Rob Armstrong > Quotes

“Greek oracles were like living Ouija boards. They communicated with the gods rather than the dead. It’s funny the way people imagine making contact with the Devil via Ouija, but never with God. Will God not come if summoned?”
― Rob Armstrong, The Ordinary Necromancers: The Science of Ouija

“Consciousness isn’t part of a child’s innate makeup. It has to be added. A child has to acquire consciousness, through education, something which others do to the child. Human culture operates on human infants to furnish them with a new operating system: consciousness. No other animal has a culture. No other animal can change their instinctual operating system. Children are the perfect laboratory for consciousness studies since they start off unconscious, slowly develop consciousness – for several years existing in an extraordinary liminal zone poised between the unconscious and conscious worlds – and, finally, become fully conscious. Via children, we can literally track how consciousness changes humans as we monitor the changing properties and abilities of children as their degree of consciousness increases.”
― Rob Armstrong, Children See Dead People: Children's Spooky Powers

“Why was Nietzsche’s “God is dead” speech so refreshing? It’s because the death of the external God would force people to become gods themselves. Nietzsche’s Superman is a God substitute. If you are a Superman then you are becoming God. The Last Man wants none of that. The Last Man always wants an external God. The Last Man always wants someone else running the show, bearing the burden.”
― Rob Armstrong, Children See Dead People: Children's Spooky Powers

“People aren’t very creative. They would feel much more godlike if they could create. After all, “God” is the Creator, is he not? Creation is what gods do. Can you create? Creation is the meaning of life. If you can’t create, you will never be satisfied with your life. You will never find meaning.”
― Rob Armstrong, Children See Dead People: Children's Spooky Powers

“The real hard problem of consciousness is that consciousness does not intrinsically belong to you. It is something added to the individual by the group. No one is born conscious. Consciousness is learned, acquired, taught. Consciousness depends entirely on socialization. It has nothing to do with the individual and individualism. Humanity has never faced up to the implications of this. Consciousness is a cultural addition to biology. It’s about memes (culture) added to genes (biology).”
― Rob Armstrong, The Ordinary Necromancers: The Science of Ouija

“For Homer, glory was the only thing that was truly imperishable. Only the glorious live on after death, in the memories and stories of humanity. Glory is the only meaningful form of immortality. The abject creature that lives on in the underworld holds no appeal. In fact, Homer’s theology demands a dismal afterlife. That way, the heroes are fully motivated to achieve glory here and now. What else is there to aim for? The grim persistence of the soul after death is in every way unappealing. Do you want a mediocre life and an even more mediocre death?”
― Rob Armstrong, Homo Roboticus: The Inner Human Robot Revealed By Sleepwalking and Hypnosis

“All Nature unfolds within a Cosmic Mind, a Soul World – an immaterial Singularity outside space and time. Just as a dream – a simulation of spacetime – takes places inside the dreamer’s mind and never at any time leaves it, so the spacetime world produced at the Big Bang in fact occurs entirely within the Cosmic Mind (the Dreamer) that generated it. There is no “expansion” of space. All of spacetime reality unfolds within the Singularity, the Mind, just as all apparent spacetime dreams never once extend beyond the mind.”
― Rob Armstrong, The Ordinary Necromancers: The Science of Ouija

“One of the greatest powers in the human world is the power of suggestion, including counter-suggestion. If you put people in a clinical, scientific environment, this acts as a massive counter-suggestion and prevents psychic phenomena from manifesting. You need to recreate the kinds of environments where paranormal events typically occur in order to provide the power of suggestion that will allow the mind to access, channel and manifest such phenomena. You cannot allow materialists and skeptics anywhere near paranormal research since they will generate an enormous field of counter-suggestion that will disrupt, sabotage and thwart the desired phenomena. If you tell people it can’t be done, it won’t be. If you tell people they can achieve the impossible, they will.”
― Rob Armstrong, The Ordinary Necromancers: The Science of Ouija

“. Consciousness is based in language and that means that people with superior language skills are more conscious than those who struggle with language. Consciousness is also about concepts. The more conceptual you are, the better able you are to understand reality since reality is not made from empirical “matter” but from rational, analytic concepts. Hegel imagined reality’s defining concepts to be philosophical. In fact, they are mathematical concepts, the quintessence of rationalism. You expand and heighten your consciousness by attaining a far superior understanding of concepts. This requires thinking, not feeling, not sensing, and not mystical intuiting.”
― Rob Armstrong, Children See Dead People: Children's Spooky Powers

