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Western religions are more concerned with behavior, doctrine, and belief than with any transformation of the way in which we are aware of ourselves and our 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
World
Transformation
Doctrine
Aware
Western
Behavior
Concerned
Belief
Way
Religions

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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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It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description.
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I find that the sensation of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is really a hallucination.
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We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time
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We have allowed brain thinking to develop and dominate our lives. As a consequence, we are at war within ourselves. The brain desiring things which the body does not want, and the body desiring things which the brain does not allow the brain giving directions which the body will not follow, and the body giving impulses which the brain cannot
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The sense of wrong is simply failure to see where something fits into a pattern, to be confused as to the hierarchical level upon which an event belongs.
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If you insist on being determined by the past that's your game, but the fact of the matter is it all starts right now.
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When you really understand that you are what you see and know, you do not run around the countryside thinking, I am all this! There is simply all this.
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The mundane and the sacred are one and the same.
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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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The Highest to which people can attain is wonder and if the prime phenomenon makes them wonder, let them be content nothing higher can it give them, and nothing further should they seek for behind it there is the limit.
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You are something that the whole world is doing just as when the sea has waves on it.
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I knew of a physicist at the University of Chicago who was rather crazy like some scientists, and the idea of the insolidity, the instability of the physical world impressed him so much that he used to go around in enormous padded slippers for fear he should fall through the floor.
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You can't figure out the Universe, especially if you're using figures to figure it.
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The role of the Guru is to show the person that he already has what he is looking for.
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Altough we all realize that monotony is boring, almost every form of industrial work- banking, accounting, mass-producing, service- is monotonous, and most people are paid for simply putting up with monotony
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We all need to go out of our minds at least once a day. When we go out of our minds we quickly come to our senses.
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But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.
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You can't make love without art.
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Your body does not eliminate poisons by knowing their names. To try to control fear or depression or boredom by calling them names is to resort to superstition of trust in curses and invocations. It is so easy to see why this does not work. Obviously, we try to know, name, and define fear in order to make it “objective,” that is, separate from “I.
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