Is there some method whereby, in our schools, we could produce from the music department, every graduation ceremony, three musicians of the stature of Bach or Mozart? Now, if we knew how to do that, that knowledge would prevent us from being surprised by the work of these people—because we would know how it’s done! And when you know how something is done, it doesn’t surprise you.

Left long enough to itself, under the prolonged and universal play of chance, matter manifests the property of arranging itself in more and more complex groupings.

What we feel instead is an identification of ourselves with our idea of ourselves—or I would rather say: with our image of ourselves—and that’s the person or the ego. You play a role, you identify with that role. I play a role—it’s called Alan Watts—and I know very well that that’s a big act. I can play some other roles besides Alan Watts, if necessary, but I find this one is better for making a living. But I assure you: it’s a mask and I don’t take it seriously. You know, the idea of my being a kind of messiah or guru or savior of the world just breaks me up. Because I know me! So, you know, it’s very difficult to be holy in the ordinary sense.

Supposing I say everybody is playing the game “me first.” Now, I’m going to play the game “you first”—to use the phrase of Bonhoeffer, who called Jesus the man for others. Now, let’s see if we can play that game. Instead of “me first,” “you first.” “After you, please.” Will you please? You know, what a way this is at putting everybody down! See, I’m the one who’s so generous. I’m the one who’s so loving, so self-effacing. And all you inferior brats can go first. You can play “me first.” I’ll play “you first.” I’ll try and convince you to play “you first.” But the success of convincing you on that is relatively small and therefore the in-group will always be the people playing “you first.” And therefore they will get the honors.

When you have had every kind of pleasure, and you’ve been able to own everything you ever wanted, and to go everywhere you ever wanted and so on, you have to come back from all that to the realization of how marvelous it is just to exist.

The way the individual is described in these sciences is not as a freely moving entity within an environment, but as a process of behavior which is the environment also.

If the present planting of humanity upon Spaceship Earth cannot comprehend this inexorable process and discipline itself to serve exclusively that function of metaphysical mastering of the physical it will be discontinued, and its potential mission in universe will be carried on by the metaphysically endowed capabilities of other beings on other spaceship planets of universe.

Those who count on the good will of mankind display a delirious, idealistic optimism. Centuries of history, despite the facts, have not been able to convince them of the contrary; reason certainly will not change them. But they are so far removed from reality that their opinion is negligible.

When you realize that cognition acts at all levels of life, then you realize that all living systems are engaged in cognitive activity. The way they interact with their environment is a cognitive process. And since there are always living systems within other living systems, there are these levels of cognition.

We come to the basic difference between the inanimate and living systems: a cell as a system is not limited to its membrane, the border between the cell and environment, but it extends as a functional unit into the environment. The membrane of the living system is not a line of separation, but rather connects the inner parts of the cell with selected parts of the environment.

Humans are already drifting in the direction of ever-more integrated hiveminds, and technology will sooner or later enable humans to join real hiveminds.

If you wish fully to realize yourselves, beware above all of everything that isolates, that refuses to accept, and that divides. Each along your own line, let your thought and action be “universal,” which is to say “total.” And tomorrow, maybe, you will find to your surprise that all opposition has disappeared and you can “love” one another.

The very fact, you see, that the world is always decaying and always falling away is the same thing as its vitality. Vitality is change. Life is death. It is always falling apart. And so there are certain supreme moments, you see, at which (in the body) we attain superb vitality—and that’s the time. Make it then. That’s the moment. Just like when an orchestra is playing: the conductor wants to get a certain group of, say, violins to come in at a certain moment, and he’s conducting, and he’s got to now make it, and they all have to go zzzt right now, see? Of course. That’s the whole art of life: to do it at the right time, to do it in time—like you dance or you play in time. And so, in the same way, when it comes to love, sexuality—or equally so in all the pleasures of gastronomy—timing is of the essence. And then it’s happened, and you’ve had it. But that’s not something that one should look upon with regret. It only is something regrettable if you didn’t know how to take it when it was timely.

If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love.

I mean, where is it writ large that talking monkeys should be able to model the cosmos? If a sea urchin or a raccoon were to propose to you that it had a viable truth about the universe, the absurdity of that assertion would be self-evident. But in our own case we make an exception.

We have now become aware of the possibility of arranging the entire human environment as a work of art, as a teaching machine designed to maximize perception and to make everyday learning a process of discovery. Application of this knowledge would be the equivalent of a thermostat controlling room temperature. It would seem only reasonable to extend such controls to all the sensory thresholds of our being.

We see that this absolute separation of good from evil renders our choice between the two an ultimately perilous adventure. While this enriches life with a dimension of earnestness and momentousness hitherto unknown, it deprives the Divinity of all humor and playfulness.

Local communities once did have autonomy, but such autonomy becomes less and less possible as local communities become more enmeshed with and dependent on large-scale systems like public utilities, computer networks, highway systems, the mass communications media, and the modern health care system. Also operating against autonomy is the fact that technology applied in one location often affects people at other locations far away.

The idea of doing work simply to make money shows an extraordinary lack of realism. There are lots of people playing the stock market to make money, and they don’t give a damn what the businesses they’re investing in are actually doing. They may be destroying rivers, raping the countryside, getting rid of whole tribes of whales. But they’re in it for the money. And what is characteristic of people who are simply in it for the money is that, when they get the money, they don’t know what to do with it. That’s what really bothers me.

Sometimes a kind of existential perception of the absurd comes over me and I see with awful certainty the hypocrisies and posturing of myself and my fellow men. And at other times, there is a different sense of the absurd, a playful and whimsical awareness.

Only those who have cultivated the art of living completely in the present have any use for making plans for the future, for when the plans mature they will be able to enjoy the results.

That the information is multiplying at that rate during just one lifetime indicates that something is going on here right now that is utterly unprecedented, and we’re in such indication of acceleration of experiences of human beings; the integration of the accelerated, the experienced, to produce awarenesses that are indicative of humanity going through some very, very important kind of transition into some kind of new relationship to Universe, I’d say. The kind of acceleration that would occur after the child has been formed in the womb, taking the nine months, and then suddenly begins to issue from the womb out into an entirely new world.

Intelligence is a function of the degree to which you realize that your behavior is one with the behavior of the rest of the world.

The philosophy of science around L. L. Whyte and people like that have pointed out that, if you use as your index complexity, then you suddenly discover that human beings have moved back to the very center of the universe: that the most complex physical material in the universe in terms of density of connectedness is the human cerebral cortex. That if novelty and density of connectedness is what is being conserved, then somehow we are central.