It is a philosophy not of nihilism but of the reality of the present—always remembering that to be of the present is to be, and candidly know ourselves to be, on the crest of a breaking wave. According to Watts there is no method to solve the problem of happiness, “The question ‘What shall we do about it? A person’s full potential to lead a holistic life is defined by all these experiences and not only one.

Regardless of what god they ascribe to, the true divinity is always security, the sense that there’s a bigger plan unfolding that features your name in bright lights, that will coddle you when the world seems too frightening a place to live within. This occurs because we believe that there exists a separate experiencer in addition to our experiences that persists through time.I have been taught by the very liberal community in which I have grown up to be skeptical of anything written by a white man in the 1950s and, in general, I think this skepticism is probably warranted. The greater the scientist, the more he is impressed with his ignorance of reality, and the more he realizes that his laws and labels, descriptions and definitions, are the products of his own thought. Focusing attention on current experience, rather than being subsumed in the world of thoughts, memories and future projections.

Watts’ objection, however, is that we mistake this essential abstraction for our fundamental nature.He reiterates the value of insecurity, and our good fortune to live in an age in which science has reinvigorated the mysteriousness of our world.