Quantum Physics and Consciousness

1. Max Planck:
   “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as a derivative from consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”

2. Niels Bohr:
   “The extension of our experience in recent years has brought to light the insufficiency of our simple mechanical conceptions and as a consequence has shaken the foundation on which the customary interpretation of observation was based.”

3. Niels Bohr:
   “Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.”

4. Werner Heisenberg:
   “The world thus appears as a complicated tissue of events, in which different kinds of processes alternate, overlap, or combine, and thereby determine the texture of reality.”

5. Werner Heisenberg:
   “The universe is not only stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.”

6. David Bohm:
   “The notion that all these fragments are separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and confusion.”

7. John Archibald Wheeler:
   “We are participators in bringing into being not only the near and here but the far away and long ago.”

8. Erwin Schrödinger:
   “Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown; there is only one thing, and that is consciousness.”

9. Albert Einstein:
   “A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.”

10. Albert Einstein:
    “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”

11. Albert Einstein:
    “A human being is a spatially and temporally limited piece of the whole, what we call ‘Universe.’”

Philosophical Foundations

1. Baruch Spinoza:
   “God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.” — Ethics

2. Baruch Spinoza:
   “Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be conceived without God.” — Ethics

3. Baruch Spinoza:
   “The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.” — Ethics

4. Baruch Spinoza:
   “Freedom is understood in the sense of being free from the necessity of being acted upon by external causes.” — Ethics

5. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:
   “The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.”

6. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:
   “The end of the world: the wholesale union of all life in the Omega Point.”

7. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:
   “Matter is spirit moving slowly enough to be seen.”

8. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:
   “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

9. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:
   “The more one approaches consciousness, the more one discovers that each element is in a state of deeper and deeper complexity, interdependent with everything around it.”

Religious and Spiritual Wisdom

The Qur'an

1. Surah Al-Baqarah (2:164):
   “Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth... are signs for a people who use reason.”

2. Surah Al-Hadid (57:4):
   “It is He who created the heavens and the earth in six Days and then established Himself above the Throne. He knows what enters into the earth and what emerges from it, and what descends from the heaven and what ascends therein; and He is with you wherever you are. And Allah, of what you do, is Seeing.”

3. Surah An-Nur (24:35):
   “Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The example of His light is like a niche within which is a lamp...”

The Vedas (Hinduism)

1. Rig Veda 10.129 (Nasadiya Sukta):
   “In the beginning, there was neither existence nor non-existence; the world was unmanifest; death was not then, nor was there immortality.”

2. Mundaka Upanishad 2.2.11:
   “As the rivers flowing east and west merge in the sea and become one with it, forgetting they were separate rivers, so do all creatures lose their separateness when they merge at last into pure Being.”

3. Bhagavad Gita 2.20:
   “For the soul there is neither birth nor death. It has not come into being, does not come into being, and will not come into being. It is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, and primeval.”

4. Chandogya Upanishad 6.2.1:
   “In the beginning, there was only Existence, one without a second. Out of that arose the manifold, and from the One, all creatures came forth.”

Buddhist Teachings

1. Diamond Sutra:
   “All conditioned phenomena are like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow...”

2. Heart Sutra:
   “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Form does not differ from emptiness, and emptiness does not differ from form.”

3. Lankavatara Sutra:
   “Things are not as they appear; nor are they otherwise.”

4. Dhammapada 20:277:
   “All things are impermanent; they arise and they pass away. Understanding this, the wise find peace.”

Cultural and Literary Reflections

1. William Blake:
   “To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wildflower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.” — Auguries of Innocence

2. T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets):
   “Time past and time future are both perhaps present in time present.”

3. The Matrix (1999):
   “There is no spoon.”

4. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980):
   “Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.” — Yoda