Alan Watts Quotes - Page 12

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• We tend to regard ourselves as puppets of the Past, driven along by something that is always behind us.

  Alan Watts

  Past, Puppets, Driven

  Alan Watts (1977). “The essence of Alan Watts”, Celestial Arts Publishing Company

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• When one speaks of awakening, it means de-hypnotizatio n; coming to your senses. But of course to do that, you have to go out of your mind.

  Alan Watts

  Mean, Mind, Awakening

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• For the world is an ever-elusive and ever-disappointing mirage only from the standpoint of someone standing aside from it—as if it were quite other than himself—and then trying to grasp it. But a third response is possible. Not withdrawal, not stewardship on the hypothesis of a future reward, but the fullest collaboration with the world as a harmonious system of contained conflicts—based on the realization that the only real "I" is the whole endless process.

  Alan Watts

  Real, Trying, Collaboration

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• A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world.

  Alan Watts

  Trying, World, Term

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• You can't figure out the Universe, especially if you're using figures to figure it.

  Alan Watts

  School, Figures, Ifs

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• Your world is all these elements. Of light and sound, of taste, smell, and touch, woven together in many dimensions on the fabulous loom of your brain. Your brain; the most complicated thing in the world, which you yourself grew...without even thinking about it.

  Alan Watts

  Thinking, Light, Smell

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• Many people think that the Bible is the authentic word of God and they worship the Bible, making it an idol.

  Alan Watts

  Thinking, Idols, People

  Alan Watts (1977). “The essence of Alan Watts”, Celestial Arts Publishing Company

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• We therefore work, not for the work's sake, but for money—and money is supposed to get us what we really want in our hours of leisure and play. In the United States even poor people have lots of money compared with the wretched and skinny millions of India, Africa, and China, while our middle andupper classes (or should we say "income groups") are as prosperous as princes. Yet, by and large, they have but slight taste for pleasure. Money alone cannot buy pleasure, though it can help. For enjoyment is an art and a skill for which we have little talent or energy.

  Alan Watts

  Art, Class, Play

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.58, Souvenir Press

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• The trouble with many religions, accused of wishful thinking, is that they are not wishful enough. They show a deplorable lack of imagination.

  Alan Watts

  Thinking, Imagination, Trouble

  Alan Watts (1967). “Beyond Theology: The Art of Godmanship”

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• Faith is a state of openness or trust.

  Alan Watts

  Faith, States, Openness

  Alan Watts (1977). “The essence of Alan Watts”, Celestial Arts Publishing Company

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• To be alive spiritually man must have union with God and must be conscious of it. Apart from this union his religious life will be an empty drudgery, a mere imitation of true spirituality.

  Alan Watts

  Spiritual, Religious, Men

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• We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree.

  Alan Watts

  Tree, World, This World

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.8, Souvenir Press

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• Where do I begin and end in space? I have relations to the sun and air which are just as vital parts of my existence as my heart.

  Alan Watts

  Heart, Air, Space

  Alan Watts (1951). “The Wisdom of Insecurity”, Vintage

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• If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.

  Alan Watts

  Letting Go, Have Faith, Belief

  Alan Watts (1951). “The Wisdom of Insecurity”, Vintage

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• If to enjoy even an enjoyable present we must have the assurance of a happy future, we are “crying for the moon.” We have no such assurance. The best predictions are still matters of probability rather than certainty, and to the best of our knowledge every one of us is going to suffer and die. If, then, we cannot live happily without an assured future, we are certainly not adapted to living in a finite world where, despite the best plans, accidents will happen, and where death comes at the end.

  Alan Watts

  Moon, Suffering, World

  Alan Watts (1951). “The Wisdom of Insecurity”, Vintage

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• One's life is an act with no actor, and thus it has always been recognized that the insane man that has lost his mind is a parody of the sage who has transcended his ego. If one is paranoid, the other is metanoid.

  Alan Watts

  Men, Ego, Mind

  Alan Watts (2017). “Psychotherapy East & West”, p.66, New World Library

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• If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If this world is a vicious trap, so is its accuser, and the pot is calling the kettle black.

  Alan Watts

  Black, Calling, World

  Alan W Watts (2012). “Wisdom Of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety”, p.76, Random House

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• We live in a culture where it has been rubbed into us in every conceivable way that to die is a terrible thing. And that is a tremendous disease from which our culture in particular suffers.

  Alan Watts

  Suffering, Culture, Disease

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• Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done; it's just doing it.

  Alan Watts

  Omnipotence, Knowing, Not Knowing

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• Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.

  Alan Watts

  Eye, Past, Reality

  Alan Watts (1989). “The way of Zen”, Vintage

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• We suffer from a hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that "I myself" is a seperate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body-a center which "confronts" an "external" world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange.

  Alan Watts

  People, Feelings, Suffering

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.8, Souvenir Press

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• I too realize that the less I preach the more likely I am to be heard.

  Alan Watts

  Realizing, Heard, Too Real

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.18, Souvenir Press

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• I can only think seriously of trying to live up to an ideal, to improve myself, if I am split in two pieces. There must be a good “I” who is going to improve the bad “me.” “I,” who has the best intentions, will go to work on wayward “me,” and the tussle between the two will very much stress the difference between them. Consequently “I” will feel more separate than ever, and so merely increase the lonely and cut-off feelings which make “me” behave so badly.

  Alan Watts

  Lonely, Stress, Cutting

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• There was never a time when the world began, because it goes round and round like a circle, and there is no place on a circle where it begins. Look at my watch, which tells the time; it goes round, and so the world repeats itself again and again.

  Alan Watts

  Inspiring, Circles, Watches

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.12, Souvenir Press

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• The hallucination of separateness prevents one from seeing that to cherish the ego is to cherish misery. We do not realize that our so-called love and concern for the individual is simply the other face of our own fear of death or rejection. In his exaggerated valuation of separate identity, the personal ego is sawing off the branch on which he is sitting, and then getting more and more anxious about the coming crash!

  Alan Watts

  Rejection, Ego, Identity

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.56, Souvenir Press

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