Alan Watts - Our Image of the World

Discussing the world, and our perception of it.

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[Stevepost2]

alan watts and joseph campbell are still the best by far they explain these ideas to us westerners better than any one i have heard in my opinion

[Dionysos37]

"We are trying to think eccentrically rather than concentrically." Trying to think "from outside"(impossible) in order to "get outside" (equally foolish). Thank you for this----

[spiritech999]

The introduction follows an archetypal theme akin to the allegory of Pinocchio, the wooden puppet whittled, built, and activated by Gepetto as a son. Through a desire for life and wandering trials and tribulations Pinocchio transforms from a wooden caricature to become a real 'boy.'

Watts' explanations of the Creator, Sun-Son-Lord of the Universe, and two archetypal models by Western Man--Radiant Catholic Basilica King and Protestant Monarchical Judgements. Criminals, tyrants and gun banning?

[bendthemindthebend]

I think that the Big Bang is a mental happening. And as dreams illustrate, you can get a whole load of 'stuff' from nothing and nowhen. It just happens out of the Void Mind just as it does in us.

I think it's an intermittent creation, but I'm not sure if it's guided. It might remember successful patterns for growth. I read ~ sleep punctuates waking lives as death punctuates earthly lives.

You have every chance, since you are consciousness itself of waking up to experience this Universe again.

[bendthemindthebend]

If the dream people on the bench had their own minds, I would be able to experience their existence 1st hand. If they worked it out and realised I was behind it all, they might consider me as God. For I am the reason for their whole existence, their body mind and soul, the bench, the park, the Universe. Their 'matter' is my mind and they are in me and of me. But I co create with them. They can take this 'matter' and play with it. I'm not responsible for it. I created it, but I don't control it.

[bendthemindthebend]

If the Universe is mental in origin it can create without need for a separate stuff. If I dream of a small planet and drop down to see two people on a bench, then all this scenery is out of my mind and I am no less for creating it. Dream is a type of creation that isn't designed, planned or forced - it just happens. It's 1st cause is considering ITSELF and the consequence of this primal thought is OTHER. Because it is Mental, this OTHER 'stuff' that it comes to know is ultimately ITSELF too.

[bendthemindthebend]

All experience rises and sets in the mind. Experienced external objects are really our internal thoughts about them. The Universe is a stream of thought that appears as a series of things in a succession of 'nows'. And it's ultimately the same as experiencing a dream - a purely mental action that results in the seeming experience of outside things. If the Universe is mental, it's probably why quantum mechanics can't pin it down and acts like a condensate of waves posing as particles when we look

[jeffbriggs1987]

its funny, when youre on the state of mind he was on, even if it's fleeting, it's all in the state of mind and not the words. when i do lsd, i used to try to write things down so i would understand it when i was sober, but id just write things that i already knew, and realize that it wasnt wasnt even what i was writing, it was the state of mind. its not what you look at its what u see

[t3mpl3guardian]

If I am Eye because You are Ewe, and You are Ewe because I am Eye, then I am not Eye and You are not Ewe