The Illusion of Separateness
The biggest taboo of all is knowing who we really are behind the mask of our self as presented to the world. Through our focus on ourselves and the world as it affects us, we have developed narrowed perception.
– Alan Watts, The Book
To understand what Watts is saying, we need to revisit Freud, for as I have discussed in a previous article, many of the ideas that we have about the self have been derived from him. Freud posited that infants have primary narcissism – a claim that was later disputed by Melanie Klein. Freud thought that it was only later in life that people develop secondary narcissism.
What is primary narcissism? It is the lack of differentiation between the self and the world. The infant cannot see the boundary that separates them from the rest of the world. According to Watts, the reality is the stage we occupy as infants, and the illusion is what we acquire as adults – the illusion of separateness.
Watts noted that Freud was influenced by “reductionism” – the nineteenth century fashion that felt the need to put down all human intelligence and culture by calling it an arbitrary by-product of blind forces.
Yet humans have hypnotized themselves into believing in the hoax of egocentricity. And this ego-fiction is not essential to the individual. Each person is a branch of the tree of humanity, but differentiation is not separation.
Read The Struggle for the Self