The Way of Liberation: Essays and Lectures on the Transformation of the Self by Alan Watts

Author:Alan Watts [Watts, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780834801813
Google: lt0HAAAAMAAJ
Amazon: 0834801817
Published: 2019-10-28T21:30:39+00:00

off so that you can let the real sunlight in . So , in the same way, pictures of God on the windows of the mind need scraping off, othenvise they become idolatrous substitutes for the reality.

Now, I am hoping that this sort of understanding will issue frofu the ” God is Dead” theology, but I am not quite sure whether it is going to . As a matter of fact, there are precedents within the Christian tradition for an intelligent theology such as this, for what I would call “atheism in the name of God.” In other words, one completely lets go of clinging to images of God because all such images only get in the way of reality. The highest form of prayer is that in which all concepts of God have been left behind-this is the supreme act of faith. But the moment you insist on the Christian image, you support the Church as a huge, imperialistic, vested-interest organization. After all , if the Church is the Body of Christ, is it not through the breaking of the Body of Christ that life is given to the world ?

But the Church does not want to be broken up, by Jove, no ! It goes around canvassing for new members.

Consider the difference between a physician and a clergyman : the physician wants to get rid of his patients, so he gives them medicine and hopes they will not get hooked on it; the clergyman, on the other hand, is usually forced to make his patients become addicts so that they will continue to pay their dues . The doctor has faith in turnover, he knows that there will always be sick people. The clergy should also have faith in turnover. Clergymen, get rid of your congregations ! Say to your people, “You’ve heard all I have to tell you. Go away. If you want to get together for making celestial whoopee, which is worship, all right ; but if you come to church out of a sense of duty, you are not wanted. ‘ ‘ When I was a chaplain at Northwestern University, I used to tell the students that if they did not want to be at Mass they would only be skeletons at the feast, O R I E N T A L P H I L O S O P H Y

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and it would be much better if they went swimming or stayed in bed because we were going to celebrate the Holy Communion and I meant celebrate !

I think it is a shame that we take religion in such dead earnest. I remember when I was a boy, how wicked I thought it was to laugh in church. We do not realize that, as Chesterton reminded us, the angels fly because they take themselves so lightly. So too, in the Paradiso, when Dante heard the song of the angels he said it sounded like the laughter of the universe. They were singing, “Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, ‘ ‘ which does not mean anything ; it is sublime nonsense.

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