Watts Profound Quotes

You can’t bite your own teeth. You can’t taste your own tongue. And you can’t touch the tip of [your] finger with the tip [of the same] finger. And that is why there is always an element of profound mystery in the problem of who we are

Life keeps moving on, and yet remains profoundly rooted in the present, seeking no result, for the present has spread out from its constriction in an elusive pin-point of strained consciousness to an all-embracing eternity. Feelings both positive and negative come and go without turmoil, for they seem to be simply observed, though there is no one observing. They pass trackless like birds in the sky, and build up no resistances which have to be dissipated in reckless action.

We do not need a new religion or a new bible. We need a new experience—a new feeling of what it is to be “I.” The lowdown (which is, of course, the secret and profound view) on life is that our normal sensation of self is a hoax, or, at best, a temporary role that we are playing, or have been conned into playing—with our own tacit consent, just as every hypnotized person is basically willing to be hypnotized. The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.

Let’s say (since in writing a book one has to say something) that reality or existence is a multidimensional and interwoven system of varying spectra of vibrations, and that man’s five senses are attuned only to very small bands of these spectra. That sounds very profound and may mean nothing at all, but in reading it one should attend to the sound of the words rather than their meaning. Then you will get my point.

[T]he question "What is everything?" has no meaning, even though it seems to be profound. [...] The point is, perhaps, that I am not looking for a verbal answer, just as when I ask for a kiss, I do not want a piece of paper with "A kiss" written on it. It is rather that metaphysical wonder looks for an experience, a vision, a revelation which will explain, without words, why there is the universe, and what it is [...].

At some point in life, we all ask the same question: Who am I? And no one really knows the answer. The self is a slippery subject—especially when it’s the subject that is regarding itself as an object! So let’s begin by grounding this airy topic with an experiential activity—taking the body for a walk. Then we’ll investigate the nature of the self in your brain. Last, we’ll explore methods for relaxing and releasing “self-ing” in order to feel more confident, peaceful, and joined with all things. (For more on this profound matter, which reaches beyond the scope of a single chapter, see Living Dhamma by Ajahn Chah, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts, I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, or The Spiritual Teaching of Ramana Maharshi.)

Regardless of whether you think the industrial era has been good or bad, three profoundly fundamental shifts underlie this revolution. The first is that industrialists harnessed new sources of energy, primarily to produce things. Preindustrial people occasionally used wind or water to generate power, but they mostly relied on muscles—human and animal—to generate force. Industrial pioneers such as James Watt (who invented the modern steam engine) figured out how to transform energy from fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas into steam, electricity, and other kinds of power to run machines. The first of these machines were designed to make textiles, but within decades others were invented to make iron, mill wood, plow fields, transport things, and do just about everything else one can manufacture and sell (including beer)7. A second major component of the Industrial Revolution was a reorganization of economies and social institutions. As industrialization gathered steam, capitalism, in which individuals compete to produce goods and services for profit, became the world’s dominant economic system, spurring the development of further industrialization and social change. As workers changed their locus of activity from the farm to factories and companies, more people had to work together even as they needed to perform more specialized activities. Factories required more coordination and regulation. In

Finally, the Industrial Revolution coincided with a transformation of science from a pleasant but nonessential branch of philosophy into a vibrant profession that helped people make money. Many heroes of the early Industrial Revolution were chemists and engineers, often amateurs such as Michael Faraday and James Watt who lacked formal degrees or academic appointments. Like many young Victorians excited by the winds of change, Charles Darwin and his elder brother Erasmus dreamed as boys of becoming chemists.8 Other fields of science, such as biology and medicine, also made profound contributions to the Industrial Revolution, often by promoting public health. Louis Pasteur began his career as a chemist working on the structure of tartaric acid, which was used in wine production. But in the process of studying fermentation he discovered microbes, invented methods to sterilize food, and created the first vaccines. Without Pasteur and other pioneers in microbiology and public health, the Industrial Revolution would not have progressed so far and so fast. In short, the Industrial Revolution was actually a combination of technological, economic, scientific, and social transformations that rapidly and radically altered the course of history and reconfigured the face of the planet in less than ten generations—a true blink of an eye by the standards of evolutionary time. Over

Just as no one in his senses would look for the morning news in a dictionary, no one should use speaking and thinking to find out what cannot be spoken or thought. Logically, then, the question, “What is everything?” has no meaning, even though it seems to be profound.

When Lao-tzu said that mui, doing nothing, was the secret of harmony with the Tao, he really meant it. But what he meant by it must be distinguished very carefully from two other courses which sound quite different from one another, though they are really the same. The first course, I will call the way of deliberate imitation. This is to suppose that we actually know what the sane and natural way of living is, to embody it in laws and principles, techniques and ideals, and then try by a deliberate effort of imitation to follow them. This leads to all the contradictions with which we are so familiar, the contradiction of man bawling himself out—as well as up—for not doing what he tells himself to do. The second, and seemingly opposed course, I will call the way of deliberate relaxation, the way of “to hell with it all.” This is to try not to control oneself, to attempt to relax one’s mind and let it think whatever it wants, to set out to accept one’s self as it is without making any effort to change it. This leads to a vast, sloppy, disorganized mess, or to a kind of compulsive stillness, or sometimes to an equally compulsive psychological diarrhea. Both of these courses are far short of the real mui, of profound and radical nondoing. What brings them to the same thing is that, in their different ways, the two courses had a result in mind. They consisted equally in something done, or not done, to get to a goal. The goal in question was some sort of image, some mental picture, some vague feeling, of an ideal, of a state of accord with the Tao, of harmony with the Way of Nature.

In truth, no matter what we think we know, we are probably wrong, and no matter what anyone else thinks they know, they are probably wrong. No one knows what’s going on in any fundamental sense. Nothing about this life is simple or clear, and from the perspective of the stars, nothing down here on earth—including us—matters all that much to anything beyond itself. Paradoxically, in this, we find great opportunity for wisdom, humility, exploration, and profound experience in our lives. “Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough,” said renowned theoretical physicist Richard Feynman. In even the most common and mundane things, there is complexity and strangeness. We don’t even know why we sleep or dream. We don’t know how most of our brain works or what consciousness is. We don’t know if time is real in any physical sense. We don’t know what gravity is or why it is. We don’t know if there are infinite other universes or dimensions around us. We don’t know why energy or matter even came to be in the first place—or why it was followed by a perfect sequence of colliding, combining, exploding, and emerging, all to put us here, right now, able to ask why. At the base of almost everything, the resulting truth is this: we don’t know. When we disregard this unknowingness, we can easily become disinterested, uninspired, and worn out of this life. We can put great stress on things that perhaps don’t matter all that much and neglect experiences and things that do. We can feel the pressure and anxiety of chasing perfection and certainty, which do not exist. We should look to the universe often, not solely for answers but for perspective; for a helpful adjustment and an aerial consideration of our daily life. With this practice, the little things in life become more striking, the mistakes and the annoyances become less significant, the calm comes more easily, and the everyday activities of our lives that we so often view as wasteful and tedious reveal themselves to be wonderfully strange and curious parts of our existence that we should make effort to ponder and appreciate as often as we can. As if to say, I’d love to marvel at and enjoy this work of art I’ve created, the universe gave itself humanity. “Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence,” said twentieth-century American-British philosopher Alan Watts. What a shame it would be to waste this experience by failing to appreciate the glory and magnificence found in the unknown. We must try to remember as often as we can that the unknown permeates everything. Its wonder is always above us, below us, around us, and inside us, whenever we need