“How do you become God? You train yourself. Anyone can become God. Because the unconscious is God. Every time you dream, you are God. Nothing is more creative than a dream, and everyone dreams. In your dreams, you create whole worlds, and entire casts of characters, out of nothing. You do it … effortlessly. It’s your consciousness that struggles. Do you understand the game? You are God … but God has no idea who God is, or what God is. So, the part of you that is God does not know it is God. The part of you that knows that part of you is God isn’t God. The part that knows, the part that isn’t God, is consciousness. The part that doesn’t know, the part that is God, is the unconscious. The cosmic comedy, or is it tragedy, is that God doesn’t know he is God. He’s not suffering from amnesia. He never knew. That’s why consciousness exists. It’s the means for God to become aware he is God. God is creativity, but he doesn’t know what to create. That’s the cosmic irony. He can create anything, yet has to be told what to create.”
― Rob Armstrong, Homo Roboticus: The Inner Human Robot Revealed By Sleepwalking and Hypnosis

“Our psyche is astonishingly fissile. The proof is our dreams where one psyche produces a whole cast of characters interacting with each other and trying to dominate each other. All dreams are examples of multiple personality disorder, with the dream characters serving as “alters” of the unconscious mind. When a person, during waking hours, cannot control their unconscious, their dream minds take over as a cast of alters and they are then diagnosed with dissociate identity disorder.”
― Rob Armstrong, Homo Roboticus: The Inner Human Robot Revealed By Sleepwalking and Hypnosis

“The acquisition of language is never treated as what it actually is: a near-miraculous process; the most important thing that ever happens to us. It’s what changes us from unconscious animals into conscious humans. It’s what makes us the masters of the world. It’s what allows memes to overcome genes, culture to overcome mere biology.”
― Rob Armstrong, Children See Dead People: Children's Spooky Powers

“The rise of consciousness, synaptic pruning, hormonal shifts, and transitions in brainwave patterns, all expel the child from Eden and push it into the normal world. Adam and Eve always have to leave paradise to grow up.”
― Rob Armstrong, Children See Dead People: Children's Spooky Powers

“The real purpose of Christianity – Ouija Christianity, shall we say – was to show everyone that they have a divine nature as well as a human nature and the divine can be accessed and used to perform wonders and make this world a paradise. Unfortunately, the message got lost and the powers-that-be made Christianity into a message about an external God rather than an internal God, a God that had to be worshipped, and needed a Church and a power hierarchy for this purpose. Christendom required people to express individual faith in their “Lord and Savior”. The real Christian message wasn’t that you should worship God but that you should become God – by accessing your inner divine nature, just as Jesus had accessed his. He was the example for all of us, not a unique person different from all of us. Why do you think Jesus said, “For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.”
― Rob Armstrong, The Ordinary Necromancers: The Science of Ouija

“Wouldn’t you like to see the dead, just as the most special children do? Wouldn’t you like to converse with the departed and learn their secrets? Odysseus managed it. So can all of us. We can all get on the black ship and sail across Oceanus to Cimmeria, where we will find the land of dreams and its astounding neighbor, the land of the dead. We are a divine species. Isn’t it about time we became gods? What are we waiting for?”
― Rob Armstrong, Children See Dead People: Children's Spooky Powers

“The Ouija board brought necromancy to the ordinary people. It democratized necromancy. It’s a portal to the dead, to the afterlife, to the Spirit World. But it’s a somewhat basic technology, a poor man’s version of the phone. What would you do if you had a special smartphone that allowed you direct communication with the dead – a Necrophone? Would you use it all the time? Would it be the most popular gadget of all time? Or would people be scared to use it? Would it make people too sad? Would it provoke a suicide epidemic?”
― Rob Armstrong, The Ordinary Necromancers: The Science of Ouija

“Is God the ultimate mystery (non-answer), or the ultimate answer? If you can’t understand God, why would you worship him? You have, by your admission, no idea what you are worshiping. In fact, it’s clear from the history of Abrahamism that billions of people have worshiped the Devil and called him God. They would of course not have made this fatal error if they had understood God.”
― Rob Armstrong, Homo Roboticus: The Inner Human Robot Revealed By Sleepwalking and Hypnosis

“What would you prefer – to remain a child all your life and have paranormal powers, or to become an adult and sacrifice your paranormal powers? Nature has made this a tradeoff. Do you want to be Peter Pan, who can fly but can never grow up, or do you want to join the adults and have adult fun and also adult responsibilities? Why do children lose their natural powers? Is it possible to get these powers back? Can adults recover their lost paranormal abilities, the abilities which society warned them as children never to play with? It’s always dangerous to play with fire. It’s even more dangerous to ignore your natural fire. Isn’t it time to light up your life?”
― Rob Armstrong, Children See Dead People: Children's Spooky Powers

