Alan Watts: On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

What are the thoughts, facts, or things that we NEED to know? What is taboo? If what used to be taboo is no longer, what has become taboo? What are those unspoken things that would benefit the world if spoken?

(Watts,9)

Does religion provide us with any of this necessary or helpful information? Generally, no. And any information seems to go rapidly out of favor as our world views are constantly changing, leaving less room, or making obsolete-the ideas or the lessons we have been taught in our past. Is there a certain book, or could there be, that holds this information?

(Watts, 10)

Our rat race of life begins to seem futile when you step back and see how much is going on in the maze. How many tubes their are. But to some, it is not simply futile because of its strangeness. Acknowledging the strangeness of our lives can almost satisfy as a reason for being Others insist we no longer ask this question of why we are

"Why this universe?" are a kind of intellectual neurosis, a misuse of words in that the question sounds sensible but is actually as meaningless as asking "Where is this universe?" when the only things that are anywhere must be somewhere inside the universe.

Nevertheless, wonder is not a disease. Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons."

The act of wondering these questions in regard to the universe is what makes us expressive creatures. Creative, and artistic

Is there a thing that has made any true discoveries in regard to this curiosity?

(Watts, 11)

This curiosity or wonder to why we are is what has become taboo We all do it, but it has never been "widely characteristic of communities or societies....it has often been thought too dangerous"

"civilization may be a huge technological success, but through methods that most people will find baffling, frightening, and disorienting—because, for one reason alone, the methods will keep changing. It may be like playing a game in which the rules are constantly changed without ever being made clear—a game from which one cannot withdraw without suicide, and in which one can never return to an older form of the game."

We do not come into this world, we come out of it

(Watts, 12)

"The hostile attitude of conquering nature ignores the basic interdependence of all things and events—that the world beyond the skin is actually an extension of our own bodies—and will end in destroying the very environment from which we emerge and upon which our whole life depends. The second result of feeling that we are separate minds in an alien, and mostly stupid, universe is that we have no common sense, no way of making sense of the world upon which we are agreed in common"

Religion can not be the great unifier of common sense here. It is too quaralsome. "they depend upon separating the "saved" from the "damned,"

(Watts, 13)

Religion: " all belief is fervent hope, and thus a cover-up for doubt and uncertainty—religions must make converts. The more people who agree with us, the less nagging insecurity about our position. " "Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world"

We do not need a religion bc all firm belief " is fervent hope and thus a cover up for doubt"

The book of information that we need to replace religion is a book of ideas and experience, to serve as a starting point. A frame of reference, but not a book of rules or steps.

(Watts, 14)

Who we are: "our sensation of self is a hoax or, at best, a temporary role that we are playing, or have been conned into playing—with our own tacit consent, just as every hypnotized person is basically willing to be hypnotized. The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego. I am not thinking of Freud's barbarous Id or Unconscious as the actual reality behind the façade of personality. "

"The sensation of "I" as a lonely and isolated center of being is so powerful and commonsensical, and so fundamental to our modes of speech and thought, to our laws and social institutions, that we cannot experience selfhood except as something superficial in the scheme of the universe"

I or we are immeasurably old, with countless experiences, but we have no way to grasp this backround. It would be like trying to look at your own eyes directly.

(Watts, 15)

Most effective in explaining our lives as many continuous flows of energy, instead of as isolated individuals, with different meanings or purposes, watts explains these "metaphysical questions" using myth, metaphores, symbols, and analogies. We can not under stand these ideas except as a comparrison, or analogy.

(Watts, 16)

Our true self: we are all god. He explains the world in a story: we are all god playing hide and seek with in ourselves, and we hide too well, and can not see who we are because the "life game" would be no fun if we knew what game we were playing. Like when you play cards; at the beginning we shuffle them all into a mess but the point of the game is to put the mess in good order. And then we do it again.

We are not really god, and we are not playing a game, but it is LIKE that He uses it as a science teacher would use toys to describe the universe to children. But it is curious, and leaves the child thinking about the universe and what it might look like. .... "By contrast, so many other mythical explanations of the world are crude, tortuous, and unintelligible. But many people think that believing in the unintelligible propositions and symbols of their religions is the test of true faith. "I believe," said Tertullian of Christianity, "because it is absurd."

(Watts, 17-18)

If one feels no ultimate god, then life has no meaning, and we wait to die.

But what if we are the ultimate?

He explains this as he could to a child: the "ultimate ground of being" is you, but not the self we pretend to be, but our unseen inspector self that is always inspecting

So what is taboo? We are. Our inspector self.

One must be dubbed insane to believe that he or she is "god". Were told to act modestly, and believe that there is a greater power, but that power is not ours. "But this is because we think of God as the King of the Universe, the Absolute Technocrat who personally and consciously controls every details of his cosmos—and that is not the kind of God in my story.... His story comes from ancient india: hinduism "Hindus do not think of God as a special and separate super-person who rules the world from above, like a monarch. Their God is "underneath" rather than "above" everything, and he (or it) plays the world from inside."

(Watts, 19)

Vedanta Philosophy: Nothing exists except god, and the other things that seem real are just gods costumes, and he constantly plays hide and seek. "The Universe of seemingly separate things is therefor real only for awhile, not eternally real, and for it comes and goes as the self hides and seeks itself"

(Watts, 20)

Notes: We don't need a new bible, or a new book, but a set of past experiences to help us draw a line between ourselves, others, and the rest of the world. Watts believes this is best done with symbols, myths, and stories, but not like the ones that strike fear, or are so outlandish that they would require blind faith and irrational dedication. Watts describes our self as an endless cycle of experiences, which is quite similar to the description of hinduism as a endless cycle of death and rebirth. A notable difference, I guess, would be that in Hinduism, the end goal is to break out of this cycle an reach some kind of state beyond this one. And I think the end goal for Watts might be for finally see oneself, but he has described that would be impossible, as we can not see the inspector in ourselves, as we are too busy inspecting.