Reality

Most civilized people today are out of touch with reality because they confuse the world as it is with the world as they think about it, talk about it, and describe it. For on the one hand there is the real world and on the other the whole system of symbols about this world that we have in our minds. They are all very useful symbols, all our civilization depends on it but like all good things they have their disadvantages And the principal disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality. Like we confuse money with actual wealth and our names about ourselves, our ideas of ourselves, our images of ourselves with ourselves.

Of course reality from the philosopher’s point of view is a dangerous word. A philosopher will ask me what do I mean by reality. Am I talking about the physical world of nature or am I talking about the spiritual world or what? And to that I have a very simple answer: When we talk about the material world it is actually a philosophical concept. And if I say that reality is spiritual it is also a philosophical concept. And reality itself is not a concept, reality is … umm well, here is where it gets tricky, could there be a clear full answer to the question “what is reality” or is it a quest to be followed until the end of time , as a thinker I find myself getting more lost the more I look into this subject and it sometimes gets quite irritating because I feel that the more i know the less I am sure about these things which leads me back to question the reality that i am in and if its the real one, the only one or just a concept designed by the body / mind / soul to question our existence, I believe finding this answer is nearly impossible but inevitable maybe through death of the body and the separation from this existence but it is hard to live with this burden, so what to do? … I think that through the exploration of the mind with psychedelics can guild the way to these answers, but in the end for me I haven’t found the solid proof that would ease my mind to the understatement of it and I look at my way of thinking as cursed and blessed at the same time, so I stay here stuck in this present reality I am in, looking, thinking and searching for answers I may never find …

– Alan Watts

Posted in: Quotes February 5th, 2016

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