On Alan Watts and The Book

In this article I wish to comment on one of my favorite authors - Alan Watts. Many of Alan Watt's books are classics in the field of Eastern Philosophy. He writes engagingly and is able to explain clearly and well even the most obscure points of Eastern Philosophy.

One of books is titled just that - The Book - On the taboo of knowing who you are. This book explains the insights of Vedanta in modern language. It is a fusion between ancient, intuitive, mystical insights and modern science.

Our modern capitalistic society where the consumer is the king is based on the assumption that consumption equals pleasure equals happiness. This in turn is based on the view that the individual self - a man or a woman - is an ego enclosed in a bag of flesh separate from the rest of existence. We fell ourselves separate and alienated from the world in which we live and all the people surrounding us.

This sense of alienation is tragic as in society it leads to conflict and excessive competition. WE aim to be one up on the people whom we know. We must have a prettier wife, a larger car and a more luxurious home than Mr. Smith who lives next door. Our focus in life is on consuming and satisfying our desires. Also society as a whole feels no kinship or connection with the world in which we live and our environment. This leads to a ruthless exploitation of natural resources to feed the world economy. Such a path will lead naturally and inevitably to the exhaustion of the Earth's natural resources and what do you think will happen then? The end of civilization as we know it seems to be a natural conclusion if not the end of the Human race.

Capitalism requires us to keep producing, earning and consuming. We are brainwashed into thinking that this is the life we must lead, that this is happiness. But is this really so?

Most if not all of the world's religions aim at making possible the mystical experience to its serious adherents. The mystical experience, or the Union with God experience is - according to religion - the only way to be happy. It is the only lasting satisfaction or happiness.

The ego constitutes ourselves, a self separate from the rest of existence enclosed in a bag of flesh. More formally - according to the Buddhists - the ego consists of the 5 aggregates. These are Form (or the physical body), feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness. The Buddhists say that there is no self to be found anywhere in these 5 aggregates.

.The 5 aggregates are transient and will be extinguished and will come to an end one day. According to the Buddhists - and this can be verified through practical experience - life on this Earth is unavoidably unsatisfactory. We cannot escape the misery that is the lot of living beings other than by a Union with God experience or the mystical experience.

Hence our efforts to earn and consume, our catering to our desires and feelings, our acting as thought these desires and feelings are the only things that are important; all this is a deeply flawed course of action. There is no lasting happiness to be found on this path.

Capitalism and the society we live in want us to produce earn and consume. But say what they will this is not the road to true happiness.

I have already explained that the mystical experience, the Union with God experience is the only lasting and true happiness worth striving for. All else, will in time, be revealed to be ultimately unsatisfactory.

According to the Hindus, God exists through the self in each of us. Hence if we know ourselves we know or experience God. And this task - knowing ourselves - is something most if not all of us have no time for, engrossed as we are in extroverted and outward pursuits.

The Book by Alan Watts, explains these and many other insights of Vedanta. These insights include the game of hide and seek that God is playing with himself. I will not spoil your experience of reading the book by explaining this insight. I will only give a few hints. One is that all of us are the expressions of the Divine - God exists in all of us and we exist in God. The second is that - according to Vedanta - all is Maya; all is an illusion which we take seriously and are fooled by. But I said earlier that we are expressions of the Divine. So who is fooling whom? And to what purpose? Is God deliberately fooling himself?

The answer to this question and many other insights are available in The Book. I urge you to pick up your copy and read it. You are in for a treat.

I hope you have enjoyed this article and that it will be useful to you.

Stay tuned for more in this continuing series.

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