> The art of meditation is a way of getting into touch with reality, and the reason for it is that most civilized people are out of touch with reality because t

> The art of meditation is a way of getting into touch with reality, and the reason for it is that most civilized people are out of touch with reality because they confuse the world as it with the world as they think about it and talk about it and describe it. For on the one hand there is the real world and on the other there is a whole system of symbols about that world which we have in our minds. > These are very very useful symbols, all civilization depends on them, but like all good things they have their disadvantages, and the principle disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality, just as we confuse money with actual wealth, and our names about ourselves, our ideas of ourselves, our images of ourselves, with ourselves. How much truer this excerpt of one of Watts' lectures [0] has become in the age where even our selves have become almost fully digitized. Many of the people you interact with will now never meet you in the flesh, only as symbols on a screen. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJYp-mWqB1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJYp-mWqB1w