The 2 page version EXTRACTS FROM (and bits from me on)
Alan Watts :
The Book on THE TABOO AGAINST KNOWING WHO YOU ARE

Introduction --- RS ---
The answers are easy - its getting the questions right which is the tricky bit....

One aspect of this taboo is found in our language. The form and structure of our language, originally developed to describe and organise life for practical purposes. And yet, we use the same thinking patterns for food collecting AND for intimate relations AND for politics or religion. We organise everything, and try to organise it, around subjects doing things to objects and our egoidea. Unnoticed, this influences all our self reflections and thus also our self-image; it influences how we try to understand relationship problems and how we think we should relate to others – it influences all our social structures; our political understanding; and it shades all our beliefs.

The good craftsman or investigative scientist, must know the specifications of his equipment, he must understand what it does optimally, and what it cant do at all. Therefore before any further attempt is made by us at clear thinking, or explaining anything, we must examine how our language influences our understanding of our world. By the way, - our language repeats its grammatical structure perhaps ten thousand times a day, we would normally expect such things to be highly hypnotic, with all the side effects of brainwashing.

AWatts continues

Most individuals are aware of themselves as an isolated “ego” which lies somewhere inside the boundary of their skin. We consider that we are a separate entity in - and separated from the rest of the world. The first result of this illusion is that our attitude to the world “outside” us is largely insecure, scared, and often even resentful and hostile.

Interdependance Of Opposites and
How We Recognise Only the “ON” Phase

... Consider, first, that all your five senses are differing forms of one basic sense—something like touch. Seeing is highly sensitive touching. The eyes touch, or feel, light waves and so enable us to touch things out of reach of our hands. Similarly, the ears touch sound waves in the air, and the nose tiny particles of dust and gas. But the complex patterns and chains of neurons which constitute these senses are composed of neuron units which are capable of changing between just two states: on or off. To the central brain the individual neuron signals either yes or no—that’s all. But, (written in 1966) as we know from computers which employ binary arithmetic in which the only figures are 0 and 1, these simple elements can be formed into the most complex and marvelous patterns.

In this respect our nervous system and 0/1 computers are much like everything else, for the physical world is basically vibration. Whether we think of this vibration in terms of waves or of particles, or perhaps wavicles, we never find the crest of a wave without a trough or a particle without an interval, or space, between itself and others. In other words, there is no such thing as a half wave, or a particle all by itself without any space around it. There is no on without off, no up without down.

Although sounds of high vibration seem to be continuous, to be pure sound, they are not. Every sound is actually sound/silence, only the ear does not register this consciously when the alternation is too rapid. It appears only in, say, the lowest audible notes of an organ. Light, too, is not pure light, but light/darkness. Light pulsates in waves, with their essential up/down motion,

... the general habit of conscious attention is, in various ways, to ignore intervals.

(RS. - Consider your own body - made up of atoms and molecules : electrons and ions whirling round in a magnetic gravitational field which is over 99% (?) empty space - yet we see and feel something unquestionably solid. ..... why? We only see solids because our optic nerve and brain has learned to build it into a solid in order to RECOGNISE it for practical purposes i.e. food danger .... but that doesnt mean that that is all it is, or that that is the absolute truth ... that which we see is only one face of the truth ... ("believe half of what you see and none of what you hear" (from "heard it through the grapevine") ... whats the point of seeing the 99% space ... I imagine space is pretty much all the same everywhere ... what we notice is the difference that the few whirling electrons make)

AWatts continues ... we are so absorbed in conscious attention, so convinced that this narrowed kind of perception is not only the real way of seeing the world, but also the very basic sensation of oneself as a conscious being, that we are fully hypnotized by its disjointed vision of the universe. We really feel that this world is indeed an assemblage of separate things that have somehow come together or, perhaps, fallen apart, and that we are each only one of them.

The truth is that in looking at the world bit by bit we convince ourselves that it consists of separate things; and so give ourselves the problem of how these things are connected and how they cause and effect each other. The problem would never have arisen if we had been aware that it was just our way of looking at the world which had chopped it up into separate bits, things, events, causes, and effects.

It is, then, as if the human race had hypnotized or talked itself into the hoax of egocentricity. There is no one to blame but ourselves. We are not victims of a conspiracy arranged by an external God or some secret society of manipulators. If there is any biological foundation for the hoax it lies only in the brain’s capacity for narrowed, attentive consciousness hand-in-hand with its power of recognition—of knowing about knowing an and thinking about thinking with the use of images and languages. (RS and then actually believing in the abstract rationalised result of this biological process which only developed for us to survive in the jungle)

Language

As soon as one sees that separate things are fictitious, it becomes obvious that nonexistent things cannot “perform” actions. The difficulty is that most languages are arranged so that actions (verbs) have to be set in motion by things (nouns), and we forget that rules of grammar are not necessarily rules, or patterns, of nature. This, which is nothing more than a convention of grammar, is also responsible for (or, better, “goeswith”) absurd puzzles as to how spirit governs matter, or mind moves body.

... Scientists would be less embarrassed if they used a language, on the model of Amerindian Nootka, consisting of verbs and adverbs, and leaving off nouns and adjectives. If we can speak of a house as housing, a mat as matting, or of a couch as seating, why can’t we think of people as “peopling,” of brains as “braining,” or of an ant as an “anting?”

... We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.”

Afterthought

... It is doubtful whether Western science and technology would have been possible unless we had tried to understand nature in terms of mechanical models. According to Joseph Needham, the Chinese—despite all their sophistication—made little progress in science because it never occurred to them to think of nature as mechanism, as “composed” of separable parts and “obeying” logical laws. Their view of the universe was organic. It was not a game of billiards in which the balls knocked each other around in a cause-and-effect series. What were causes and effects to us were to them “correlatives”—events that arose mutually, like back and front. The “parts” of their universe were not separable, but as fully interwoven as the act of selling with the act of buying. A “made” universe, whether from God or the Automatic Model (monkeys on a typewriter), is made of bits.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Epilogue --- RS ---

So, apparently, according to modern scientists, our so called “solid” bodies are really whirling magnetic energy bundles with lots of space and lights flashing and things pulsing – almost see-through and transparent - isnt this something like we always imagined spirits are? (a quite impractical form for eating) (but maybe quite useful to explore as a green energy recource)

-------

I was thinking about how our senses are like peepholes cut out in a black blanket – I was thinking about the spaces between our senses : e.g. there must be vibrations between smell and sound – are there? do any animals sense that? Some animals have radar and sonar peepholes ...

Most animals eyes arent focussed, they only recognise when something moves,... – why did eyes develop so unfocussed?? ... maybe it was more necessary to look all around and only recognise movement ... an early warning system for potential danger at distances further away than sound and smell? – ... whatever, focussing came later ... (all predators ... maybe not true? ... the first maybe sharks, snakes?)

also, focussing supports the human impression of solid visual appearances ... smells and noise are vague to us

We think: “we are all solid shapes, and solid shapes make noises and vague smells”

I bet my hedgehog thinks. “essentially everything is a smell and these smells make noises and vague shapes”