The prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East.To define is to limit. The words we use in language are limits to the magnificence that is our presymbolic. The boundaries we set on the boundless make it impossible to properly define things like the universe.

The Real Self

The individual is separate from his universal environment only in name. When this is not recognized, you have been fooled by your name. Confusing names with nature, you come to believe that having a separate name makes you a separate being. This is — rather literally — to be spellbound.Memories overtime convinces you that ‘I’ is real—they are actually one of the key parts of the ego-sensation. It gives an impression of a self, the executive, as something that remains constant as life changes—as if our conscious selves were a static mirror reflecting a fixed perception

The World Is One

The universe is at root a magical illusion and a fabulous game… there is never anything to be gained —through the zest of the game is to pretend that there is.Everything is a big wiggle. They wiggle so much and in so many different ways that one can really make out where one wiggle begins and another ends whether it be in space or time.No matter how much we divide, count, sort, or classify the wiggle into particular things, this is nothing more than a method for thinking about the world; Nothing Is Actually Ever Divided.

Wiggly Universe: An Undivided Entity

Attention is an intentional, unapologetic discriminator. Attention is a narrowed perception. Like a scanning mechanism, it is a flashlight in the darkroom that narrows our perception. While a narrowed perception is great for being sharp, it can only focus on one area at a time.

Out Attention

Life is a system of geological and biological cooperation. But man continues to separate himself, as though he is the only subject among a world of objects—such dualist thinking is a neurosis.Two Factors are ignored:<ul><li>Not realizing that so-called opposites are poles of the same thing. Things like light and darkness, sound and silence, solid and space cannot be without one another.</li><li>We are absorbed in conscious attention, convinced that this narrowed perception is the only real way of seeing the world.</li></ul>

The Duality Of Life

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.

Just as nothing or organism exists on its own, it does not act on its own. The total interrelationship between all things.The more things changes, the more they are the same. Change is in some ways an illusion, for we are always at a point of uncertainty where any future can occur.America’s reputation for materialism is unfounded. Pleasures are not material but symbols for pleasure—attractively packaged, but inferior in content.

Change And Materialism

The self or ego that we create and identify as a separate being does not really exist. A mind-altering experience on every page, the illusion of separateness we attach to is identified as the problem, and a solution to our ego trip is offered. Since forcibly ignoring the self only strengthens its influence, we must embrace it, learn so much about it that our new found self-consciousness makes its influence blatant—we gain control with awareness.

What Eastern Thought Is

Real travel requires a maximum of unscheduled wandering, for there is no other way of discovering surprises and marvels, which, as I see it, is the only good reason for not staying at home.

Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social environment.

Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.

Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.

By accepting our condition—craving for categorization—we can begin to monitor how we create these imitation realities and modify our conscious experience to embrace our relationship with the universe.Our normal sensation of self is a hoax, or, at best, a temporary role that we are playing, or have been conned into playing — with our own tacit consent, just as every hypnotized person is basically willing to be hypnotized. The most powerful taboo in society is the one against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.”

We Are Not Categorically Separate

The essential introduction to his life and ideas

books

Books

communication

Communication

philosophy

Philosophy

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

The Philosophy Of Alan Watts 

Alan Watts condenses eastern philosophy and spiritual teachings, providing insights in the language that the west understands.

A witty attack on the illusion that the self is a separate ego that confronts a universe of alien physical objects.

religionandspirituality

Religion & Spirituality

A revelatory primer on what it means to be human and a mind-opening manual of initiation into the central mystery of existence, by “perhaps the foremost interpreter of Eastern disciplines for the contemporary West" (Los Angeles Times). At the root of human conflict is our fundamental misunderstanding of who we are. The illusion that we are isolated beings, unconnected to the rest of the universe, has led us to view the “outside” world with hostility, and has fueled our misuse of technology and our violent and hostile subjugation of the natural world. To help us understand that the self is in fact the root and ground of the universe, Alan Watts provides us with a much-needed answer to the problem of personal identity, distilling and adapting the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta.

ALAN WATTS

Similar ideas

Boosting wellbeing from laughing

What Humor Is

The power of laughter