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Alan Watts

brownbradley39

brownbradley39

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Mar 18, 2014
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Does anyone else find the teachings of Alan Watts absolutely beautiful? I shouldn't say teachings but you get what i'm saying... He makes such beautiful ideas as the different forms of Buddhism and Hinduism easy to understand for us Westerners. The idea of "No-Self" is truly beautiful and liberating :) I've just been having a tough time grasping and feeling whats called the true Self or Brahman though..
 
I find his ideas need to be "planted' and understood in a theoretical/abstract way; as in understood in the world of thoughts, before they can truly be understood and felt.
 
I enjoy listening to recordings of his lectures. He was a gifted speaker. As you say, he presents complex ideas in a way that's relatively easy for us Westerners to understand, however, I'm still trying to grok the idea of "No Self." What are some of your favorite lectures or topics?
 
I've come back to listen to his very soothing voice a few times whenever I've needed it. Most recently I went through about a hundred lectures over a couple of weeks. I do find it a helpful and reassuring way to frame your life, but I agree that it's hard to make it kind of stick, or truly resonate with your consciousness.
 
I'm grateful for his communication of eastern ideas into the western sphere of understanding, he provided a valuable service for others without question.

My only issue with his communications is the idea that one need not do anything, that it's already done. In a sense this is true, but unless you have proven it by your own work then it is still no different from any other belief. This is the danger with any great orator.. the words sooth the doubts we have about the big questions and tend to make us content in belief as opposed to really finding out for ones self.

We know most of the ideas have truth in them. But there is an infinitely great difference between knowing something, and really knowing. To really know means experiencing directly, otherwise it's all just postulation.
 
He certainly did have a spell bounding voice.. His ideas are just difficult for us to understand because its a complete paradigm shift! I've noticed my understandings of his lectures seem to happen after pouring over and listening to many of his lectures and reading similar subjects before and then in an "aha" moment the answer seems to intuitively come to me. The subject of "No Self" and the illusions our brains construct are by far my favorite subjects of his... But totally agree knowing something from experience/feeling is infinitely different than just it theoretically making sense.
 
Yes, love his work.

I giggle through his lectures with an unmistakeable feeling of enlightenment, that is, becoming lighter - for me the laughter is an emotional connection, like an existential sigh of relief that finally someone is talking sense and relieving me, at least for a moment, of a nearly constant feeling of cosmic urgency and impatience. That feeling is more than just an appreciation of the ideas put forth, the experience seems very healing to me.
 
I've just been having a tough time grasping and feeling whats called the true Self or Brahman though..
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This will help. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by4qqGRrQ8Q

He discusses how you are "free" to be "stuck" or "unstuck" he is specifically talking about that freedom of choosing between the two. When he talks about "True Self" in the video he talks about the Thinker and the Thoughts. True Self/No Self would then be able to distinguish Thinker from Thoughts and thus accepting the totality of his Being and liberating himself from emotional bonds. That is also to ask "what is the nature of the Thinker and the Thoughts", this is what he means by "feedback".
 
That's because those dissociative disorders are a negative iteration of the same experience. The thing itself just is (or rather, isn't). Whether it's divine ecstasy or psychological horror, or just another facet of life, depends on the subject.
 
Very much charisma. I like it when you can hear he gets confused because he had to say or do something that he did not allow himself to do, like giggle or something.
 
I do find the lectures depressing however, You can hear he is depressed too (and drunk sometimes)
 
Listening to watts is never a disappointment. His lectures either leave me in deep contemplation or with a new insight to myself, the human condition, and life itself. He is easily one of the single biggest influences on me.
 
Mitchi said:
I do find the lectures depressing however, You can hear he is depressed too (and drunk sometimes)
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Yeah I was wondering if anyone noticed he sounds out of it sometimes. He drank a great deal daily apparently. He tried to excuse it by saying enlightened people have to allow themselves one or two vices to keep human.

Doesn't change the ideas and message he presented though.
 
In most cases, it would change the ideas and message he presented. When examined logically, one sees the suffering of Alan Watts as an affirmation to the fact that his message of well-being is at least lacking. But when examined further, it's rather piercing that Alan Watts was only an Actor; A shell or a Vessel to knowledge that is inherent within the collective consciousness. It's this Spirit which is to be celebrated, that inalienable core which was represented through his shell. In the end, his message is unshakable, and proven - As simple of an understanding as possible, driven by unimaginable complexity - That we are all One.

