Alan Watts Quotes

The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today.

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

The wave is the same as the ocean, though it is not the whole ocean. So each wave of creation is a part of the eternal Ocean of Spirit. The Ocean can exist without the waves, but the waves cannot exist without the Ocean.

In death, as in sleep, I am all things.

The Now is as it is because it cannot be otherwise. What Buddhists have always known, physicists now confirm: there are no isolated things or events. Underneath the surface appearance, all things are interconnected, are part of the totality of the cosmos that has brought about the form that this moment takes.

Since the past is unreal and the future is unreal, all your thoughts are about nothing.

I can't tell one from the other:I find you or you find me?There was a time before we were born If someone asks, this is where I'll be.

What does it mean that I am in this endless universe, thinking that I'm a man sitting under the stars on the terrace of the earth, but actually empty and awake throughout the emptiness and awakedness of everything? It means that I'm empty and awake, that I know I'm empty and awake, and that there's no difference between me and anything else.

The eternal principle, which never was born, never will die: it is in all things: it is in you now. You are the wave on the face of the ocean. When the wave is gone, is the water gone? Has anything happened? Nothing has happened. It is a play, a game, a dance.

It is not to be wondered that men have worshiped the ocean, for in his depths they have seen mirrored the image of Eternity of Infinity. Here they have seen the symbol of God's great plan of oneness with His creatures, for the sea is the union of all infinite particles, and it takes the whole to make the one.

What does infinity mean to you? Are you not infinity and yourself?

They had no past. They had no future. They just were.

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper? ?To be? is to inter-be. We cannot just be by ourselves alone. We have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.

Man is not only a contributory creature, but a total creature; he does not only make one, but he is all; he is not a piece of the world, but the world itself, and next to the glory of God, the reason why there is a world.

Death is nothing, nor life either, for that matter. To die, to sleep, to pass into nothingness, what does it matter? Everything is an illusion.

Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness.

I am the drop that contains the ocean

There are times when I catch myself believing that there is such a thing as something; which is separate from something else.

There exists no God. What exists is godliness, and that godliness surrounds you. We are all in the same ocean.

He who has seen present things has seen all, both everything which has taken place from all eternity and everything which will be for time without end; for all things are of one kin and of one form.

In reality there are no separate events. Life moves along like water, it's all connected to the source of the river is connected to the mouth and the ocean.

In greatness, life and death merge.

Loving another person is not separate from loving God. One is a single wave, the other is the ocean.

If you would behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and sea are one.

This world is nothing. An illusion. Death is the release.