This book represents a radical reversal of ordinary thinking about the search for security. The author poses the question: how can we live in a world of insecurity? In a world deprived of the comfort of traditional religious beliefs? And he finds the answer in the law of regression: human beings suffer and perish because of the very efforts they make to avoid suffering and death.

Lao Tzu, the ancient master of paradoxical thought, already explained it: "Those who justify themselves do not convince." "To know the truth, one must be free of knowledge." "Nothing is more powerful than emptiness."

It is not a philosophy of nihilism, but rather the opposite: it is a call to live in the present without the anxiety generated by the illusion of time and history. It is a philosophy, clearly Taoist, that teaches that salvation begins when one accepts there is no "salvation," and that security arises when one accepts one's most radical insecurity.

Written in a lucid and engaging style, this book by Alan Watts has inexhaustible relevance in our time of uncertainty and crisis.