Alan Watts

Yes, I know he looks like yound Morbious from the Forbidden Planet in the photo above, but... Writing about Alan Watts brought to mind a few other things he said in some of his lectures that made me "think" way back when... Watts had a beautiful British accent. It was a literate, articulate tongue. Definately not working class or upper crust. He was quite understandable.

Here are some of my favorite Watts statements that I remember from listening to him over 25 years ago.

“We’ve always had the question about the chicken and the egg, which came first? The solution depends upon how one views the problem. So let me propose that a chicken is one eggs way of making more eggs.”

“It is man who builds square buildings and makes square things. This doesn’t happen often in nature other than crystals. Most of nature is round. It is a wiggly world in which we live.”

“It was an act of Irreducible Rascality!”

“When Jung was working on his theory of the dark side, he met a fellow who seemed to be perfect. Jung could find no dark side in this man, and he was about to give up on his theory all together, but then the man invited him to is home to meet his wife, and immediately upon meeting her Jung realized he had found this man’s dark side.”

“You know that when something is ineffable it is something that can’t be F’ed.”

“The Universe is a web of jewells”

“I misunderstood Suzuki (a Japanese Zen Master and writer) when I asked him what the essence of Zen was, I thought he said, ‘Act, but don’t act’, but what I found out later in his writing he said, ‘Act no bad act.”

"As important as it is to have a memory, it is equally important to have a forgetory."

“The word ‘Person’ comes from the Greek magaphonic masks that actors wore on stage known as ‘Personas’. So when you say that you are a real person you are admitting to be a genuine fake.”

"The that for which there is no whicher."

"A trip well traveled is often better than arriving."

"..my poor Krell..." Oops, that was actually a Dr. Morbious quote, sorry ; )