Alan Watts Quotes About Consciousness

Quotes about: Consciousness

• We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between a causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality.

  Alan Watts

  Memories, Past, Reality

• We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.

  Alan Watts

  Nature, War, Desire

• We must see that consciousness is neither an isolated soul nor the mere function of a single nervous system, but of that totality of interrelated stars and galaxies which makes a nervous system possible.

  Alan Watts

  Stars, Soul, Consciousness

• Like too much alcohol,self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double, and we make the double image for two selves - mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous. Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering.

  Alan Watts

  Self, Two, Alcohol

  Alan W. Watts, Daniel Pinchbeck (2013). “The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness”, p.76, New World Library

• But the transformation of consciousness undertaken in Taoism and Zen is more like the correction of faulty perception or the curing of a disease. It is not an acquisitive process of learning more and more facts or greater and greater skills, but rather an unlearning of wrong habits and opinions. As Lao-tzu said, "The scholar gains every day, but the Taoist loses every day.

  Alan Watts

  Skills, Perception, Taoism

  Alan Watts (1970). “The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness”

• There is no mission, nor interest to convert, and yet I believe that if this state of consciousness could become more universal, the pretentious nonsense which passes for the serious business of the world would dissolve in laughter. We should see at once that the high ideals for which we are killing and regimenting each other are empty and abstract substiutes for the unheeded miracles that surround us - not only in the obvious wonders of nature but also in the overwhelming uncanny fact of mere existence.

  Alan Watts

  Laughter, Believe, Miracle

• The point is seeing that THIS - the immediate, everyday and present experience - is IT, the entire and ultimate point for the existence of a universe. I believe that if this state of consciousness could become more universal, the pretentious nonsense which passes for the serious business of the world would dissolve in laughter.

  Alan Watts

  Happiness, Laughter, Believe

• All I'm saying is that minerals are just a rudimentary form of consciousness whereas the other people are saying that consciousness is a complicated form of minerals.

  Alan Watts

  People, Complicated, Consciousness

• As the fish doesn't know water, people are ignorant of space. Consciousness is concerned only with changing and varying details; it ignores constants-especially constant backgrounds. Thus only very exceptional people are aware of what is basic to everything.

  Alan Watts

  Space, People, Water

• Our normal sense of the person as a lonely island of consciousness, is a dramatic illusion based on theological imagery.

  Alan Watts

  Lonely, Islands, Normal

  Alan Watts (1973). “Beyond Theology: The Art of Godmanship”, Vintage

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