"We are living in a culture entirely..." - Quote by Alan Watts
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.
More by Alan Watts
More on Time
“Humor is tragedy plus time.”
“Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,But bad mortality o'ersways their power,How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,Whose action is no stronger than a flower?”
“Thou mayest foresee... the things which will be. For they will certainly be of like form, and it is not possible that they should deviate from the order of things now: accordingly to have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years.”
More on Illusion
“Everything's fine today, that is our illusion.”
“There is only one inborn erroneous notion ... that we exist in order to be happy ... So long as we persist in this inborn error ... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence ... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of ... disappointment.”
“Open your Eyes, for this World is only a Dream.”