The faster things move in circles, the sooner they become indistinguishable blurs. It is obvious that the only interesting people are interested peop… - Alan Watts

It is obvious that the only interesting people are interested people, and to be completely interested is to have forgotten about “I.

Harry Emerson Fosdick could write a book called On Being a Real Person, which translated literally is, “How to be a genuine fake,” because in the old sense, the person is the role, the part played by the actor. But if you forget that you are the actor, and think you are the person, you have been taken in by your own role. You are “en-rolled,” or bewitched, spellbound, enchanted.

This kind of living in the fantasy of expectation rather than the reality of the present is the special trouble of those business men who live entirely to make money. So many people of wealth understand much more about making and saving money than about using and enjoying it. They fail to live because they are always preparing to live. Instead of earning a living they are mostly earning an earning, and thus when the time comes to relax they are unable to do so. Many a “successful” man is bored and miserable when he retires, and returns to his work only to prevent a younger man from taking his place.

Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap. Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. For in a civilization equipped with immense technological power, the sense of alienation between man and nature leads to the use of technology in a hostile spirit — -to the “conquest” of nature instead of intelligent co-operation with nature.