The Book_ On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are - Alan Watts [0]
On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
ALAN WATTS
Alan Watts, who died in 1974, held both a master's degree in theology and a doctorate of divinity, and was best known as an interpreter of Zen Buddhism in particular, and of Indian and Chinese philosophy in general. He was the author of many books on the philosophy and psychology of religion, which include The Way of Zen, The Supreme Identity, The Joyous Cosmology, Beyond Theology, Nature, Man and Woman*, Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown* and In My Own Way: An Autobiography.
*Also available in Abacus
Also by Alan Watts in Abacus
NATURE, MAN AND WOMAN
CLOUD-HIDDEN, WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN
Alan Watts
THE BOOK
On the Taboo Against Knowing
Who You Are
ABACUS edition published in 1973
by Sphere Books Ltd
30/32 Gray's Inn Road, London, WC1X 8JL
Reprinted 1976, 1977
First published in Great Britain
by Jonathan Cape Ltd 1969
Copyright © 1966 by Alan Watts
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Set in Monotype Times Roman
Printed in Great Britain by Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd Aylesbury, Bucks
To my Children and Grandchildren
Joan
Tia
Ann
*
Mark
*
David
Richard
Myra
Elizabeth
Lila
Michael
Christopher
Diane
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author is grateful to the following for permission to quote: Cambridge University Press for The Nature of the Physical World by Sir Arthur Eddington and My View of the World by Erwin Schrödinger; Prentice-Hall Inc.
for Quantum Theory by David Bohm; William Collins & Sons Ltd for The Gospel According to Thomas, translated by A. Guillaumont and others; J. M.
Dent & Sons Ltd for Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas; and Methuen & Co.
Ltd for The Collected Poems of G. K. Chesterton.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
9
1
Inside Information
11
2
The Game of Black-and-White
29
3
How To Be a Genuine Fake
53
4
The World Is Your Body
82
5
So What?
100
6
IT
125
THE BOOKS
143
PREFACE
THIS BOOK explores an unrecognized but mighty taboo—our tacit conspiracy to ignore who, or what, we really are. Briefly, the thesis is that the prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East—in particular the central and germinal Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism.
This hallucination underlies the misuse of technology for the violent subjugation of man's natural environment and, consequently, its eventual destruction.
We are therefore in urgent need of a sense of our own existence which is in accord with the physical facts and which overcomes our feeling of alienation from the universe. For this purpose I have drawn on the insights of Vedanta, stating them, however, in a completely modern and Western style—so that this volume makes no attempt to be a textbook on or introduction to Vedanta in the ordinary sense. It is rather a cross-fertilization of Western science with an Eastern intuition.
Particular thanks are due to my wife, Mary Jane, for her careful editorial work and her comments on the manuscript. Gratitude is also due to the Bollingen Foundation for its support of a project which included the writing of this book.
Sausalito, California
ALAN WATTS
January, 1966
CHAPTER ONE
INSIDE INFORMATION
JUST WHAT should a young man or woman know in order to be "in the know"? Is there, in other words, some inside information, some special taboo, some real lowdown on life and existence that most parents and teachers either don't know or won't tell?
In Japan it was once customary to give young people about to be married a "pillow book." This was a small volume of wood-block prints, often colored, showing all the details of sexual intercourse. It wasn't just