The prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East — in particular the central and germinal Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism. This hallucination underlies the misuse of technology for the violent subjugation of man's natural environment and, consequently, its eventual destruction. We are therefore in urgent need of a sense of our own existence which is in accord with the physical facts and which overcomes our feeling of alienation from the universe... Just as no thing or organism exists on its own, it does not act on its own.... Parts exist only for purposes of figuring and describing, and as we figure the world out we become confused if we do not remember this all the time.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East — in particular the central and germinal Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism. This hallucination underlies the misuse of technology for the violent subjugation of man's natural environment and, consequently, its eventual destruction. We are therefore in urgent need of a sense of our own existence which is in accord with the physical facts and which overcomes our feeling of alienation from the universe... Just as no thing or organism exists on its own, it does not act on its own.... Parts exist only for purposes of figuring and describing, and as we figure the world out we become confused if we do not remember this all the time." in the context of "Alan Watts in The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.