Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the fundamental connection between living beings and their environment, warning against the delusion of separation.
Alan Watts points out that failing to recognize the deep relationship and interdependence between organisms and their environment can lead to significant misunderstandings about existence. This 'dangerous hallucination' reflects a disconnection that can have severe consequences on both the individual and ecological levels, urging us to cultivate awareness of our unity with the natural world.
In practice
During a lecture on ecology, to emphasize how human actions affect the environment.
Jesus Christ knew he was God. So wake up and find out eventually who you really are. In our culture, of course, they’ll say you’re crazy and you’re blasphemous, and they’ll either put you in jail or in a nut house (which is pretty much the same thing). However if you wake up in India and tell your friends and relations, ‘My goodness, I’ve just discovered that I’m God,’ they’ll laugh and say, ‘Oh, congratulations, at last you found out.
What we see as death, empty space, or nothingness is only the trough between the crests of this endlessly waving ocean. It is all part of the illusion that there should seem to be something to be gained in the future, and that there is an urgent necessity to go on and on until we get it. Yet just as there is no time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is never anything to be gained - though the zest of the game is to pretend that there is.
There is only this now. It does not come from anywhere; it is not going anywhere. It is not permanent, but it is not impermanent. Though moving, it is always still. When we try to catch it, it seems to run away, and yet it is always here and there is no escape from it. And when we turn around to find the self which knows this moment, we find that it has vanished like the past.
Many people never grow up. They stay all their lives with a passionate need for external authority and guidance, pretending not to trust their own judgment.
There are two specific objections to use of psychedelic drugs.First,use of these drugs may be dangerous.Howev er,every worth-while exploration is dangerous-climb ing mountains,testi ng aircraft,rocket ing into outer space,or collecting botanical specimens in jungles.But if you value knowledge & the actual delight of exploration more than mere duration of uneventful life,you are willing to take the risks.
The Godhead is never an object of its own knowledge. Just as a knife doesn't cut itself, fire doesn't burn itself, light doesn't illuminate itself. It's always an endless mystery to itself.
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, / That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
If the spiritual universe and the way to it were shown, No one would remain in this world for a single moment.
In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. This is what makes American what it is.
The devil's most devilish when respectable.
The role of the intellectual cannot be to excuse the violence of one side and condemn that of the other.
Every thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears your signature.
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