Phoenix
by Dale J. Sprague
White Papers
A.W. Watts
In "The Book, On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" by Alan W. Watts, he offers the thesis...you as God'self.
A monist of his own design. (p.8) "Irrevocable commitment to any religion (its dogma or conception) is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world." A new vision perhaps, of his own, where (p.13) "God is the (hidden) Self of the world," and proceeds to deconstruct the popular perception of things, beginning with his conception of the 'illusion of polarity,' to usher the reader to see more clearly his vision, his conception of a God'self reality existing as a collective of 'hidden selves' among all beings, presumably throughout the universe.
Watts existential thesis is basically that God hides from his or herself because he or she is playing a game of (p.12) 'hide and seek'...to have fun, avoid boredom? An answer to "why the universe?"...as good as any other, if an answer is necessary, as opposed to a question, for fundamental queries.
The basic strategy is to deconstruct one conceptual world, via Buddhist notions, and pave the way for one to see another conceptual world. One perhaps, that is a greater space for the mind, but one that is nevertheless confined within his monistic paradigm of the 'hidden god'self' collective, an irrevocable commitment to a theistic concept, and intellectual suicide of a more subtle order, which happens to a irrevocable commitment to any concept that tries to make the universe a derivative of something, or an integral, as with Watts, of something.
As to the validity of a 'black and white' world (p.21), Watts needed to declare what was alive, the hidden God'self, and what was not, everything else but the hidden God'self, and in the same breath, declare what or who is God and what is not; a black and white world, again of a more subtle and perhaps simple order, but black and white nevertheless.
What authority is required for one to feel enabled to declare who or what is God, or what and what is not alive? In the execution of this authority, Watts disabled himself from understanding why oppressed children construct irrevocable concepts of themselves and the world to navigate emotionally in it, and was disabled from seeing their true hidden self...an undeveloped un'biased minded child.