"Our normal sense of the person as..." - Quote by Alan Watts
Our normal sense of the person as a lonely island of consciousness, is a dramatic illusion based on theological imagery.
More by Alan Watts
“You must not be afraid of playing wrong notes. Just forget it, play it wrong! But play!”
“You find out that the universe is a system that creeps up on itself and says 'Boo' and then laughs at itself for jumping.”
“We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.”
More on Self
“Attitude ... is the vanguard of your true self.”
“Surely what a man does when he is taken off guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is. If there are rats in a cellar, you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats; it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me ill tempered; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am.”
“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”
More on Illusion
“Financiers live in a world of illusion. They count on something which they call the capital of the country, which has no existence.”
“This world's existence is one night long. There's a great lively gathering that night, but some people sleep through it.”
“Fears are nothing more than a state of mind.”