Greetings, Friendlies!
In The Tao of Philosophy [1] Watts says, “People, who by various methods become fully aware of their floodlight consciousness, have what is called ‘a mystical experience,’ or what the Buddhists call bodhi, an awakening. …they discover that the real deep, deep self, that which you really are fundamentally and forever, is the whole of being—all that there is, the works, that is you.”
Watts goes farther than “mystical experience” to speak of “a mystic”. I didn’t find language like “an awakened being” but he says that “a mystic is one who is sensibly or even sensuously aware of his inseparability as an individual from the total existing universe”.
Watts is not speaking here of a temporary experience which one remembers, but a permanent shift in perspective, a lived experience that is “fully aware of … floodlight consciousness”. I am reading this “mystic” as what we would now call in dhamma circles “an awakened being”.
Next time we’ll play with equating Watts’ and McGilchrist’s attentions… just to see what happens…
With friendliness!
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[1] The Tao of Philosophy includes talks given later in Watts’ career, maybe a decade after the excerpts from This is It.
Dharma PhD 