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Alan Watts

Quote of Alan Watts - Inability to accept the mystic experience...


Biography - Alan Watts:

British philosopher, writer and speaker.
Born: 1915 - Died: 1973
Period:
20th century
Place of birth: United Kingdom
United Kingdom

Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap. Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. For in a civilization equipped with immense technological power, the sense of alienation between man and nature leads to the use of technology in a hostile spirit – to the ‚conquest‘ of nature instead of intelligent co-operation with nature.



Translation

Translation

(German, French)



German
Die Unfähigkeit, die spirituelle Erfahrung als solche anzuerkennen, ist mehr als eine intellektuelle Beschränkung. Ein Mangel an Bewusstsein der grundlegenden Einheit von Organismus und Umwelt ist eine ernsthafte und gefährliche Halluzination. Denn in einer Zivilisation, die mit immenser technologischer Macht ausgestattet ist, führt die Entfremdung zwischen Mensch und Natur zur Anwendung von Technologie in einer feindseligen Geisteshaltung – zur ‚Eroberung‘ der Natur statt intelligenter Kooperation mit ihr.

French
L'incapacité à accepter l'expérience mystique est plus qu'un handicap intellectuel. Le manque de conscience de l'unité fondamentale de l'organisme et de l'environnement est une hallucination grave et dangereuse. Car dans une civilisation dotée d'un immense pouvoir technologique, le sentiment d'aliénation entre l'homme et la nature conduit à l'utilisation de la technologie dans un esprit hostile - à la conquête de la nature au lieu d'une coopération intelligente avec la nature.




See also 

See also...






Quotes for: nature


Quotes

Quotes about nature:


Painters understand nature and love her and teach us to see.





Truly, art is embedded in nature; he who can extract it, has it.





Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.





Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.





Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another.





Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.











Quotes for: danger


Quotes

Quotes about danger:


Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when it's the only one we have.





But where the danger is,
also grows the saving power.






The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.





The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.





Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers.





The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have not viewed the world.











Quotes for: intelligence


Quotes

Quotes about intelligence:


Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our mind by means of our language.





To be able to discern what is true as true and what is false as false — this is the mark and character of intelligence.





Intelligence has value only in the service of love.





Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.





What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.





Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another.











Quotes for: experience


Quotes

Quotes for: experience


What experience and history teach is this — that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.





Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.





Poetry is related to philosophy as experience is related to empirical science.





Wisdom is the daughter of experience.





Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.





Experience is the teacher of all things.











Quotes

Quotes for: Civilization


We civilizations now know ourselves mortal.





By the mere fact that he forms part of an organised crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilisation.





Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime.





Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.





While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.





At the root of our civilization, there is the freedom of each person of thought, of belief, of opinion, of work, of leisure.







Quotes

Alan Watts also said...


The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.





A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with reality, and lives in a world of illusion.





You can't live at all, unless you can live fully now.





Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.





No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.





Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.












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