Reading Archives (Author)

Everything Human Is Natural

Alan Watts

Man is as much attached to nature as a tree, and though he walks freely on two legs and is not rooted in the soil, he is by no means a self-sufficient, self-moving, and self-directing entity. For his ...

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35K reads, 13 comments

The World Mirrors The Soul And The Soul Mirrors The World

Alan Watts

If you sit still for a while, completely relaxed, and let your thoughts run on, let your mind think of whatever it likes, without interfering, without making suggestions and without raising any kind o...

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23K reads, 7 comments

One Has No Self To Love

Alan Watts

Love that expresses itself in creative action is something much more than an emotion. It is not something which you can “feel” and “know,” remember and define. Love is the orga...

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31K reads, 13 comments

You Play The Piano

Alan Watts

The existence, the physical universe is basically playful. There is no necessity for it whatsoever. It isn’t going anywhere. That is to say, it doesn’t have some destination that it ought ...

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73K reads, 17 comments

True Splendor of Science

Alan Watts

The true splendor of science is not so much that it names and classifies, records and predicts, but that it observes and desires to know the facts, whatever they may turn out to be. However much it ma...

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34K reads, 4 comments

Money is not Wealth

Alan Watts

Money is a way of measuring wealth but is not wealth in itself. A chest of gold coins or a fat wallet of bills is of no use whatsoever to a wrecked sailor alone on a raft. He needs real wealth, in the...

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43K reads, 31 comments

Who Wants To Be A Philosopher?

Alan Watts

Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself. Other creatures may love and laugh, talk and think, but is seems to be that the special peculiarity of human beings is...

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21K reads

Become What You Are

Alan Watts

Begin with the practice of concentration, that is, of attentive looking. It is as if to say, "If you want to know what reality is, you must look directly at it and see for yourself. But this needs a c...

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21K reads, 7 comments

Illusion of Oneself

Alan Watts

"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...

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21K reads

Hermits in New York

Alan Watts

Let's take hermits. People today think being a hermit is a very unhealthy thing to do. Very antisocial, doesn't contribute anything to everybody else - because everybody else is busy contributing lik...

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28K reads