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3.97 AVERAGE
3.97 AVERAGE
An interesting idea that has become the precursor to so many of todays philosophical, spiritual and self-help guides.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
"And if I forget how many times I have been here, and in how many shapes, this forgetting is the necessary interval of darkness between every pulsation of light. I return in every baby born."
Books like this --heady, woo-woo philosophies based loosely on a smorgasbord of different religious influences -- have to find you at the right time; the reviews this book gets are either an ecstatic 5 stars or a scathing "what the hell is this drivel" 1 star. I'm happy to say I picked this book up at a very appropriate time in my life and I'm in the former camp. Alan Watts has become a symbol largely of psychedelic culture and that doesn't interest me much, but beneath that there's a lot of great stuff in this book.
"No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now."
Books like this have to be fluffy, because without a basis of language to describe concepts the author has to sort of chip away at an idea from a few different metaphorical vantage points before he strikes at the heart of the matter. You have to be along for the ride and be in a headspace where you yourself are wondering and testing some of the ideas he's also testing. This is not a book that would convince a devout-anybody to abandon their views; you have to already be questioning the nature of things.
"Don't try to get rid of the ego-sensations. Take it, so long as it lasts, as a feature of play of the total process, like a cloud or wave, or like feeling warm or cold... when this feeling of separateness is approached and accepted like any other sensation, it evaporates like the mirage that it is.
If this book could be boiled down into a thesis statement, it's that the sense of personal ego is an illusion. Our biology, reinforced by our culture, tells us a story that our self is somewhere inside our head, controls our body, and is separate to the environment we're inside of. But, shown in physics and philosophy and biology, we only exist in relation to the context around us: we only move in context to what we move past, things are witnessed only in contrast to what's around them. When and where we are born, the community in which we are born, the body into which we are born, all shape what we know as our "self." And that self is not immutable; all 7 billion of us currently experience the sensation of "I"-ness, and all 7 billion instances will one day dissolve and give rise to new iterations.
"You can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with the certain conviction you are one with her and she with you. You are as invulnerable as she... as surely as she will engulf you tomorrow, so surely will she bring you forth anew to new striving and suffering. Today, every day, she is bringing you forth, thousands upon thousands of times. For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end."
Watts brings these ideas from the philosophical to the sociological: just as dark only exists in contrast to light, socially we define ourselves by our opposites. The philosophy of dualism, that is so prevalent in Western civilization and our religions, is found in our societies: our left exists in contrast to our right, our in groups only exist as a response to the out group, and those on the outside create new "ins" as members outside of the hegemony. If Watts is making any grand point about what to do about it, I missed it, but being conscious of these impulses helps put our own behavior into context. Even the groups obsessed with trying to destroy the ego are reinforcing the ego by creating a new in-group of "enlightenment!"
"Modern Protestantism is the religion most strongly influenced by the mythology of man as the separate ego. Hoaxed into the illusion of being an independent source of actions, he cannot understand why what he does never comes up to what he should do, for a society which has defined him as separate cannot persuade him to behave as if he belonged... so he feels chronic guilt and makes the most heroic efforts to placate his conscience."
I'll definitely be buying a copy and revisiting it often.
"Idolatry is not the use of images, but confusing them with what they represent, and in this respect, mental images and lofty abstractions can be more insidious than bronze idols."
Books like this --heady, woo-woo philosophies based loosely on a smorgasbord of different religious influences -- have to find you at the right time; the reviews this book gets are either an ecstatic 5 stars or a scathing "what the hell is this drivel" 1 star. I'm happy to say I picked this book up at a very appropriate time in my life and I'm in the former camp. Alan Watts has become a symbol largely of psychedelic culture and that doesn't interest me much, but beneath that there's a lot of great stuff in this book.
"No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now."
Books like this have to be fluffy, because without a basis of language to describe concepts the author has to sort of chip away at an idea from a few different metaphorical vantage points before he strikes at the heart of the matter. You have to be along for the ride and be in a headspace where you yourself are wondering and testing some of the ideas he's also testing. This is not a book that would convince a devout-anybody to abandon their views; you have to already be questioning the nature of things.
"Don't try to get rid of the ego-sensations. Take it, so long as it lasts, as a feature of play of the total process, like a cloud or wave, or like feeling warm or cold... when this feeling of separateness is approached and accepted like any other sensation, it evaporates like the mirage that it is.
If this book could be boiled down into a thesis statement, it's that the sense of personal ego is an illusion. Our biology, reinforced by our culture, tells us a story that our self is somewhere inside our head, controls our body, and is separate to the environment we're inside of. But, shown in physics and philosophy and biology, we only exist in relation to the context around us: we only move in context to what we move past, things are witnessed only in contrast to what's around them. When and where we are born, the community in which we are born, the body into which we are born, all shape what we know as our "self." And that self is not immutable; all 7 billion of us currently experience the sensation of "I"-ness, and all 7 billion instances will one day dissolve and give rise to new iterations.
"You can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with the certain conviction you are one with her and she with you. You are as invulnerable as she... as surely as she will engulf you tomorrow, so surely will she bring you forth anew to new striving and suffering. Today, every day, she is bringing you forth, thousands upon thousands of times. For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end."
Watts brings these ideas from the philosophical to the sociological: just as dark only exists in contrast to light, socially we define ourselves by our opposites. The philosophy of dualism, that is so prevalent in Western civilization and our religions, is found in our societies: our left exists in contrast to our right, our in groups only exist as a response to the out group, and those on the outside create new "ins" as members outside of the hegemony. If Watts is making any grand point about what to do about it, I missed it, but being conscious of these impulses helps put our own behavior into context. Even the groups obsessed with trying to destroy the ego are reinforcing the ego by creating a new in-group of "enlightenment!"
"Modern Protestantism is the religion most strongly influenced by the mythology of man as the separate ego. Hoaxed into the illusion of being an independent source of actions, he cannot understand why what he does never comes up to what he should do, for a society which has defined him as separate cannot persuade him to behave as if he belonged... so he feels chronic guilt and makes the most heroic efforts to placate his conscience."
I'll definitely be buying a copy and revisiting it often.
"Idolatry is not the use of images, but confusing them with what they represent, and in this respect, mental images and lofty abstractions can be more insidious than bronze idols."
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
adventurous
funny
informative
inspiring
mysterious
fast-paced
informative