“Language is the basis of culture and consciousness, so, once humans had language, they became capable of using culture to override biology (using memes to drive humanity rather than genes; using idea mutations rather than gene mutations) and thus freed humanity from animalism and instinct. The new dawn of consciousness, culture and knowledge had arrived.”
― Rob Armstrong, Children See Dead People: Children's Spooky Powers

“Maslow emphasized the “heights”, but to get to the heights you must have the Dark Night of the soul, and make your trip to the Chapel Perilous. Katabasis means a going-down, a descent. It’s used to describe journeys to the underworld. Anabasis is its opposite, a going-up. You can only reach the spiritual heights if you have also known the spiritual depths.”
― Rob Armstrong, Homo Roboticus: The Inner Human Robot Revealed By Sleepwalking and Hypnosis

“The only system that can be God is mathematics, the quintessential subject for providing answers, and the only subject that can deliver perfection. Mathematics is the mirror of God and mathematics is God. This is the gospel of ontological mathematics.”
― Rob Armstrong, Homo Roboticus: The Inner Human Robot Revealed By Sleepwalking and Hypnosis

“Children are so remarkable because they are the humans in whom the unconscious and conscious minds are so closely intertwined. For several years, the unconscious mind is dominant in children and then gradually consciousness rises up in power and finally takes over. The child’s mind is an incredible laboratory for the study of the science of consciousness. Uniquely, with children, the rise of consciousness can be tracked, and the gradual subordination of the unconscious to consciousness followed. With this priceless knowledge, we can work out how to achieve the holy grail: to be able to use consciousness and be adults, while also retaining or recovering the paranormal powers of the unconscious. To be conscious humans able to routinely exercise paranormal powers would put us on the path to divinity.”
― Rob Armstrong, Children See Dead People: Children's Spooky Powers

“Imagine life without language, without thoughts conducted in words and sentences. That’s the life of an unconscious animal. Stone Age humans were little more than animals. Their unconscious ruled them.”
― Rob Armstrong, Children See Dead People: Children's Spooky Powers

“It’s not just the Spirit World that Ouija can reach. It can explore a realm every bit as strange, that of the unconscious mind, the mind of which we know nothing, precisely because it’s unconscious. Yet it’s an aspect of our own mind. Isn’t it bizarre that our own “hidden” mind is the biggest, and closest, mystery in our life!”
― Rob Armstrong, The Ordinary Necromancers: The Science of Ouija

“In many ways, our consciousness is a trainer. A large part of its function is to train the unconscious to do things that would be impossible if the unconscious were directed purely by instinct. Animals can never change their basic instinctual repertoire, which is why all animals belong to narrow evolutionary niches. Humans, by contrast, can train themselves to do almost anything. That’s because they are conscious. With consciousness, they can plan new activities entirely unknown to instinct. That’s why humans escaped from their original niche and became the masters of the earth, able to dominate the niches of all other species. Consciousness overcomes instinct. That’s the point of consciousness. If we couldn’t break from instinct, we would still be living in the trees, or in caves, and scarcely be any different from apes. Consciousness is the greatest power in the animal universe, because it can allow any animal that becomes conscious to transform its destiny. Only humans have. Why did Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) go extinct and Homo sapiens didn’t? Was it because the latter became conscious and the former didn’t? The latter were able to solve problems that the former could not. Leibniz said, “… it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths that distinguishes us from the mere animals and gives us Reason and the sciences, raising us to the knowledge of ourselves and of God.” You cannot do systematic reasoning unless you have a mind space in which to conduct it. You need a space where you can deal with relations of ideas, truths of reason, universals, holism, coherence, pure logic, and so on.”
― Rob Armstrong, Homo Roboticus: The Inner Human Robot Revealed By Sleepwalking and Hypnosis

“Did humanity once “sleepwalk” during the day? Was Homo sapiens preceded by Homo roboticus? And is Homo sapiens actually just a cloak that Homo roboticus wears, i.e., Homo roboticus remains the core human? If you remove the “wise” cloak, you go straight back to the robot. All humans are robots underneath, and the controllers of modern society are much more interested in the robot than the person.”
― Rob Armstrong, Homo Roboticus: The Inner Human Robot Revealed By Sleepwalking and Hypnosis