Alan Watts – Fear of Enlightenment

Alan Watts explores the fear of enlightenment. Don’t be afraid of how great you are.

Supposing I say to you: each one of you is really the Great Self, the Brahman. And you say, ‘All you’ve said up to now makes me fairly sympathetic to this intellectually. But I don’t really feel it. What must I do to feel it really?’ My answer to you is this: you ask me that question because you don’t want to feel it really. You’re frightened of it. And therefore what you’re going to do is you’re going to get a method of practice so you can put it off. So you can say, ‘Well, I can be a long time on the way of getting this thing, then maybe I’ll be worthy of it after I have suffered enough. See, because we are brought up in a social scheme where we have to deserve what we get and the price one pays for all good things is suffering. But all that is precisely postponement because one is afraid, here and now to see it.