So in this idea, then, everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality. Not God in a politically kingly sense, but God in the sense of being the self, the deep-...down basic whatever there is. And you're all that, only you're pretending you're not. And it's perfectly OK to pretend you're not, to be perfectly convinced, because this is the whole notion of drama. ~ Alan Watts ...from "The Nature of Consiousness"; also published as "What Is Reality?" (1989)
ReplyDeleteI will tell you the secret. The cycle of births and deaths is from time immemorial caused by ignorance, which displays itself as pleasure and pain, and yet is only a dream and unreal. Being so, the wise say that it can be ended by knowledge. By what kind of knowledge? Wisdom born of realisation (viz., `I am That').
~ Tripura Rahasya, chapter XVII