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When we look for things there is nothing but mind, and when we look for mind there is nothing but things.

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
Nothing
Looks
Mind
Complexity
Things
Spirituality
Chaos
Religion
Spirit
Look

More quotes by Alan Watts

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Perhaps there is no other knowing than the mere competence of the act. If at the heart of one's being, there is no self to which one ought to be true, then sincerity is simply nerve it lies in the unabashed vigor of the pretense. But pretense is only pretense when it is assumed that the act is not true to the agent. Find the agent.
Alan Watts
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When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique.
Alan Watts
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We see what we believe rather than what we see.
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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.
Alan Watts
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The destination of life is this eternal moment.
Alan Watts
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But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is. If you awaken from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death - or shall I say, death implies life - you can conceive yourself.
Alan Watts
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...the materialism of modern civilization is paradoxically founded on a hatred of materiality, a goal-oriented desire to obliterate all natural limits through technology, imposing an abstract grid over nature.
Alan Watts
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But the disappearance of the effort to let go is precisely the disappearance of the separate thinker, of the ego trying to watch the mind without interfering.
Alan Watts
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We have somehow conned ourselves into the notion that this moment is ordinary. This now moment, in which I'm talking and you're listening, is eternity.
Alan Watts
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To go out of your mind at least once a day is tremendously important. By going out of your mind, you come to your senses.
Alan Watts
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Real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.
Alan Watts
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The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it - aliens.
Alan Watts
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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.
Alan Watts
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The trouble with many religions, accused of wishful thinking, is that they are not wishful enough. They show a deplorable lack of imagination.
Alan Watts
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The Greek word for sinning means to ‘miss the point’ The point is eternal life which is here and now.
Alan Watts
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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.
Alan Watts
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The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.
Alan Watts
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Philosophy is man’s expression of curiosity about everything and his attempt to make sense of the world primarily through his intellect.
Alan Watts
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But when no risk is taken there is no freedom. It is thus that, in an industrial society, the plethora of laws made for our personal safety convert the land into a nursery, and policemen hired to protect us become selfserving busybodies.
Alan Watts
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When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
Alan Watts