Yeah, tottaly can relate Alan Watts words. When I assume that suicide is possible for me - anxiety about it just gone. But still at the end of attached video, he theorizes about afterlife damnation and childrens, both of which I willn't have most likely.
I think you may have missed the context of what he was saying, there; he wasn't theorizing about damnation and hell; he was talking about those people who get hung on on those concepts....
That particular section would be written as this: "...unless you say, "well, I don't because... after all, there might be eternal damnation in the back of the thing, if I did that or then I identify with my children or something, and I think of them going on and without me..." Watts is quoting the mindset of someone using those concepts to hold them back...(Watts doesn't hold to such beliefs as eternal damnation, himself...)
I think you may have missed the context of what he was saying, there; he wasn't theorizing about damnation and hell; he was talking about those people who get hung on on those concepts....
That particular section would be written as this: "...unless you say, "well, I don't because... after all, there might be eternal damnation in the back of the thing, if I did that or then I identify with my children or something, and I think of them going on and without me..." Watts is quoting the mindset of someone using those concepts to hold them back...(Watts doesn't hold to such beliefs as eternal damnation, himself...)
(Here's Watts explaining his thoughts on the Christian conception of heaven and hell, and his conception of the afterlife...It's too long to quote in its entirety, but here are some pertinent passages:)
'The Tao of Philosophy 2: Images of God' by Alan Watts
Alan Watts talks on the impact of various models of the ultimate reality, and the contrasts between male and female symbolism.

www.organism.earth
"But to reject the paternalistic image of God as an idol is not necessarily to be an atheist, although I have advocated something called 'atheism in the name of God.' That is to say, an experience, a contact, a relationship with God—that is to say, with the Ground of Your Being—that does not have to be embodied or expressed in any specific image."
"Now, theologians on the whole don't like that idea because—I find in my discourse with them—that they want to be a little bit hard-nosed about the nature of God. They want to say that God has, indeed, a very specific nature. Ethical monotheism means that the governing power of this universe has some extremely definite opinions and rules to which our minds and acts must be conformed. And if you don't watch out you'll go against the fundamental grain of the universe and be punished—in some way. Old-fashionedly, you will burn in the fires of hell forever. More modern-fashionedly, you will fail to be an authentic person. It's another way of talking about it. But there is this feeling, you see, that there is authority behind the world, and it's not you! It's something else. Like we say, 'That's something else! That's far out!'"
"Well, of course. We've made death howl with all kinds of ghouls. We've invented dreadful afterlives. I mean, the Christian version of heaven is as abominable as the Christian version of hell. I mean, nobody wants to be in church forever. Children are absolutely horrified when they hear these hymns, which say, 'Prostrate before thy throne to lie, and gaze and gaze on thee'—they can't imagine what this imagery means. I mean, in a very subtle theological way I could wangle that statement around to make it extremely profound. I mean, to be prostrate at once, and to gaze on the other hand, see, is a coincidentia oppositorum: a coincidence of opposites, which is very deep. But to a child it is a crick in the neck. And that's the sort of imagery we're brought up with."
"Then there are other people who say, 'Well, when you're dead you're dead.' Just, y'know—nothing going to happen at all. So what do you have to worry about? Well, we don't quite like that idea, because it spooks us. You know? What's it like to die, to go to sleep and never, never, never wake up? Well, [there are] a lot of things it's not going to be like. It's not going to be like being buried alive. It's not going to be like being in the darkness forever. I'll tell you what: it's going to be like as if you never had existed at all. Not only you, but everything else as well. There just never was anything and there's no one to regret it. And there's no problem. Well, think about that for a while. It's kind of a weird feeling you get, when you really think about that; you really imagine it. Just to stop altogether. And you can't even call it "stop," because you can't have "stop" without 'start,' and there wasn't any start. There's just… no thing."
"So there is that profound, central mystery. And the attitude of faith is to stop chasing it. Stop grabbing it. Because if that happens, the most amazing things follow. But all these ideas of the 'spiritual,' the "godly," as this attitude of UNGH! Must! And we have been laid down the laws which we are bound to follow—all this jazz is not the only way of being religious and of relating to the ineffable mystery that underlies ourselves and the world."
