impairment QUOTES

1 " Meanwhile, the self can stand in the way of the Not-Self, interfering with the free flow of spiritual grace, this maintaining the self in a state of blindness, and also with the flow of animal grace, which leads to the impairment of natural functions and, in the long run, of the slower processes called structure. For each individual human being, the main practical problems are these: How can I prevent my ego from eclipsing the inner light, synteresis, scintilla animae, and so perpetuating the state of unregenerate illusion and blindness? And these practical problems remain unchallenged, even if we abandon the notion of an entelechy or physiological intelligencer, of an atman or pneuma and think, instead, in terms [of] systems... "

― Aldous Huxley

2 " Before aligning the body to the future, the mind has to straighten out from the impairment or religion. "

3 " ✡ Before aligning the body to the future, the mind has to straighten out from the impairment of religion. "

4 " A book is open in front of me and this is what it has to
say about the symptoms of morphine withdrawal:

'... morbid anxiety, a nervous depressed condition,
irritability, weakening of the memory, occasional
hallucinations and a mild impairment of consciousness
...'

I have not experienced any hallucinations, but I can
only say that the rest of this description is dull, pedestrian
and totally inadequate.

'Depressed condition' indeed!

Having suffered from this appalling malady, I hereby enjoin
all doctors to be more compassionate toward their
patients. What overtakes the addict deprived of morphine
for a mere hour or two is not a 'depressed condition': it is
slow death. Air is insubstantial, gulping it down is useless
... there is not a cell in one's body that does not crave
... but crave what? This is something which defies analysis
and explanation. In short, the individual ceases to exist:
he is eliminated. The body which moves, agonises and
suffers is a corpse. It wants nothing, can think of nothing
but morphine. To die of thirst is a heavenly, blissful death
compared with the craving for morphine. The feeling must
be something like that of a man buried alive, clawing at the
skin on his chest in the effort to catch the last tiny bubbles
of air in his coffin, or of a heretic at the stake, groaning and
writhing as the first tongues of flame lick at his feet.

Death. A dry, slow death. That is what lurks behind
that clinical, academic phrase 'a depressed condition'. "

― Mikhail Bulgakov , Morphine