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If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.

Alan Watts

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Alan Watts
Age: 58 †
Born: 1915
Born: January 6
Died: 1973
Died: November 16
Anglican Priest
Author
Dramaturge
Musician
Philosopher
Theologian
Videographer
Writer
Kent
England
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World
Whether
Future
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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.
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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 enviornment.
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For the price of intelligence as we now know it is chronic anxiety, anxiety which appears to increase—oddly enough—to the very degree that human life is subjected to intelligent organization.
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Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
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You don't need to try to be God, you are! But if you try to be God it means you don't know you are.
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The hallucination of being a separate ego will not stand up to biological tests.
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Lack of love for the vegetative, subtle, cthonic, pagan, and sexy aspect of the world means death.
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No one is more dangerously insane than one who is sane all the time: he is like a steel bridge without flexibility, and the order of his life is rigid and brittle.
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You are the universe experiencing itself.
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Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.
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LSD is simply an exploratory instrument like a microscope or telescope, except this one is inside of you instead of outside of you.
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The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music also, it is fulfilled in each moment of its course. You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meaning of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.
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Where does my fist go when I open up my hand? Where does my lap go when I stand up?
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I am amazed that Congressmen can pass a bill imposing severe penalties on anyone who burns the American flag, whereas they are responsible for burning that for which the flag stands: the United States as a territory, as a people, and as a biological manifestation. That is an example of our perennial confusion of symbols with realities.
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If you want to stay in a state of illusion, stay in it. But you can always wake up.
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When we attempt to exercise power or control over someone else, we cannot avoid giving that person the very same power or control over us.
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Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
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What would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?
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Think about a piece of music - some great symphony - we don't expect it to get better as it develops, or that its whole purpose is to reach the final crescendo. The joy is found in listening to the music in each moment.
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You will never get to the irreducible definition of anything because you will never be able to explain why you want to explain, and so on. The system will gobble itself up.
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