Alan Watts Quotes

I find that the sensation of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is really a hallucination.

How much of what we call 'reality' is actually out there or rather within our own head?

Many people mistakenly suppose that the essence of consciousness is that of a control mechanism

Life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves.

The world consists of images on a screen, and consciousness is the steady light that emanates from the projector.

Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part.

If I use the word consciousness, in our lab, in our institute, what we mean is the special quality of mind, the special features that exist in the mind, that permit us to know, for example, that we, ourselves, exist, and that things exist around us.

And wasn't my mind also like another crib in the depths of which I felt I remained ensconced, even in order to watch what was happening outside? When I saw an external object, my awareness that I was seeing it would remain between me and it, lining it with a thin spiritual border that prevented me from ever directly touching its substance; it would volatize in some way before I could make contact with it, just as an incandescent body brought near a wet object never touches its moisture because it is always preceded by a zone of evaporation.

'Tell me one last thing,' said Harry. 'Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?' Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry's ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure. 'Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?'

Consciousness is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation.

Consciousness in the individual is that area where the totality of life is located.

I can no longer be sure whether the psyche is in me or whether I'm in the psyche.

It's pretty much a fact that our entire universe is a mental construct. We don't actually deal with reality directly. We simply compose a picture of reality from what's going on in our retinas, in the timpani of our ears, and in our nerve endings.

The "paradox" is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality "ought to be."

The world doesn't just disappear when you close your eyes, does it?

We confuse ourselves with space-time events, when in fact we are the ones who generate these space-time events.

I had the feeling . . . that my experience was very different from other people’s. (Are we all under this illusion?)

[D]oes the real world have any more substance than visions and hallucinations when we're having them? At any given moment, what's happening in our minds is all and everything that happens.

The problem is we think we exist.

The physical body is conceived and constructed in consciousness as are time and space. All happens within our self.

Everyone tries to create a world he can live in, and what he can't use he often can't see. But the real world is already created, and if your fabrication doesn't correspond, then even if you feel noble and insist on there being something better than what people call reality, that better something needn't try to exceed what, in its actuality, since we know it so little, may be very surprising. If a happy state of things, surprising; if miserable or tragic, no worse than what we invent.

I'm not here now. This isn't happening. You're just visiting a dream of mine.

The quality of your life is determined by how you feel at any given moment.How you feel is determined by how you interpret what is happening around you,not by the the events themselves.

Aren't memories just dreams we have when we're awake?