The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money... they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.
Interpretation
Imagination is crucial for truly enjoying wealth and life, rather than merely accumulating money.
Alan Watts suggests that poverty is not merely a lack of money, but a lack of imagination. Those who accumulate wealth without the ability to appreciate and enjoy it are missing out on the true richness of life, which comes from creativity and imagination rather than just material possessions.
In practice
In a speech about financial literacy, one might quote this to highlight the importance of using imagination in managing wealth.
Jesus Christ knew he was God. So wake up and find out eventually who you really are. In our culture, of course, they’ll say you’re crazy and you’re blasphemous, and they’ll either put you in jail or in a nut house (which is pretty much the same thing). However if you wake up in India and tell your friends and relations, ‘My goodness, I’ve just discovered that I’m God,’ they’ll laugh and say, ‘Oh, congratulations, at last you found out.
What we see as death, empty space, or nothingness is only the trough between the crests of this endlessly waving ocean. It is all part of the illusion that there should seem to be something to be gained in the future, and that there is an urgent necessity to go on and on until we get it. Yet just as there is no time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is never anything to be gained - though the zest of the game is to pretend that there is.
There is only this now. It does not come from anywhere; it is not going anywhere. It is not permanent, but it is not impermanent. Though moving, it is always still. When we try to catch it, it seems to run away, and yet it is always here and there is no escape from it. And when we turn around to find the self which knows this moment, we find that it has vanished like the past.
Many people never grow up. They stay all their lives with a passionate need for external authority and guidance, pretending not to trust their own judgment.
There are two specific objections to use of psychedelic drugs.First,use of these drugs may be dangerous.Howev er,every worth-while exploration is dangerous-climb ing mountains,testi ng aircraft,rocket ing into outer space,or collecting botanical specimens in jungles.But if you value knowledge & the actual delight of exploration more than mere duration of uneventful life,you are willing to take the risks.
The Godhead is never an object of its own knowledge. Just as a knife doesn't cut itself, fire doesn't burn itself, light doesn't illuminate itself. It's always an endless mystery to itself.
None but a good man is really a living man, and the more good any man does, the more he really lives. All the rest is death, or belongs to it.
ROMANCE, n. Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as They Are. In the novel the writer's thought is tethered to probability, but in romance it ranges at will over the entire region of the imagination . . .
Soul of all souls, life of all life - you are That. _x000D_ Seen and unseen, moving and unmoving - you are That. _x000D_ The road that leads to the City is endless; _x000D_ Go without head and feet _x000D_ and you'll already be there. _x000D_ What else could you be? - you are That.
The rule of law, democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of expression - we cannot take them for granted. They do not exist willy-nilly across the world; they are very rare.
Emmitt Till had walked into a cultural narrative in which his role was already tragically written. It was a narrative designed to preserve white supremacy. So it gave power - the right to kill - to any white claiming to defend the honor of white women.
Contented saturnine human figures, a dozen or so of them, sitting around a large long table...Perfect equality is to be the rule; no rising or notice taken when anybody enters or leaves. Let the entering man take his place and pipe, without obligatory remarks; if he cannot smoke...let him at least affect to do so, and not ruffle the established stream of things.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.