23 Quotes by Alan W. Watts about Nonduality
- Author Alan W. Watts
-
Quote
And the sage does not see himself as a little thing thrown into a vast and alien space: for him, the thing-space is a unity as inseparable as life-death, up-down, back-front, or inside-outside.
- Tags
- Share
- Author Alan W. Watts
-
Quote
The cosmos is seel as a multi-dimensional network of crystals, each one containing the reflections of all the others, and the reflections of all the others in those reflections... In the heart of each there shines, too, the single point of light that every one reflects from every other.
- Tags
- Share
- Author Alan W. Watts
-
Quote
This recognition of the two-sidedness of the One is what makes the difference between the exoteric and esoteric aspects of a religion, and the latter is always guarded and is alwaysmystical or ''closed'' [...] because of the danger that the opposites will be confused if their unity is made explicit. It is thus that mysticism is never quite orthodox, never wholly respectable.
- Tags
- Share
- Author Alan W. Watts
-
Quote
On the one hand, to withdraw is a separative and thus essentially selfish position. On the other, to choose not to play rather than to play is still to choose, and thus to remain in duality. Therefore the most truly awakened sages are represented as coming back to participate in the life of the world out of ''compassion for all sentient beings,'' playing the game of good against evil, success against failure, in the full knowledge that it is a game [.]
- Tags
- Share
- Author Alan W. Watts
-
Quote
Part of the difficulty seems to be that we educate a style of consciousness which ignores whatever is a constant sensation. Consciousness is ever upon the alert for new conditions in the environment so as to keep the rest of the organism I informed about adaptations that must be made, and this style of attention comes to eclipse the more open and total style of sensitivity that we have in the beginning.
- Tags
- Share
- Author Alan W. Watts
-
Quote
[T]he paradox of civilization is that the more one is anxious to survive, the less survival is worth the trouble.
- Tags
- Share
- Author Alan W. Watts
-
Quote
If, then, a pleasurable state is to be conscious, it cannot be constant, for there will be no contrasting ground against which to feel it. Pleasure is thus in fact the configuration pleasure/non-pleasure (e.g., pleasure/pain, pleasure/anxiety, pleasure/boredom, pleasure/hunger, etc.) in which the first term is the figure and the second the ground.
- Tags
- Share
- Author Alan W. Watts
-
Quote
Man makes God in his own image, and as he comes to a clearer and more intelligible view of his own image - changing it in the process - he comes to a more intelligible view of God.
- Tags
- Share
- Author Alan W. Watts
-
Quote
Yet as the world becomes more intelligible, it also becomes more mysterious - not, perhaps, in the sense of being problematic and baffling, but of being immeasurably grander, vaster, more complex, and, indeed, more imaginative than we had supposed.
- Tags
- Share