Refreshingly Alan Watts has an easy to read and follow writing style, and contrary to how verbose similar books usually are, it is short and to the point.

The following writing goes through the chapters of the book and tries to summarize it in a way I have understood it. This interpretation may be completely wrong and for that it should be taken with a grain of salt. However, I think it will be helpful to those who are contemplating buying the book as it can provide a short summary in what may be found within the pages.

Consider buying the book if you think it may be something you are looking for: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (non affiliate link)

Perhaps this little short story representing a similar idea may raise your interest:

Below whenever a quotation is not marked, it has been made by the author and the quote has been taken from the chapter under discussion.

One - Inside information

The chapter is about how people have lost their ability to know themselves. The real self. As if it became a taboo to talk about who a given individual is. Alan shows that the purpose of religions at their core is to show us that the individual is the manifestation of the divine. We as individuals, the surrounding animals, the trees and the sky, the good and the bad are all God. He stipulates that this has been lost throughout the ages, because people had to form groups of beliefs and when groups are formed the goal changes from improving all to a perpetual game of one-upmanship. My religion is more virtuous than yours etc.

Without the redeeming nature of religion, of the belief in a higher good and value, the individual is left with nothing but the realization that they are nothing more than little tubes putting food in one end and excreting the result at another end. The tube makes other tubes so when their inevitable death finally arrives they don’t fully disappear.

Our generation knows a cold hell, solitary confinement in this life, without a God to damn or save it. Until man figures out the trap and hunts … “the Ultimate Ground of Being,” he has no reason at all for his existence. Empty, finite, he knows only that he will soon die. Since this life has no meaning, and he sees no future life, he is not really a person but a victim of self-extinction. - T. George Harris

I think that, just that paragraph alone describes everything that is wrong in the world today.

Although religion is very important to the author he points out that there is no single good answer and more importantly, even the pursuit for finding such an answer is false goal.

Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is, above all, open-ness – an act of trust in the unknown.

Two - The game of black and white

Light and dark are necessary as without one there can be no other. This notion is something many nowadays are familiar with. Alan argues that this isn’t the end of the story. They aren’t just necessary to each other to exist they are one thing. We just find it difficult to comprehend the unity, because we live (light) and we die (dark). Death is something that we are raised/built to avoid. It inevitably becomes something bad, something to be avoided. Therefore, our lives turn into the metaphorical battle between light and dark. Whatever may come light must win.

But with this approach we miss the big picture. Our minds get stuck being narrowly focused on the parts without seeing the whole. Attention, similarly to life and death, necessitates ignorance. One can only attend to something if others are ignored.

Life is full of wonders if ones allows themselves to see.

Real travel requires a maximum of unscheduled wandering, for there is no other way of discovering surprises and marvels, which, as I see it, is the only good reason for not staying at home.

Yes, it is dangerous to go outside, but it is just as dangerous to stay at home and do nothing. With an apt example Alan demonstrates what it is to be afraid of death:

Indeed, you were kicked off the edge of a precipice when you were born, and it’s no help to cling to the rocks falling with you. If you are afraid of death, be afraid. The point is to get with it, to let it take over-fear, ghosts, pains, transience, dissolution, and all. And then comes the hitherto unbelievable surprise; you don’t die because you were never born. You had just forgotten who you are.

This strange paragraph is best understood with the idea presented in the first chapter:

We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves”, the universe “peoples”. Every individual is an expression of the whole real of nature, a unique action of the total universe.

In this sense our approach to life is wrong. We are the results not the beginnings with ends. Like our cells in our body, made for a specific purpose, destined to fulfill it or die trying.

Three - How to be a genuine fake

Collectively our society has been constructed throughout the generations to spellbind us into believing that we are separate individuals ought to be free.

The rules of the social game are:

The first rule of this game is that is not a game. Everyone must play. You must love us. You must go on living. Be yourself, but play a consistent and acceptable role. Control yourself and be natural. Try to be sincere.

Contradictions upon contradictions are the rules of the game. We ought to do things, but these actions are only valuable if they are done sincerely. You must be free and you must play by the rules. What is one left to do? That which is allowed. You cannot be free if you are bound by the rules. These contradictions are built into us by society and by our heritage. The precise reason the illusion can penetrate our minds so deeply is because we are inseparable parts of our whole society and in fulfilling our quest to be separate individuals we force the impossible. We try to be separate beings, when in essence we are one.

Nothing fails like success - because the self-imposed task of our society and all its members is a contradictions: to force things to happen which are acceptable only when they happen without force. This, in turn, arises from the definition of man as an independent agent-in the universe but not of it-saddled with the job of bending the world to his will.

