Alan Watts' Self

Nothing fails like success---because the self-imposed task of our society and all its members is a contradiction----to force things to happen which are acceptable only when they happen without force.* This in turn, arises from the definition of man as an independent agent ----in the universe but not of it---saddled with the job of bending the world to his will. page 75

The individual may be understood neither as an isolated person nor as an expendable humanoid working machine. He may be seen, instead , as one particular focal point at which the whole universe express itself---as an incarnation of the Self, of the Godhead, or whatever one may choose to call IT (page 78)

. in the Nootka language, a church is "housing religiously a shop is "housing tradingly....Does t really explain to say that a man is running? On the contrary, the only explanation would be a description of the field or situation in which "a manning goes with running " as distinct from a manning goeswith sitting......"the cause" of the behavior is the situation as a whole, the organization/environment...(page 95)

Here is someone who has never seen a cat. He is looking through a narrow slit in a fence, and on the other side, a cat walks by. he sees first the head, then ...then tail. ....The cat turns round and walks back...This sequence begins to look like something regular and reliable. .Thereupon he reasons that the event head is the invariable and necessary cause of the event tail, which is the head's effect. page 31

...not all the features of a total situation have to appear at the same time the existence of a man implies patents, even though they may be long since dead, ..Total situations are, therefore, patterns in time as much as pattern in space. (page 96)

There is no fate unless there is someone or something to be fated. ....when the line between myself and what happens to me is dissolved and there is no strong-hold left for an ego even as a passive witness, I find not in a world but as a world which is neither compulsive nor arbitrary.(page 124)

...the universe in general and playing in particular are, in a special sense, "meaningless"; that is, they do not --like words and symbols---signify or point to something beyond themselves...page 128

...all experience is just that....it is nothing more than the mysterious utterance of the old man of Spithead, who op end the window and said;

Fill jomble, fill jumble,
Fill rumble-come-tumble

page 130

The only real "you" is the one that comes and goes, manifests and withdraws itself eternally in and as every conscious being. For "you" is the universe looking at itself from billions of points of view, points that come and go so that the vision is forever new. page 130

"The Book" Alan Watts
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*page 73 The soical double-mind game can be phrased in several ways.....Control yourself but be natural....Essentially, this game is a demand for spontaneous behavior of certain kinds.