think others perceive us, but obviously this image is not really who we are; it is just a projection of the mind. When we mistake this illusory entity of thought to be who we actually are we do all kinds of strange and unnecessary things to maintain it and improve it. We feel the need to always state our point of view, push our beliefs onto others, tell them about our experiences, tell them who we are, what we like, what we dislike, and so on…always focused on “me.”

“Language is an attempt to define life in linear words and symbols, but in reality, everything everywhere is happening all together at once, and to explain the totality of this with language is impossible. Thus, to awaken to the truth of reality, the truth of who we are, we must go beyond our language and intellectual way of understanding life.”

“We do not need an ashram or church, some secret initiation, a guru’s blessing, or an intentional community. As helpful or supportive as those may be at times, ultimately, what we need is the willingness to look at ourselves honestly, to feel what emotions lie within us, to acknowledge our thoughts and actions, to choose to be aware of what we ignore or suppress, and to let go of what limits and distracts us so we can open ourselves fully to the truth of life in this moment.”

“Our perception of reality is not reality itself, but it is the lens through which we view reality. It is like looking outside through a stained-glass window—if we look through red glass, the outside world will appear to be red; if we look through blue glass, the outside world will appear to be blue. The outside world isn’t changing, we are just observing it through different colors of glass, which make it appear to have the same color as whatever color glass that we look through.”

“All human beings throughout the world are conditioned. It is an obvious and undeniable fact. Yet, many of us are unaware of this fact of our conditioning. We are unaware of the ways in which our culture influences our minds and shapes our perception of reality. We do not realize that most of our thoughts, opinions, and beliefs are not really our own, but were simply inherited by our family and the society that we were raised in.”

“We all have only one true emotional need as human beings, and that is the need to feel loved. The majority of our actions aim towards this goal in one way or another. We seek relationships, we seek fame or success, we act (or don’t act) in certain ways simply because we feel the need to be accepted, the need to be recognized, the need to feel loved. This is a very powerful thing to realize.”

“The psychological suffering of human beings on such a mass scale manifests as the physical suffering we see and experience in the world today. It is ignorant to objectify this suffering as if it were something outside of us, belonging only to the world and to those unfortunate beings who experience it. It is within each one of us, and to acknowledge our suffering is the only way to start to heal it, and by healing the suffering within ourselves, we help to heal the suffering of the world.”

“If you have ever watched a football game, you will likely recall that while the game is being played, there is a commentator who is narrating the plays of the game and making interpretations. Our thoughts are just like this. In our mind, we have the direct experience and we have the commentator that narrates and describes our direct experience. The commentator of a football game isn’t really necessary, and he doesn’t affect the activity of the game in any way. He is just describing the game to the audience, and doing so from his perspective, with his own opinions, based on his mood, memory, education, past experiences and so on. In ourselves, the commentator is also unnecessary, and does not change the experience that it is commenting on. It merely describes it from its own biased perspective, with its own opinions, based on its mood, memory, education, past experiences, and so on. Our problem is that we have mistaken the comments of the commentator for the reality that is being commented on. We have confused our own identity as being that of the commentator, and we believe that what is being described is actually the truth of reality.”

“The world exists because your mind exists. If your mind didn’t exist, there would be no world. As you look at these words, you see them in what appears to be a reality outside of you. What you are really seeing is the image that your mind is creating from the electrical signals being sent to your brain. While they may appear to be outside of you, this is an illusion, they exist within your own mind, and are being projected to appear as if they are outside of you. This apparent reality that is projected by our minds, is maya, and to believe that maya is the ultimate reality is a result of ignorance, or avidya in Sanskrit.”

“Examples of fractals are everywhere in nature. They can be found in the patterns of trees, branches, and ferns, in which each part appears to be a smaller image of the whole. They are found in the branch-like patterns of river systems, lightning, and blood vessels. They can be seen in snowflakes, seashells, crystals, and mountain ranges. We can even see the holographic and fractal-like nature of reality in the structure of the Universe itself, as the clusters of galaxies and dark matter resemble the neurons in our brain, the mycelium network of fungi, as well as the network of the man-made Internet.”

“All of Nature follows perfectly geometric laws. The Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Peruvian, Mayan, and Chinese cultures were well aware of this, as Phi—known as the Golden Ratio or Golden Mean—was used in the constructions of their sculptures and architecture.”

“Have you ever had a dream that you were certain was real, only to wake up and realize that everyone and everything in the dream was really you? Well this is how many mystics describe the nature of our reality, as a dream in which we think we are individual personalities existing in the physical universe. But eventually, like in all dreams, we will wake up. Except in this dream we do not wake up to realize we are still in the world, we awake from the world to realize that we are God.”