In our great contradiction we grow up, continuously sacrificing for the future “thing” that might come that will be perfect, for which all this is worth the effort. Meanwhile we feel desperate and alone, because we are trying to win a rigged game that should not be played. We try to one up the universe, to conquer it whatever the cost. Even if we should fail in doing so we believe our children will succeed, and the cycle continues forever. To fill the void caused by our isolation we buy things that make us happy, and go to work to earn money so we can buy things. However, most of us are so into the game that we work jobs that we hate for the sole reason of earning money. We produce garbage, because the goal is to make things quick and cheap so more money can be made. In turn everyone buys and makes garbage. The ruse being who can fool whom better, so that the winner can buy more things that would make them happy?

The sliver of consciousness controlling our bodies has been taught so thoroughly that it is separate from the harmonious whole that it perceives necessary things as enemies. Death and decay as things to be feared, sorrow and loss to be avoided, instead of embracing them as parts of the divine.

For the enemy/friends of man are his pruners. They prevent him from destroying himself by excess fertility, so that a person who dies of malaria or tuberculosis should be honored at least as much as one who has died for his country in battle. He has made room for the rest of us, and the bacteria which killed him should be saluted with proper chivalry as an honorable foe.

These sentences are harsh, but deep inside we know them to be true. Nonetheless, we have been made into genuine fakes so successfully that we would cling to our freedom tormented by perpetual suffering and inevitable end, instead of embracing our unity binding us together with everything there is.

Four - The world is your body

The world is your body or your body is the world. You are what you are, and the world is what the world is. Things occur in a way that causality rises as the side effect of observing parts of the whole. In this sense the cause of death is birth as everything that lives eventually dies. They cannot be separated as matter cannot be separated from space. Without space there cannot be something and without something there is no space.

Apart from your brain, or some brain, the world is devoid of light, heat, weight solidity, motion, space, time, or any other imaginable feature. All these phenomena are interactions, or transactions, of vibrations with a certain arrangement of neurons. Thus vibrations of light and heat from the sun do not actually become light or heat until they interact with a living organism, just as no light-beams are visible in space unless reflected by particles of atmosphere or dust. In other words, it “takes two” to make anything happen.

That said you are what the environment needs, and the environment is what needs you. Without something to perceive it there might as well be nothing out there. Moreover, an organism is fully bound by the limits imposed on it by the environment. No organism exists without its habitat and no environment exists without an organism either.

The advent of scientific thinking gave us the power and the know-how to bend the world to our will, but in our conquest of becoming powerful we separated ourselves from the inseparable. We became an utterly unimportant little germ in an unimaginably vast and enduring universe.

Our lives are more than little flashes in the incomprehensible vastness of the cosmos. If that were the case we might as well call it a day and get it over with. If the cause of death is life then why even start it?

It is not possible that this unity of knowledge, feeling and choice which you call your own should have sprung into being from nothingness at a given moment not so long ago; rather this knowledge, feeling and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all men, nay in all sensitive beings. But no in this sense - that you are a part, a piece, of an eternal, infinite being, an aspect or modification of it, as in Spinoza-s pantheism. For we should have the same baffling question: which part, which aspect are you? What, objectively, differentiates it from the others? No, but inconceivable as it seems to ordinary reason, you - and all other conscious beings as such - are all in all. Hence this life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. - Erwin Schrödinger

If I am what is, what is ought to be, and I am you, then there isn’t really no difference between you or me or any conscious being. When I die, you take my place, when you die I will take your place.

Thus you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with the certain conviction that you are on with her and she with you. You are as firmly established, as invulnerable as she, indeed a thousand times firmer and more invulnerable. As surely as she will engulf you tomorrow, so surely will she bring you forth anew to new striving and suffering. And not merely ‘some day’: now, today, every day she is bringing you forth, not once but thousands upon thousands of times, just as every day she engulfs you a thousand times over. For eternally and always there is only now, and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end. - Erwin Schrödinger

Five - SO WHAT?

As we have seen previously an individual who is hoaxed into the illusion of being an independent entity cannot convince themselves that they belong. This breeds quilt and resentment. To mitigate these feelings the individual makes the most heroic efforts to support equality, social change and progress. But because they themselves don’t belong and have no idea who they are, they are never satisfied.

Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment.

Life is not lived “in the moment”, but experiences are gulped down in the relentless pursuit to satisfy the insatiable hunger. Days follow days, where the best we can remember is the vague outline of the things that have happened, and we have happened to perceive them as important. Nothing seems to be enough, because things have no meaning at all. The individual fails to see the double bind. The more they struggle to fill the void in themselves the more they fail in doing so. The more they decide to go with the flow, the more will they struggle not to struggle. Each direction is wrong. There is no way out and only frustration ensues. The individual fails to develop a sense of love for themselves, for everything there is. They become the specks of dust against the inevitable doom and to fight back this feeling all effort is made to elevate themselves, but these efforts are hollow.

This is why moralistic preaching is such a failure: it breeds only cunning hypocrites-people sermonized into shame, guilt, or fear, who thereupon force themselves to behave as if they actually loved others, so that their “virtues” are often more destructive, and arouse more resentment, than their “vices”.

