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raphaelndonga 's review for:
The Book
by Alan Watts
The japanese had a book on sex ,that would liberate them from having to talk about the embarassing details of sex, which they slipped underneath their children's pillows. This book is intended to be the same, but it is on the taboo against knowing who you really are. GOD or "The Self". Not in the sense of the Abrahamic fatherly figure. More like the force behind the universe in it's entirety.
First of all, you need to understand that the seeing yourself as a separate ego is an illusion. You don't own your neurons. In a way, they own you in that they produce your consciousness. You didn't put them there but they put you here. And for you to get a sense that you are here, you need an experience relative to your environment. There is no you without an environment with a range of experiences to hand over to you. So in a sense, since your neurons and environment are externals, you are not only inside, but also outside.
And get this. As much as there is no inside without an outside, there is no outside without an inside. This concept took me a while, but eventually I wrapped my head around it. As Don Hoffman in his podcast with Sam Harris stated, scientists all over are certain that the world as we see it, is very different from how we perceive it. What we have as living organisms is a user interface to efficiently extract fitness payoffs from the universe. We don't have access to the "hard code" that is reality. Without an organism to perceive the universe, reality is unreachable. In Grand Theft auto, when you play you expect to see cars, not lines of code.
So the universe and you are not separate entities. You are a crest and it the trough of the same wave. None can do without the other.
Alan Watts calls this A Game of Black and White. Every aspect of our lives seems to have separate fighting entities. The Left vs The Right. The Good vs The Bad. The Successful vs The Poor. Heaven vs Hell. The funny thing however is, there can be no good person if there are no bad people. There would just be "people". The successful people have to measure their wealth against the poor to deem themselves successful. If there were no poor people, They would also just be "people". If the winner needs the presence loser for her to be a winner, it means they are not separate, but one.
So What?
The game of black and white is not a game of black vs white. The goal of all this is to realize that we might have differing views but the goal is to realize that we also need each other to exist. White should have the upper hand but if Black never wins, it seizes to be a game. And basically Alan Watts is calling for us to realize this.
I liked the moral aspect of the book indeed. I was however ambivalent about the metaphysical aspect of the book. It was still very interesting I have to confess.
Picture life before conception. Black, unconcious, we'll place this as a trough in our wave of life, since indeed, everything is a wave of sorts. Life after conception is the crest of the wave, and death is the trough again. Is it preposterous to claim that on this basis: There can be no life without death, that also there can be no death without life? Ponder that.
Alan Watts believes that GOD has been playing this game since time immemorial, manifesting himself within us. GOD apparently has been playing these games because "He was bored". I don't know about that. It seems like an incredibly oversimplified explanation about the origin of life. I however loved how Alan Watts reopened my eyes again to the metaphysical aspects of the universe. Our current society can easily take the magic out of everything.
First of all, you need to understand that the seeing yourself as a separate ego is an illusion. You don't own your neurons. In a way, they own you in that they produce your consciousness. You didn't put them there but they put you here. And for you to get a sense that you are here, you need an experience relative to your environment. There is no you without an environment with a range of experiences to hand over to you. So in a sense, since your neurons and environment are externals, you are not only inside, but also outside.
And get this. As much as there is no inside without an outside, there is no outside without an inside. This concept took me a while, but eventually I wrapped my head around it. As Don Hoffman in his podcast with Sam Harris stated, scientists all over are certain that the world as we see it, is very different from how we perceive it. What we have as living organisms is a user interface to efficiently extract fitness payoffs from the universe. We don't have access to the "hard code" that is reality. Without an organism to perceive the universe, reality is unreachable. In Grand Theft auto, when you play you expect to see cars, not lines of code.
So the universe and you are not separate entities. You are a crest and it the trough of the same wave. None can do without the other.
Alan Watts calls this A Game of Black and White. Every aspect of our lives seems to have separate fighting entities. The Left vs The Right. The Good vs The Bad. The Successful vs The Poor. Heaven vs Hell. The funny thing however is, there can be no good person if there are no bad people. There would just be "people". The successful people have to measure their wealth against the poor to deem themselves successful. If there were no poor people, They would also just be "people". If the winner needs the presence loser for her to be a winner, it means they are not separate, but one.
So What?
The game of black and white is not a game of black vs white. The goal of all this is to realize that we might have differing views but the goal is to realize that we also need each other to exist. White should have the upper hand but if Black never wins, it seizes to be a game. And basically Alan Watts is calling for us to realize this.
I liked the moral aspect of the book indeed. I was however ambivalent about the metaphysical aspect of the book. It was still very interesting I have to confess.
Picture life before conception. Black, unconcious, we'll place this as a trough in our wave of life, since indeed, everything is a wave of sorts. Life after conception is the crest of the wave, and death is the trough again. Is it preposterous to claim that on this basis: There can be no life without death, that also there can be no death without life? Ponder that.
Alan Watts believes that GOD has been playing this game since time immemorial, manifesting himself within us. GOD apparently has been playing these games because "He was bored". I don't know about that. It seems like an incredibly oversimplified explanation about the origin of life. I however loved how Alan Watts reopened my eyes again to the metaphysical aspects of the universe. Our current society can easily take the magic out of everything.