Alan Watts

[Cato]

I don't think you could have picked a better example to demonstrate my point. That statement, I think, is both absurd and profound, but far from banal. The fact is every atom in your body has existed since the big bang and will continue to do so long after your mind is destroyed. Bodies of matter are like continuous waves in an ocean that perpetuates ever-changing forms, then dissolves them, and the process repeating ad infinitum. Another way of putting it is that you may very well, at this moment, be inhaling molecules that were once the brain of Plato. Many rightly find that thought quite mystical.

First, a bit of nitpicky housekeeping. Only hydrogen, helium, lithium, and beryllium have existed since the Big Bang. Even this is inaccurate since recombination didn't kick in for ~400K years. Stars can create elements as heavy as iron; supernovae are required for the rest. I'm being nitpicky, but agree with your intended meaning.

I had the same thought when I first read this quote, but I cannot be as charitable regarding Watts. I could appreciate his thought and let it go if I thought he was simply being poetic, but I can't bring myself to ignore his adherence to panpsychism when I read this. Watts isn't just saying we are made of elements strewn throughout the universe, he is suggesting that we are part of a greater universal consciousness. This is how the profound becomes mystical gibberish.

My enthusiasm in considering the ingestion of what was once part of Plato's brain is tempered by the realization that I may have very well ingested what was once Platonic shit.

I find that statement as silly as you but it also might make more sense if I had the context. Like I said, I don't agree with a lot of Watt's ideas, and there certainly is some woo. But I find quite a bit of truth in the following quotes, eloquently expressed:

Thanks for the following quotes. There is much in them that I like, particularly what I'll call the Wittgensteinian approach to dissolving philosophical problems. I have no problem with placing boundaries on the idea of self and quite like Watts' "coming out of the world"; however, I think he too quickly dismisses the "isolated egos inside bags of skin". Our constituent parts may have come out of the world, but our experiences laying the foundation and development of the self are unique and will forever disappear at death regardless of how long our constituent parts are re-purposed. Again, I think it is his adherence to an unsubstantiated panpsychism that muddies the waters when he gets to this point.