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We tend to regard ourselves as puppets of the Past, driven along by something that is always behind us.

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
Past
Something
Puppets
Always
Driven
Tend
Regard
Behinds
Along
Behind

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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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Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself. Just as the word “water” is a noise that symbolizes a certain liquid without being it, so too the idea of ego symbolizes the role you play, who you are, but it is not the same as your living organism.
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We live in a culture where it has been rubbed into us in every conceivable way that to die is a terrible thing. And that is a tremendous disease from which our culture in particular suffers.
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What we need to realize is that there can be, shall we say, a movement, a stirring among people, which can be organically designed instead of politically designed.
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The future is a concept, it doesn't exist. There is no such thing as tomorrow. There never will be, because time is always now. That's one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking. We find there is only present, only an eternal now.
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In looking out upon the world, we forget that the world is looking at itself.
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To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, “I am listening to this music,” you are not listening.
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Where-so-ever beings exist throughout all galaxies, it doesn't make any difference - you are all of them....and when they come into being, that's you coming into being.
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Every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree.
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