Alan Watts

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Makes sense. Thanks.

You asked for our thoughts about these videos. I could spend the rest of my life writing a book about any one of these, but I plan to keep this post a bit shorter than that.

I liked the third one best, because of the time lapse video to go with his words.

If you are wondering why I revived this thread, I will tell you. I have spent about a year now studying atheism. I saw a video by Douglas Adams on the subject, and it caught my imagination. Here was my chance to rid myself of the last vestiges of the religious nonsense that I was taught when I was too young to recognize the situation. At the end of my journey, I felt free of that particular dogma, but I was left with a bit of a void. Of all the philosophies I have encountered, Buddhism seemed to be the most helpful. I loved the idea of the middle path. These series of videos on YouTube by Alan Watts led me to search Wrong Planet to see if anyone else found them to be of interest. They have revived my joie de vivre.

In High School, I read several books by Alan Watts in my spare time and enjoyed them. I was still under the influence of Christian Science at that time. I remember reading one of Watts' books on the beach, and then going into the ocean on an inflatable raft. I contemplated the book while I bobbed on the undulating waves. Slowly, I drifted further and further out. I don't know if I actually heard the crowd of people on the beach shouting at me to come back to shore, but I eventually looked up to see them frantically waving their hands. I used to think that Alan Watts almost killed me that day. I am being facetious, but he did distract me with his engrossing writings. I now realize that it was that religion that was inflicted on me that made me think that practical considerations like the possibility of drowning didn't need to be considered. Jesus taught that we needn't concern ourselves with practical matters. A balanced approach to life is better.

I am still an atheist. But atheism is only a lack of belief. It cleared the way for me to seek the truth about reality. Alan Watts presents a buffet of ideas often in the form of questions. I don't plan to eat the entire buffet, (I don't plan to start believing in reincarnation, for example) nor limit myself to his offerings alone, but he reminded me that withholding belief does not preclude considering possibilities and using certain working models of reality provisionally, until a better one comes along. This is what science does.

I love Alan Watts.

Alan Watts was best known for explaining eastern philosophies to western audiences. He did this not to convert anyone to any particular point of view, but to aid understanding. He pointed out many hidden assumptions built into our language and culture that most people are unaware of (as a fish in the water presumably isn't aware it is in the water since it is immersed completely in it all the time). He also points out the importance of realizing the background as well as the foreground. He illustrated this by drawing a circle on a blackboard and asking people what they thought he drew. Some would say a circle, or a ball. The answer he was looking for was a wall with a hole in it.

In my fifty-two years of life so far I have read many thousands of books on every subject of human inquiry. I have watched hundreds or thousands of movies and listened to many people speak. Nobody else has opened my mind to new ways of realization as much as Alan Watts has. The depth and breadth of his knowledge was amazing, but he was not an expert on every subject and I do not agree with everything he (or anyone else) says.

He wrote some books about Zen and such, but for me his writing is rather dry. I enjoy listening to him talk much more than reading his words myself. I have about fifty hours of audio files of him giving seminars on various subjects I am most fascinated with such as consciousness, reality, religion, and comparative mythology. I have listened to some of these seminars dozens or even hundreds of times.

Much of what he teaches is becoming more integrated into western culture now than when he was around (he died in 1973). Some Hindu ideas about the eternal "now" are supported by the findings of General relativity. Some other ancient teachings seem to be supported by some of the findings of quantum mechanics too, although a lot of new age hooey hogwash has been written on the subject.

I recommend listening to Alan Watts speak, or watching one of his videos, more than I recommend reading his books. Still, he is one of my all time favorite human beings even though he had his personal demons and vices.