“When we perceive the stars, the stars are the object of our perception—they exist within us. When we perceive the ocean, the ocean is also within us. The idea that things exist outside of our Consciousness is an illusion. Ancient wisdom traditions have known this for centuries, and even modern science has recognized that our sense organs merely receive information and project it within our own minds. Vision does not take place in the eye, but in an area located in the back of the brain. Everything that we perceive to be “out there” is being experienced “in here.”

“In Advaita Vedanta, and in many other ancient wisdom traditions, the world is said to be an illusion. This illusion is commonly referred to as maya, a Sanskrit name which refers to the apparent, or objective reality which is superimposed on the ultimate reality in order to generate the phenomena of what we call the material world. Maya is the magic by which we create duality—by which we create two worlds from one. This creation is an illusory creation—it is not real—it is an imaginary manifestation of the one Universal Consciousness, appearing as all of the various phenomena in objective reality. Maya is God’s, or Consciousness’s, creative power of emptying or reflecting itself into all things and thus creating all things—the power of subjectivity to take on objective appearance.”

“Our beliefs shape how we perceive reality to be, and the belief that shapes our current perception of reality was adopted by the worldview of Newtonian physics, which asserts that reality is objective—that there is a material universe existing outside of our experience. But this isn’t true; there is no material universe outside of you; the Universe takes form through you.”

“You are not a small and unimportant creature confined to the form of this physical body, contrary to popular belief. At the core of your being you are pure awareness, and this awareness is the same source from which everything in the Universe arises, exists as, and returns to. Consciousness is the dimension of yourself that you have forgotten you are, and of which you long to return to.”

“Everything we perceive to be solid and static is made up of almost entirely empty space.”

“Everything exists as information in a field of infinite possibilities, and it is our Consciousness that renders the information and causes it to appear as the material world.”

“Jehovah, the Christian name for God derived from the Hebrew Yahweh, (from the letters YHWH), is translated as "I AM." YOU ARE the essence of life—the Cosmic Consciousness that creates, lives in, and destroys all things. In Buddhism, your true nature is referred to as your “Buddha Nature.” Muslims refer to it as Allah, Native tribes have often called it the Great Spirit, Taoists refer to it as the Tao, and numerous other cultures throughout history have all created their own distinctive names for it. But the one eternal reality that these cultures point to remains the same—and this reality is YOU.”

“Subject and object are not separate—so-called objective reality is projected by our subjective Consciousness.”

“God is the ultimate ground of Being, and this ultimate ground of Being is YOU. For one who realizes their true nature as God, as Consciousness, life becomes a joy without end.”

“True Love is when you are able to see yourself in another, when you recognize that there is no separation between you and any other Being in the Universe.”

“You are just as connected to the Universe as a finger is to a hand, or as a branch is to a tree. The entire cosmos is expressing itself through your being.”

“We often try to force the experience we want to have, instead of allowing the experience we were meant to have, and in doing this, we miss out on gaining any new insight or understanding.”

“We are like waves in the ocean, each with a unique character and quality on the surface, but deep down we are eternally connected to one another and to the ocean as a whole. If you practice looking beyond the surface of appearances, you will begin to see the true Being that lies within each form. You will see your Consciousness looking through the eyes of another, and it is when you see yourself in another that you cannot help but develop compassion for them; because in Truth, there is no “them,” there is only YOU, experiencing yourself from an inconceivable amount of perspectives.”

“We cannot learn if we are stuck in our mind’s conditioned way of thinking. We must be open to discovering the Truth, whatever it may turn out to be. This requires a state of openness, curiosity, and sincerity, a state of pure awareness, a state of observing reality without jumping to conclusions about what reality is. This state of direct experience is known in Zen as “beginner’s mind,” and it is essential to embody this state when we want to understand our experience.”

“Because we feel ourselves to be separate from the world in which we live, we have also grown to feel quite alone in this world. Our sense of loneliness and isolation not only makes us feel depressed and miserable, but it also causes us to be anxious and afraid of the world and everyone in it. Because of this inherent fear, we put up all kinds of barriers to protect us from the world—barriers that we have created to keep us safe, but that really end up making us feel more alone, more miserable, and more afraid, as they prevent us from being our natural selves.”

“Your body and my body are both totally made up of and dependent upon the elements of the earth—the water, the air, the heat, the land, the soil and the food it produces—as well as all of the elements that these elements are dependent upon—the sun, the stars, the galaxies, and a vast field of energy and space to contain them in. Nature is our extended body, and the elements outside of our skin are just as important to our health as the elements within our skin. Our bodies are connected to the universe as a whole, and consequently to each other and the many ways in which we influence our shared environment.”

“We fail to see the oneness of all things, and because of this, we unknowingly cause a lot of harm to ourselves. We pollute the Earth that we live on, cut down the trees that produce our oxygen, destroy the ecosystems of nature and the animals that maintain them, and we mistreat and harm each other, thinking that these destructive actions will not have a direct effect on us.”