Alan Watts - Stop Trying To Change The World.

[The Lawspeaker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn9-Ygto9yw
Alan Watts - Stop Trying To Change The World.
There is no knowledge of tomorrow.
Observation implies no accumulation of knowledge, even though knowledge is obviously necessary at a certain level: knowledge as a doctor, knowledge as a scientist, knowledge of history, of all the things that have been. After all, that is knowledge: information about the things that have been. There is no knowledge of tomorrow, only conjecture as to what might happen tomorrow, based on your knowledge of what has been. A mind that observes with knowledge is incapable of following swiftly the stream of thought. It is only by observing without the screen of knowledge that you begin to see the whole structure of your own thinking. And as you observe, which is not to condemn or accept, but simply to watch, you will find that thought comes to an end. Casually to observe an occasional thought leads nowhere, but if you observe the process of thinking and do not become an observer apart from the observed,if you see the whole movement of thought without accepting or condemning it,then that very observation puts an end immediately to thought, and therefore the mind is compassionate, it is in a state of constant mutation.

[arcticwolf]

Dude I was trying many, many times to explain this to the TA crowd, they are not gonna get it this time either. Though what he says is absolutely reality. Mind has to be ready for this to work, there is no understanding it without the mind having achieved the appropriate level of readiness.

The only thing that made me pause and think is the word mutation that he used, well mutation is part of evolution, some may get the negative vibe associated with the word sometimes.

The short synapsis for perceptually challenged :P : It's not what you see but how you look at it that counts the most.

[Cygnus]

I had guessed initially that Watts was just another fake counter-culture guru until I learned that he was engaged with the ideas of Rene Guenon and A. K. Coomaraswamy. Some of his writings are rather good and display some serious thinking and are not without a certain interest.