Alan Watts: A Modern Vedantist Examination of the "I"

In "The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are," philosopher Alan Watts examines the delusionary way in which each of us looks as him or herself as a separate "ego" or "self" and the implications this has for society's development and its future. Critically examining the way that all of us are conditioned in this belief, Watts presents an Advaita Vedantist view on the question of our consciousness with a decidedly modern twist.

"The sensation of "I" as a lonely and isolated sense of being is so powerful and commonsensical, " Watts notes, "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 seem to be a brief light that flashes but once in all the aeons of time," he observes, "a rare, complicated and all-too-delicate organism on the fringe of biological evolution, where the wave of life bursts into individual sparkling, and multicolored drops that gleam for a moment only to vanish forever. Under such conditioning it seems impossible and even absurd to realize that myself does not reside in the drop alone, but in the whole surge of energy which ranges from the galaxies to the nuclear fields in my body. At this level of existence "I" am immeasurably old; my forms are infinite and their comings and goings are simply the pulses or vibrations of a single and eternal flow of energy."

 "As the ocean 'waves,'" notes Watts, "so the universe 'peoples.'"

For more on this topic: See "Einstein to Alan Watts and Beyond: Who Are We?"

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Maya, Existence and Non-Existence

"When the Hindu says the world is Maya, at once people get the idea that the world is an illusion. This interpretation has some basis, as coming through the Buddhistic philosophers, because there was one section of philosophers who did not believe in the external world at all. But the Maya of Vedanta, in its last developed form is neither Idealism nor Realism, nor is it a theory. It is a simple statement of facts - what we are, and what we see around us."

"The one peculiar attribute we find in time, space, and causation is that they cannot exist sepearte from other things. Try to think of space without colour, or limits, or any connection with the things around - just abstract space. You cannot; you have to think of it as the space between two limits, or between three objects. It has to be connected with some object to have any existence. So with time; you cannot have any ideas of abstract time, but you have to take two events, one preceding, and the other succeeding, and join the two events by the ideas of succession. Time depends on two events, just as space has to be related to outside objects. And the idea of causation is inseparable from time and space."

"As no man can jump out of his own self, so no man can go beyond the limits that have been put upon him by the laws of time and space. Every attempt to solve the laws of causation, time and space, would be futile, because the very attempt would have to be made by taking for granted the existence of these things."

"What does the statement of the existence of the world mean, then? "This world has no existence." What is meant by that? It means that it has no absolute existence. It exists only in relation to my mind, to your mind, and to the mind of everyone else."

"We see this world with the five senses, but if we had another sense, we would see in it something more. If we had yet another sense, it would appear to be as something still different. It has, therefore, no real existence; it has no unchangeable, immovable, infinite existence. Nor can it be called non-existence, seeing that it exists, and we have to work in and through it. It is a misture of existence and non-existence."

-- Swami Vivikenanda --
("Teachings of Swami Vivikenanda," Advaita Ashrama Publishings, pp. 198-199.)