To try to see God is like trying to look at your own eyes, for he is nearer to us than we are to ourselves.
– Alan Watts, Behold the Spirit

The mere intellectual decision that there is no God cannot wipe out the thought patterns and habits of centuries all at once. But in time a faith based on nothing but habit will weaken, and the complete insanity of the meaningless life will take its place if man cannot be diverted with make-believe meanings – commercial enterprise, material ‘success’, absorption in political and social reform movements, all of which can easily be maintained in an era of physical expansion. Yet when that era ends, only futility is left.
– Alan Watts, Behold the Spirit

Human desire differs from animal desire in that it is at root insatiable. Man is characterized by a hunger for the infinite, for an eternity of life, love and joy which, whether he knows it or not, can be nothing other than God.
– Alan Watts, Behold the Spirit

Every attempt to find plan and purpose and respectable rationality in the universe, whether on a supernatural or a merely naturalistic basis, is bound to end in absurdity, and of the two the naturalistic explanations are the most absurd. Perhaps the song of birds is “explainable” simply as a device for sexual attraction; perhaps the radiant wings of insects are no more than protective colouring; perhaps the beauty of the morning-glory is merely to entice the bee, appealing no doubt to his acute aesthetic appreciation of colour and form. Perhaps. But if the aim of so much splendour is merely to stimulate the sexual process of purely instinctual organisms, the mountain has laboured and brought forth a mouse.
– Alan Watts, Behold the Spirit

St. Paul made it clear that Christian morality is an art and not a science; it only proceeds from a new Life and not from a new law. One may master all the rules of grammar but fail to be a good writer for lack of anything to say. One may master all the rules of conduct but fail to be a Christian for lack of love. Mere obedience to a law will never of itself produce love, because love is the very life of God and there is no system or set of rules whereby one can become its posessor. Thus the mission of Christ was not to teach a new moral law. There was nothing particularly original in his moral principles, all of which may be found in earlier Jewish literature or in the precepts of other and older religions. The mission of Christ was to bring into human consciousness a new life and a new power which will make it possible not only to carry out the old precepts but also to reform them.
– Alan Watts, Behold the Spirit