Alan Watts and his writings

Way back I read a few books by Alan Watts. Not totally impressed, and I left the guy behind with thoughts that he was maybe a bit superficial and new agey. But a few years ago after a long journey of my own - call it an inner journey but maybe that seems a bit pretentious - I picked up a book of his in zen, and it was very good. Hit the mark. Since then I dipped into a few others by him and they are quite impressive.

One I am reading at the moment, "Beyond Theology: The Art of Godmanship" , is particularly good. Chapter Three very much so, "How must we have faith".

Anyone else know of him?

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SW-User

Here is a brief excerpt from the book I am currently reading:-

....such persons (i.e the skeptical and secular minded) have a view of reality that is grimmer by far than even Jonathan Edwards’s conception of the Angry God. For the secularist imagines the universe beyond and outside man to be essentially dead, mechanical, and stupid. With him it is high dogma that nature cares nothing for human values, but is a system of confusion which produced us by mere chance, and therefore must be beaten down and made to submit to man’s will. Now, there is something in this view of the universe which is akin to states of consciousness found in psychosis. The vision of the world as a Malicious System which eggs you on with hopes, just to keep you alive, and then grinds you horribly to bits. In this state there is no luminosity in things. Faces, flowers, waters, and hills all look as though they were made of plastic or enameled tin — the whole scene a tick-tock toy shop, a nightmare of metal and patent leather, garish under reflected light alone. Other people aren’t really alive; they’re mocked-up mannequins, automatic responders pretending to be alive. Even oneself is a self-frustrating mechanism in which every gain in awareness is balanced by new knowledge of one’s ridiculous and humiliating limitations.

Those who, outside mental hospitals, like to see things this way persuade themselves and others that this attitude is somehow not only realistic but heroic. In philosophical arguments they can always one-up the religious or metaphysically inclined by a show of being down-to-earth and hard-boiled.