Watts talks about two essential forms of consciousness, ‘Spotlight’ consciousness and ‘Floodlight’ consciousness. ‘Spotlight’ consciousness is what we are used to, what we are taught from childhood onwards, when we are told to ‘concentrate’.
It roughly translates into ‘conscious attention’, which Watts sees as analogous to the ‘ego feeling’.
The floodlight, on the other hand, is the unconscious mind, which we tend to distrust, as a kind of remnant of our animal selves, but which Watts and many Eastern philosophies look to as the source of authentic selfhood.
“The narrow form of consciousness is called scanning, or dividing experience into bits. It’s like sweeping a radar beam over the environment. You intensely concentrate light on restricted areas.
“The floodlight is less intense, but…
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