这是生活的真正秘诀 ：完全投入到现在和你现在所做的事情上，意识到这是游戏， 而不称之为工作。 --艾伦沃茨
艾伦沃茨 Alan Wilson Watts（1915年1月6日 - 1973年11月16日）是一位英国裔美国哲学家，宗教学者，作家和演说家，为西方解释和推广东方哲学。他研究了印度哲学和中华哲学，尤其喜爱聚佛家和道家于一体的禅。他崇尚自然，认为人是自然的产物，每一个人都是整个世界，像天空中无数的星辰，每一个人都是宇宙的中心。
像传说中的禅师，艾伦认为语言是个粗笨的解释工具，禅是不可说。他具有真正禅师的幽默，不认为自己是个精神导师，潇洒地自封为”精神艺人“，在娱乐大家的同时，把禅几乎给说了。他最受喜爱的著作之一是 《禅道》（The Way of Zen - 1957)。
禅不混淆思考神和剥土豆。 禅就只是剥土豆。 -- 艾伦沃茨
在”生命之梦“里艾伦沃茨用一个简单的假设寥寥数语地概括了多元宇宙的量子物理学思想，佛教的转世思想，解释了生命的痛苦和快乐的原因。生命的本质是喜悦和享受，正如印度的哲学与神学，上帝有无穷的威力，一切都在掌控中，上帝也因此郁闷无聊，于是自己和自己玩起捉迷藏的游戏。
生命之梦 --艾伦沃茨
如果你从这种幻觉中醒来，你明白黑意味着白，自我意味着其人，生命意味着死亡， 或者说死亡意味着生命，你可以感受到自己的存在是整个宇宙的根本，你不是侥幸来到这世界的陌生人，也不是在这里接受等待生活的缓刑。
我并不是想要说服你接受这个理念，我希望你能够玩弄它的可能性。我并不想证明它，我只是把它作为一种可能的生活来思考。那么，让我们假设你每天晚上都能够梦想你的任何梦想，并且你可以在一夜之间拥有梦想75年的时间，或者任何更长时间的权力。
自然地，刚开始这梦想的冒险时，你会满足你的所有愿望。你会梦想经历你所能想象的所有快乐。在经历了几晚75年的十足的乐趣之后，你会说“嗯，太棒了！但是现在让我们有一个意外，让我们有一个不受控制的梦想，在那里会发生一些我不知道的事情。“
在你经历你能挖掘到各种意外之后，你会说“哇，死里逃生，不是吗？”然后你会越来越冒险，进一步和更进一步的赌博你会实现你的梦想。最后，你会梦想现在的你，过着你梦想生活的现在的你。
扮演不是上帝游戏的精髓就是假装不知道自己是上帝，而在无穷无尽的选择中，你会选择扮演现在的你过着你现在的生活。在这个意义上，每个人从根本上说都是最终的现实。每个人都不是政治意义上的上帝，而是作为自我意义上的上帝，或者作为宇宙最基本最深沉的存在。你就是整个宇宙，只是你在假装你不知道。
If you awaken from this illusion and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death (or shall I say death implies life?), you can feel yourself – not as a stranger in the world, not as something here on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke - but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental.
I am not trying to sell you on this idea in the sense of converting you to it, I want you to play with it. I want you to think of its possibilities, I am not trying to prove it. I am just putting it forward as a possibility of life to think about. So then, let’s suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream, and that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time, or any length of time you wanted to have.
And you would, naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each you would say “Well that was pretty great. But now let’s have a surprise, let’s have a dream which isn’t under control, where something is gonna happen to me that I don’t know what it's gonna be."
And you would dig that and would come out of that and you would say “Wow that was a close shave, wasn’t it?”. Then you would get more and more adventurous and you would make further- and further-out gambles what you would dream. And finally, you would dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.
That would be within the infinite multiplicity of choices you would have. Of playing that you weren't God, because the whole nature of the godhead, according to this idea, is to play that he is not. So in this idea then, everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality, not God in a politically kingly sense, but god in the sense of being the self, the deep-down basic whatever there is. And you are all that, only you are pretending you are not.
