Alan Watts on Understanding Absolute Love

[Leo Gura]

@BipolarGrowth Not all one-liners are the same.

[Raptorsin7]

Didn't Alan Watts die from alcoholism?

If you can't heal your own addiction then you probably shouldn't be giving people advice on how to use psychs

[Tim R]

4 hours ago, BipolarGrowth said:

You love all kinds of dukkha. Your mom is dukkha. You just defined her as good. Now that limits your capabilities to love all of experience. The duality gums up the works. 

@BipolarGrowth It's true that I created my own Dukkha, but primarily out of ignorance, not Love. Yes, I love one thing and not the other thing - and thereby create duality, frustration and suffering. That is Avidya, ignorance. And the resulting Dukkha is just the other side of my ignorant Love for the duality that I set up. It's not my Love for Dukkha because when I'm ignorant, I don't even know that it's me who created my own suffering! In a sense, ignorance comes first. And as I said, if you could love Dukkha, it would cease to be Dukkha. 

[BipolarGrowth]

55 minutes ago, Tim R said:

@BipolarGrowth It's true that I created my own Dukkha, but primarily out of ignorance, not Love. Yes, I love one thing and not the other thing - and thereby create duality, frustration and suffering. That is Avidya, ignorance. And the resulting Dukkha is just the other side of my ignorant Love for the duality that I set up. It's not my Love for Dukkha because when I'm ignorant, I don't even know that it's me who created my own suffering! In a sense, ignorance comes first. And as I said, if you could love Dukkha, it would cease to be Dukkha. 

That is the point of the whole thread. 

[Tim R]

@BipolarGrowth Oh ok?? I just woke up, pardon me. 

Yeah. I don't know if the acceptance/love of Dukkha is actually the cure for it. Because Dukkha is the symptom of ignorance, so you need to get rid of that first, otherwise there will always be more Dukkha. And the whole problem with accepting Dukkha is that if you could accept it, there would be no need for you to do so (not even if the first place!!).

It's not that loving Dukkha will get rid of Dukkha - it's that so long as there is Dukkha to love, you can't love Dukkha, or there would be no resistance/suffering/Dukkha to begin with. That's why Dukkha is the wrong place to start the journey. It can't be done.

Ignorance is the problem, not Dukkha. 

[BipolarGrowth]

44 minutes ago, Tim R said:

@BipolarGrowth Oh ok?? I just woke up, pardon me. 

Yeah. I don't know if the acceptance/love of Dukkha is actually the cure for it. Because Dukkha is the symptom of ignorance, so you need to get rid of that first, otherwise there will always be more Dukkha. And the whole problem with accepting Dukkha is that if you could accept it, there would be no need for you to do so (not even if the first place!!).

It's not that loving Dukkha will get rid of Dukkha - it's that so long as there is Dukkha to love, you can't love Dukkha, or there would be no resistance/suffering/Dukkha to begin with. That's why Dukkha is the wrong place to start the journey. It can't be done.

Ignorance is the problem, not Dukkha. 

This isn’t intellectual loving of dukkha. It’s like jaw-dropping realization that what you were running from your entire life is like your greatest soul mate and perfect match. All sensation is dukkha. And this is no different than saying absolute love. It’s just from a more effective angle now that I’ve actually experienced this stuff with dukkha. It’s way more useful in daily life than absolute love ideas ever were. 

[TheAlchemist]

"If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen."

He is simply referring to the importance of integration; for a serious explorer to never go back would be as ridicilous as a biologist glimpsing a cell through a microscope and never looking through it again because he "got the message". 

Edited August 3, 2021 by TheAlchemist

[Tim R]

@BipolarGrowth I think your understanding of Dukkha differs from mine. 

38 minutes ago, BipolarGrowth said:

All sensation is dukkha

See this is where I would disagree with you. Why do you think that?

[BipolarGrowth]

1 hour ago, Tim R said:

@BipolarGrowth I think your understanding of Dukkha differs from mine. 

See this is where I would disagree with you. Why do you think that?

It’s just inevitable that positive sensations create dissatisfaction eventually and usually have dissatisfactory elements to them even in peak experiences. Just examine your ultimate version of god long enough with the three characteristics and it’ll become an empty shell. Nothing satisfies forever.  

