Alan Watts Enlightenment Quotations

Enlightenment or awakening is not the creation of a new state of affairs but the recognition of what already is.

Enlightenment remains unrealized so long as it is considered as a specific state to be attained, and for which there are standards of success.

It is a special kind of enlightenment to have this feeling that the usual, the way things normally are, is odduncanny and highly improbable. G.K.Chesterton once said that it is one thing to be amazed at gorgon or a griffin, creatures which do not exist; but it is quite another and much higher thing to be amazed at a rhinoceros or a giraffe, creatures which do exist and look as if they don't. This feeling of universal oddity includes a basic and intense wondering about the sense of things.