Alan Watts Quotes

Scott Fitzgerald said famously that "he who invented consciousness would have a lot to be blamed for." But he also forgot that without consciousness, he would have no access to true happiness or even the possibility of transcendence.

Learn to feel yourself in other bodies, to know that we are all one. Throw all other nonsense to the winds. Spit out your actions, good or bad, and never think of them again. What is done is done. Throw off superstition. Have no weakness even in the face of death. Be free.

Study what thou art Whereof thou art a part What thou knowest of this art This is really what thou art. All that is without thee also is within.

Consciousness is indeed always with us. Everyone knows 'I am!' No one can deny his own being.

The answer is, who you are cannot be defined through thinking or mental labels or definitions, because it's beyond that. It is the very sense of being, or presence, that is there when you become conscious of the present moment. In essence, you and what we call the present moment are, at the deepest level, one.

Meditation demands an astonishingly alert mind; it is the understanding of the totality of life in which every form of fragmentation has ceased.

Most people don't know how to listen because the major part of their attention is taken up by thinking. They pay more attention to that than to what the other person is saying, and none at all to what really matters: the Being of the other person underneath the words and the mind. Of course, you cannot feel someone else's Being except through your own. This is the beginning of the realization of oneness, which is love. At the deepest level of Being, you are one with all that is.

There isn't any me. I'm you. Don't make up a separate me.

Ordinary mind includes eternal perceptions. Notice what you notice. Observe what's vivid. Catch yourself thinking. Vividness is self-selecting. And remember the future.

The Seeker himself becomes the knower. The thing to be known is already there. There is nothing to be known afresh. More-over there are no two things. There is only the seer, the knower.

A conscious mind is a mind with a self in it.

Consciousness ... is the phenomenon whereby the universe's very existence is made known.

Consciousness is not in the body; the body is in consciousness. And you are that consciousness.

For every seeing soul, there are two absorbing facts - I, and the abyss.

The ego of man and woman is the soul. If the soul is independent, how then can it be isolated from the infinite whole?

I'm not always what I think I am, but I am what I think.

Instead of being lost in your thinking, when you awaken you recognize yourself as the awareness behind it. Thinking then ceases to be a self-serving autonomous activity that takes possession of you and runs your life.

Without knowing myself, I have no real basis for thinking.

Should you really open your eyes and see, you would behold your image in all images. And should you open your ears and listen, you would hear your own voice in all voices.

The illusion of self-awareness. Happy automatons, running on trivial programs. I'll bet you never guess. From the inside, how can you?

It is wrong to say: I think. One ought to say: I am thought. I is someone else.

The portrait I do best is of the person I know best.

Our thoughts are certainly part of us; they come from us, but we are not our thoughts. Have you ever woken up in the morning and said to yourself, 'I am not going to think today; I am too tired'? No, of course not. Just as breathing happens and is constant, thoughts happen, and they are also constant.

Everybody is a hero in their own story if you just look.

The very act of questioning whether you exist proves you do, because you must be there for the doubt to be entertained in the first place.