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About this quote

What does it mean?
Consciousness can be divided into separate parts that exist together but do not interact or acknowledge each other.
In plain terms
Parts of your mind can exist separately without knowing each other.
What can you take from it?
Recognize that the mind can operate in split modes.

Where it applies

  • psychological study
  • self-reflection
  • therapy

Putting it to work

  • explore mental divisions
  • study dissociation

Questions to consider

  • Can minds be truly split?
  • How aware are we of ourselves?

Another view

Consciousness might be more integrated than this suggests.

More from William James

  1. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we …

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  2. Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits...A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talki…

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  3. The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our character…

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