Nice!

It's an interesting concept isn't it?

It is interesting in a poetic way; I find that it does not invite me to elaborate on it at all, just as I would not attempt to explain the meaning of a poem.

I think your response might be a form of poetry in and of itself :)

:)

I like much of Alan Watts' work. In this case I think there is a salient asymmetry though, that the saying, for all its poetry, overlooks.

That is that nobody ever wakes up - in the sense of being suddenly completely lucid - having never gone to sleep. We gradually attain lucidity over the first few months (or years?) of our life. For some people the process of death may be the reverse of that - particularly in the case of dementia. But for illnesses or injuries that attack other parts of the body than the mind, the symmetry is not there. One can be there and fully lucid one moment, and have permanently ceased consciousness the next.

After you're dead, the only thing that can happen is the same experience - or the same sort of experience - as when you were born. Only, you can only experience it one at a time. You can't have an experience of nothing; nature abhors a vacuum.

I've tried to imagine what it would be like to go to sleep and never wake up, but it always ends with waking up again.

For me being born was rather like waking up. There was in some sense a me already formed who discovered myself in this world in a little body.

I see what you're saying, but some of what you're assumes that we understand the consciousness of newborn babies and that is something that really can't be proven.

Your answer was everything I wish I could have written:)

“Try to imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up... now try to imagine what it was like to wake up having never gone to sleep.” - Alan Watts — saw038

Very well, I've tried. Now what?

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. — Samuel Beckett

:D

I presume the imagining waking up after never having gone to sleep must have been tough because the only thing that would describe that would be birth.

now try to imagine what it was like to wake up having never gone to sleep. — saw038

I don't think I get it.

Re babies, yeah, the idea that there would be something clearly like conscious experience prior to ever having slept is extremely dubious.

But it logically follows because we can imagine going to sleep and never waking up (at least, crudely); therefore, we should be able to imagine the inverse; that is, waking up without ever having gone to sleep. Alan's point was that this represents birth.

Well, waking up logically requires that we were asleep first, though.

I don't buy that there's nothing like consciousness or sleep prior to birth, and I also don't buy that consciousness is more or less like it is as an adult for the first few years that we're alive. It would be too difficult to explain why we have (amost) no memories of being infants if we were to posit that consciousness when we're 1 or 2 is more or less similar to adult consciousness. But clearly we sleep prior to consciousness being like adult consciousness.

I think this little statement is supposed to be like one of them thar Zen koans, which need not (or perhaps are not supposed to) make sense but which somehow bring about enlightenment, or something like that. Like asking about the sound of one hand clapping. So, perhaps Mr. Watts is saying something like: "Death is just not being alive, man; you can't sleep or wake up. Shanti."

. . it logically follows because we can imagine going to sleep and never waking up (at least, crudely); therefore, we should be able to imagine the inverse; that is, waking up without ever having gone to sleep. — saw038

No, there is no such thing to imagine, because the ability to identify what something is like is acquired when one is awake. If you have never been awake before, then there can be no such thing to imagine as waking up without ever having gone to sleep. Also "crudely" it would be a fictional story of what something was like but which couldn't have been like anything.

Then it would also follow since you have never been dead before that we cannot say that death is nothingness.

I see what you're saying, but some of what you're assumes that we understand the consciousness of newborn babies and that is something that really can't be proven. — saw038

I said that based on my own memories, in particular that I have no recollections of consciousness prior to the age of four. It's possible that I was lucid at the age of one month but do not recall it. That seems implausible to me but you're right that I can't prove it.

Well, waking up logically requires that we were asleep first, though. — Terrapin Station

You can be asleep first without ever having 'gone to sleep" though; because to go to sleep implies having been previously awake.

I agree with that.

“Try to imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up... now try to imagine what it was like to wake up having never gone to sleep.” - Alan Watts

Thoughts?

Epicurus Symmetry argument:

"...anyone who fears death should consider the time before he was born. The past infinity of pre-natal non-existence is like the future infinity of post-mortem non-existence; it is as though nature has put up a mirror to let us see what our future non-existence will be like. But we do not consider not having existed for an eternity before our births to be a terrible thing; therefore, neither should we think not existing for an eternity after our deaths to be evil."

The problem I have with this argument is that there is an asymmetry. Any existence after death would be a continuance of present existence, however that might be conceived, whereas any existence before birth would not be. This is so because if we have no memory of any existence before birth we know it cannot be thought as related in any coherent way to present existence; whereas the possibility there might be memory of the present existence in a future existence allows that there might be a coherent way to relate the two. This doesn't rule out that there might be, or that there might come to be, memory of previous existence in the present life, though, and if there were then the situation would still not be symmetrical because we cannot have memories of a future existence.

Epicurus argument bears few assumptions.
We were not
Then we are
Then we are not

There is no presumption of continuation, it is symmetry. It is Meontology.

True, true within those assumptions, yes. "Meontology"! I like it!

My earlier post was quoting bits of Watts from a fairly well-known youtube clip of his (called The Real You). What's funny (to me) is that I have a friend who has absolutely no time or patience for philosophy, but he said to me one day he had suddenly realised what happens after you die - but he wasn't really able to verbalise what he thought (which I thought was pretty just considering his dislike of philosophy, but anyway). He kept saying, literally, "after you die other people are born" which is almost verbatim how Watts puts it. He went round and round in circles trying to explain it to me. There were diagrams, timelines, and established names such as "The Andy Life Theory". Eventually I got an inkling of what he was trying to get at ("I'm telling you, after you die, other people are born! It's so obvious!") and I asked him to listen to this clip of Alan Watts, who came to the same realisation. He couldn't believe someone had got there before him and explained so clearly where words failed him. He was pretty gutted.