Nothing causes more destruction than the love of someone who cannot love or the help from whom does not sincerely wish for things to be better. The quest however has been set and “I” depends on it, so it will be done. Whether you like it or not. Actions such as these are ultimately aimed solely at the protection of the fragile “I”. The hoax of separateness pits the “I” against everything there is outside it. To survive it has no other choice, but to fight tooth and nail. Virtue rises without substance and violence is bred where piece was intended.

The issue is not with the intentions, the issue is with who you think or where taught you are. Simply there is no you.

The only real “you” is the one that comes and goes, manifests and withdraws itself eternally in and as every conscious being. For “you” is the universe looking at itself from billions of points of view, points that come and go so that the vision is forever new. What we see as death, empty space, or nothingness is only the trough between the crests of this endlessly waving ocean. It is all part of the illusion that there should seem to be something to be gained in the future, and that there is an urgent necessity to go on and on until we get it. Yet just as there is no time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is never anything to be gained - though the zest of the game is to pretend that there is.

There is no difference between the perceived “I” and everything there is. It is true you are nothing but a particle in a vast universe, but you are part of it. Without you the waves of life would not be as they should be. You have a part to play in all this whole. It just happens to be that the contribution of each player in this game of eternity is infinitesimally small. This however does not mean that any player is without need. Without your eyes there is no light, without your ears there is no sound, without death there is no life and without pain there can be no joy. Everything, absolutely everything matters. You need the people you hate, so they keep you vigilant, you need the people you love, so they comfort you. You need the misfortunes of life so that you can appreciate what is.

What has really changed then if you adopt this understanding and observe the dissolution of the “I” as the mirage that it is? Absolutely nothing except that now, you are not alone. You are not a soldier facing a foe that cannot be defeated, but a part of an endless game played with yourself. You want to have this game as fascinating as it can be, so you play your part as well as you can. Furthermore, you appreciate your hardships, your victories and sorrows, because now you have the little twinkle in your eyes, and you know this is why this is worth playing. One second you are the villain, the other the saint. As no good story is interesting without hardships your life isn’t either.

To play so as to be relaxed and refreshed for work is not to play, and no work is well and finely done unless it, too, is a form of play.

You still make choices, and you still make plans, but you know it is all just a game and the part you play is just as important as any other. Even the mundane tasks of life can be exceedingly interesting if they are played well. Cooking for example is a choir for some who do not play it well, but some do, and become chefs. Being a bus driver could be a tedious drag or a game of dodging and weaving. The number of games are endless and we all must play some of them. What we have to decide is to play it the best we can and make it interesting for “ourselves”.

Six - IT

There are questions in life that have no meaning at all and asking them perhaps looks profound, nonetheless leads to nowhere. One of these questions is “What is everything?”. There is no answer to such question as the class of everything defines it. It puts boundaries around it. Not to mention the previously discussed duality of things, for there to be everything there has to be nothing. The two poles cannot be discussed separately as they are part of the process of being.

To be able to think about anything in a meaningful way, without going round and round, one has to familiarize themselves with this correlative vision. The eternity of black and white, where the opposites are not separate at all, but part of the same process.

To go anywhere in philosophy, other than back and forth, round and round, one must have a keen sense of correlative vision. This is a technical term for a thorough understanding of the Game of Black-and-white, whereby one sees that all explicit opposites are implicit allies-correlative in the sense that they “gowith” each other and cannot exist apart.

People have evolved and developed more and more ingenious ways to describe and quantize the world. We have made so much progress and made such a complex universe that now even the image of God is not enough to explain how all this works. We are left alone with an inevitable death. But…

Is it possible that myself, my existence, so contains being and nothing that death is merely the “off” interval in an on/off pulsation which must be eternal-because every alternative to this pulsation (e.g., its absence) would in due course imply its presence? Is it conceivable, then that I am basically an eternal existence momentarily and perhaps needlessly terrified by one half of itself because it has identified all of itself with the other half?

If that is true, perhaps we can go further. Ask not the questions that have no meaning, rather realize that we are IT. If I am the single process encompassing self and other, subject and object, organism and environment then I truly exist and will exist.

The word IT is insufficient to describe what I and you are. But we can accept it as a convention, just like we accept the convention of perspective portrayed by lines meeting at a vanishing point on a flat image as 3 dimensional representation.

The final notes from Alan:

Now you know-even if it takes you some time to do a double-take and get the full impact. It may not be easy to recover from the many generations through which the fathers have knocked down the children, like dominoes, saying, “Don’t you dare think that thought! You’re just a little upstart, just a creature, and you had better learn your place.” On the contrary, you’re IT. But perhaps the fathers were unwittingly trying to tell the children that IT plays IT cool. You don’t come on (that is, on stage) like IT because you really are IT, and the point of the stage is to show on, not to show off. To come on like IT-to play at being God-is to play the Self as a role, which is just what it isn’t. When IT plays, it plays at being everything else.