This Is It

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This is It is a book by Alan Watts which

Notes

1. This is IT

Chapter one is an attempt to work out the nature of Connection Experience what Watt calls "It." In this chapter, he describes "It" as best he can, including his own connection experiences. The chapter has some useful insights and characterizations, describes quite a few Connection Outcomes, and even dives into a condemnation of Normal Consciousness, but lacks theoretical coherence and is really just a jumble of "wow, isn't this cool" statements. There are also useful arguments against the use of spiritual truths to justify inequality and injustice.

2. Instinct, Intelligence, and Anxiety

Chapter two is a discussion of the "peculiar neurosis" of civilized man, which is anxiety, self-doubt, and "paralysis" caused by, he says, our dualistic thinking, the separation of intelligence from instinct/faith/feeling. He suggests that the solution to this is not authoritarianism, anti-intellectualism, obedience to religion, etc., but connection(!), with nature, with each other, with the Universe!

For this is the sensation which, however garbled and perverted, is the impulse underlying the great religious traditions of the world—the sensation of basic inseparability from the total universe, of the identity of one’s own self with the Great Self beneath all that exists.

Watts attributes our inability to have what he calls the [[[Experience of Relationship]] with our lack of "spiritual poverty," and some other personal type failures. Of course, that's not true. Our inability to Connect is a consequence of the damage and confusion caused by Toxic Socialization and not because of some evolutionary moral, or spiritual failure/weakness.

3. Zen and the Problem of Control

4. Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen

5. Spirituality and Sensuality

6. The New Alchemy