@ Alan ₿ Watts ⚡️
2025-06-15 22:43:38
"I wonder, I wonder, what would you do if you had the power to dream any dream, and alter your time sense to slip, say, 75 years of subjective time into 8 hours sleep.
You would, I suppose, start by fulfilling all your wishes. You would design for yourself the most ecstatic life — love affairs, banquets, dancing girls, wonderful journeys, gardens, music beyond belief. And then after a couple of months of this sort of thing, at 75 years a night, you’d be getting a little taste for something different, and you would move over to an adventurous dimension, where there are sudden dangers involved, and the thrill of dealing with dangers, and you would rescue princesses from dragons, and go on dangerous journeys, make wonderful explosions, and eventually get into contests with enemies. And after you’ve done that for some time, you’d think up a new wrinkle — to forget that you were dreaming, so you’d think it was all for real, and be anxious about it. Because it’d be so great when you woke up, and then you’d say, like children who dare each other, how far out could you get? What could you take? What dimension of being lost, of abandonment of your power, what dimension of that could you stand?
Well, after you’ve gone on doing this for some time, you’d suddenly find yourself sitting around in this room, with all your personal involvements, problems, etc, talking with me. How do you know that’s not what you’re doing now?
Could be, because after all, what would you do if you were god? If you were what there is, the Self.
One of the Upanishads starts out by saying, “In the beginning was the Self, and looking around it said, “I am.” And thus it is that everyone to this day, when asked who is there, says that it is “I.”
If you were god in the sense that you knew everything, you would be bored. So instead, god says to his Self — “man, get lost."
— Alan Watts
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