Basically, the idea is this (I'll be using Watts' words verbatim as well as my own). The only thing that can happen is the same experience, or the same sort of experience, as when you were born - because you can't have an experience of nothing; nature abhors a vacuum. After you die, someone else is born who thinks they're an 'I' and that their sense of self is the centre of the universe, just how you feel now. Someone else 'wakes up' and gets a first person perspective and begins experiencing the world. Only, it's you. Well, it's not 'you' in the sense of reincarnation; you died along with your material body. But, in a sense it is still you because everybody is an 'I'. You are something that the whole universe is doing, in the same way that a wave is something the whole ocean is doing. What you do is what the whole universe is doing at the place you call here and now. Wheresoever beings exist throughout all galaxies, it doesn't make any difference; you are all of them. Only, you can only experience it one at a time. Your 'self' dies upon death, but there is never any 'nothingness' because, as said, you can't have an experience of nothing. There is only more experience, and for there to be more experience, someone else needs to wake up. What happens after you die is a continuing succession of I's one after the other. And as Watts would say, they're all you because you are everything. That is what is meant by The Real You.

Take that for what you will, but that's the gist of it all. In my more contemplative moods it makes a lot of sense to me, especially considering our earliest ('mechanical') biological roots were something purely physical/chemical that the world 'did' when in a particular state. Only, that state became more complex through evolution got us to where we are now with a sense of self and a 'separateness' from our origins and the world of our surroundings. But we are both still it and in it, we never became separate from it nor did we emerge from it, it's still ongoing and therefore "what we do is what the whole universe is doing at the place we call here and now". I especially like the idea that the 'self' is what makes us think we're separate from the universe when we aren't. I think of it as The Fall from God (or the universe, in the ancient Greek sense as per the Stoics, a thought I'm sure you can appreciate). "Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself" (Rust Cohle from True Detective, but pessimistic theory in general) and to get back to living in accordance with nature one has to lose their sense of self, thereby 'delimiting' it so that we become once again immanent with all creation - realising that The Real You is "something that the whole universe is doing in the same way a wave is something the whole ocean is doing". Otherwise you'll stay pretending that you're just a 'poor little me', as Watt's puts it. To me, that's what ego death is. It also ties in nicely with the pessimistic idea of 'self-consciousness under time' (Joshua Foa Dienstag, Pessimism, 2006). "We suffer because we desire" things from the past that we can't retrieve, and because we desire things from the future we are perpetually unable to attain (the strict Buddhist sense probably fits somewhere in here also). We project our sense of self into the future and the past because self-consciousness is what makes us able to do that. Our self-consciousness of/under time doesn't allow us to live in 'the place we call here and now' (Watts). This would also explain why "you can't have an experience of nothing", because without a self there is no experience, and without experience there is no time. Hence there might be a billion years between your death and the next person who 'wakes up', but it will go by, for want of a better phrase, like nothing (that is what makes the continuing 'succession' of separate experiences after death). That is how it was before you were born; this was all here for billions of years but as far as you and your self are concerned, it came into being when you did. As I said it makes sense to me, but to really appreciate it you need to almost think 'outside' your self and "discover who you really are", which is what caused the whole problem to begin with. Only in my more contemplative moods.

Anyway, that's going quite far from what Watt's said himself, but I think there is a 'grand unifying theory' of many different philosophies (including pessimism, Buddhism, determinism, some form of idealism, Stoicism, Christianity, neo-Platonism, philosophy of time, and every-day understandings of death and the self) to be found somewhere in my ramblings.

Yes I had that thought too at an early age, long before I knew what philosophy, spirituality or religion was.

Anyway, that's going quite far from what Watt's said himself, but I think there is a 'grand unifying theory' of many different philosophies (including pessimism, Buddhism, determinism, some form of idealism, Stoicism, Christianity, neo-Platonism, philosophy of time, and every-day understandings of death and the self) to be found somewhere in my ramblings. — WhiskeyWhiskers

This is most certainly not true historically speaking.

As regards the general gist of your statement, I will say this. Most people never doubted that existence itself continues after they die (and hence others are born, etc.). Their concern was exactly the preservation of their identity - their habits, their ideas, their way of being, their character, and their particular features. They always were concerned whether this identity keeps on existing - to say "no it doesn't, but the rest of existence keeps on existing" is irrelevant. It doesn't mean anything. It's a denial of one's own self. Just as absurd as saying that killing yourself will cure your headaches!

Like Socrates, I think it is better to hope in an afterlife - and hope is the most we can have in this life. We're going to die anyway, might as well die with hope and gladness in our hearts.

I'm not speaking 'historically'. I'm talking about a bare underlying idea that runs through some parts of these different philosophies. Like I said in another post, there are going to be many differences in the details, but I think there's something there that is worth considering, and makes sense to me. Going on about identity after death is a red herring as to what I'm talking about. It has nothing to do with it and that wasn't what I was referring to. Whether people had those anxieties or not has little to no bearing on my idea.

Edit: and from what you said, it sounds like you don't really understand what I said. It was exactly the same attitude I took to my fiend when he said "after people die, other people are born". I said well that just sounds like a common sense truism and everyone knows that. There is another meaning beneath that which is what Watts was saying, and one which I didn't immediately see as a similarity between them.