[Tim R]

@BipolarGrowth Who said anything about "positive sensations"? 

[BipolarGrowth]

2 minutes ago, Tim R said:

@BipolarGrowth Who said anything about "positive sensations"? 

Your genuine human experience if we’re not hiding things. 

[Tim R]

Ah yes. But you know just as well as me that there is actually nothing positive about the sensation. 

If there's nothing positive or negative about it, if it's not even neutral - then what? Still Dukkha? 

[eman]

17 hours ago, Consilience said:

I think out of all the uses of psychedelics, deep healing has probably been the most potent of effects. Yes seeing deeply into the nature of reality is great while tripping, but the views and understanding tend to leave after the trip and get cognized as an intellectual understanding. The energetic and emotional releases, however, actually stay cleared and Im left feeling lighter. So while the insights don‘t necessarily stick around after the trip ends, the healing that took place does. I really do view them more as medicine at this point. 
 

/thread 

Stop analyzing and trying to wrap your intellectualization around these medicines. Let go of the monkey mind, go deep into the experience, period.

[taotemu]

8 hours ago, Raptorsin7 said:

Didn't Alan Watts die from alcoholism?

If you can't heal your own addiction then you probably shouldn't be giving people advice on how to use psychs

He was an alcoholic, but he died of a heart condition.  While I may not agree with him completely on the use of psychedelics, he was one of the greatest spiritual minds of the 20th century.  Mozart was likely an alcoholic as well, but that doesn't change the fact he was one of the greatest composers of all time.  Who else should we cancel for their personal failings?  Van Gogh (psychotic)?  Thomas Jefferson (slave owner)?  Einstein (he married his cousin)? Steve Jobs (a megalomaniac who denied his own child)?

This "Woke" culture of canceling someone's genius because of their personal failings is perhaps the saddest thing about our current cultural zeitgeist.       

[impulse9]

10 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

And as far as his advice for using psychedelics, it's just terrible advice.

As opposed to your terrible advice, which is "lol just take as much psychedelics as you possibly can"? I'm sure that won't cause any damage to a lot of people.

[Raptorsin7]

2 hours ago, taotemu said:

He was an alcoholic, but he died of a heart condition.  While I may not agree with him completely on the use of psychedelics, he was one of the greatest spiritual minds of the 20th century.  Mozart was likely an alcoholic as well, but that doesn't change the fact he was one of the greatest composers of all time.  Who else should we cancel for their personal failings?  Van Gogh (psychotic)?  Thomas Jefferson (slave owner)?  Einstein (he married his cousin)? Steve Jobs (a megalomaniac who denied his own child)?

This "Woke" culture of canceling someone's genius because of their personal failings is perhaps the saddest thing about our current cultural zeitgeist.       

Someone cannot be addicted to alcohol and the greatest spiritual teacher of our time. 

The path is about happiness and ending suffering.

This has nothing to do with cancel culture, this has to do with discernment. 

Go find a teacher who managed to transcend addiction. There are plenty

[impulse9]

That doesn't invalidate his wisdom at all @Raptorsin7. And for what it's worth, he never claimed to be a spiritual teacher of any sorts, in fact in many of his talks he specifically addressed that. He labeled himself a "spiritual entertainer". I still think he was incredibly wise, regardless of his personal problems. We all have personal problems. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone and all that.

[Raptorsin7]

@impulse9 I'm not saying he didn't have genuine insight. But I'm saying take what hes saying with a grain of salt because he never healed himself fully.

You can follow whatever teacher you want. I'm sure there are some fat dudes with good health advice, but I'd be skeptical about someone teaching about health who's addicted to big Macs.

 

[impulse9]

Fair enough. To me Watts isn't a teacher, he's closer to a rockstar in the sense that his talks are beautiful and a joy to listen to. You wouldn't say Jim Morrison wasn't a fantastic singer just because he had a massive drug problem which resulted in his death. Look at the message and not the messenger is my approach.

[The Lucid Dreamer]

On 8/2/2021 at 8:53 AM, BipolarGrowth said:

“If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen.”

Love Alan Watts to death, but this is so silly.  Of course as a scientist, you don’t keep your eyes glued to the telescope or microscope, but you don’t just simply stop using them all together and throw them away after you make observations.  You keep using them periodically to gain more data.