As is so often the way, what we have suppressed and overlooked issomething startlingly obvious. The difficulty is that it is so obvious andbasic that one can hardly find the words for it. The Germans call it a Hintergedanke, an apprehension lying tacitly in the back of our mindswhich we cannot easily admit, even to ourselves. The sensation of "I" asa lonely and isolated center of being is so powerful andcommonsensical, and so fundamental to our modes of speech andthought, to our laws and social institutions, that we cannot experienceselfhood except as something superficial in the scheme of the universe. Iseem to be a brief light that flashes but once in all the aeons of time–arare, complicated, and all-too-delicate organism on the fringe ofbiological evolution, where the wave of life bursts into individual, sparkling, and multicolored drops that gleam for a moment only tovanish forever. Under such conditioning it seems impossible and evenabsurd to realize that myself does not reside in the drop alone, but in thewhole surge of energy which ranges from the galaxies to the nuclearfields in my body. At this level of existence "I" am immeasurably old;my forms are infinite and their comings and goings are simply thepulses or vibrations of a single and eternal flow of energy. . Alan W. Watts
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  3. I envy people that know love. That have someone who takes them as they are. - Jess C. Scott
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More Quotes By Alan W. Watts
  1. The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.
  2. This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.
  3. The art of living... is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.
  4. If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you'll spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing thing you don't like doing,...
  5. Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.
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