No one... NO one is perfect. We are simply colonies of cells. Clumps of twisted, vibrating matter... Blundering about in the cold, vast void. Even beyond this, there is something perfect within each of us, and we all share it. It's not something that can be conquered, pillaged, or even Truly Understood.

Still, there it is. Often, it's his slurring, drunken voice which is the one that re-births me into this understanding.
 
Flickering said:
I've come back to listen to his very soothing voice a few times whenever I've needed it.
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Same.

I do enjoy his lectures, and rediscover them from time to time as if I had forgotten what he had to say. His ideas and manner of speaking are a bit fluffy, but not necessarily in a negative way. He has a brilliant ability to transcribe complex or abstract philosophical concepts in order to present them to a greater audience, and even make them highly enjoyable and sometimes funny or humorous. It's almost like recreational philosophy for me, but this doesn't devalue the fundamental concepts that he discusses.

Good stuff.
 
I've definitely been moved by Alan Watts. I've only ever read him on paper, never listened to recordings of him speaking or preaching. Still, his tone is decidedly more oratory than technical, even to read on paper.

I think Watts' agenda was a bit Promethian. At the beginning of Psychotherapy East and West he states as an objective from the start to de-mystify many complex abstract ideas from Eastern philosophy and religious writings that get bandied around a lot by Western hipsters with a superficial (at best) understanding of them. I always got the sense his audience was average Joes, and he wrote in language that was to-the-point and simple to grasp because of this. He wrote for people who'd likely never have the time or the interest to pore over dry tomes translated from the Sanskrit or Classical Chinese, but did enjoy dipping their toes in these waters.

I don't think Alan Watts' target audience was anyone in academe, or explicitly anyone in any roles of leadership in society. He fancied he understood a lot of Eastern concepts he'd heard about or studied more completely and accurately than a lot of people he heard waxing philosophical in coffee houses, and thought he'd give his punchy take on it all, as his gift to the world. Whether he truly did grok these concepts to the core is something I can't say, as I haven't read any Eastern philosophy any time recently. I've heard critics of Watts say he tends to oversimplify, and given his objective, it wouldn't surprise me if this was a fair charge in some instances.

Yeah Rev. Watts had his flaws. He definitely wasn't the soberest chap, and cheated on his wife once when he was a minister. But that's where the whole accept the message not the messenger comes in. If the idea is good, it doesn't matter who said it or came up with it. But if you attach yourself to a person and decide to accept all (or none) of what they say, there's no guarantee everything that they do or say will be wisdom to live by. Every thinker and writer (and artist and scientist and entertainer, etc.) has shone on certain occasions and not so much on others.
 
MyDoorsAreOpen said:
I think Watts' agenda was a bit Promethian.
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Well put.

I've been meaning to read his stuff instead of just listening to lectures. What you say about his attempts to demystify some ideas is very much in line with some of the recordings I've heard. He described that a spiritual seeker would be initiated into a mystery school by being made to undergo all manner of ridiculous ordeals and trials. It was only when he realised he'd been made to chase himself in circles that he could finally settle down into the real business of things. Which, if the message was true, would universally be about nothing but embracing the moment. So all these teachers - and indeed he even said this about himself - were running a sort of joke, or even fraud, over their students, in the hopes that the student would see that. Very funny way to look at it.

Yeah Rev. Watts had his flaws. He definitely wasn't the soberest chap, and cheated on his wife once when he was a minister. But that's where the whole accept the message not the messenger comes in. If the idea is good, it doesn't matter who said it or came up with it. But if you attach yourself to a person and decide to accept all (or none) of what they say, there's no guarantee everything that they do or say will be wisdom to live by. Every thinker and writer (and artist and scientist and entertainer, etc.) has shone on certain occasions and not so much on others.
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Also very true.
 
brownbradley39 said:
Listening to watts is never a disappointment. His lectures either leave me in deep contemplation or with a new insight to myself, the human condition, and life itself. He is easily one of the single biggest influences on me.
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I agree with you. Watt's knowledge is profound on spiritual understanding. Of anyone is serious about "self knowledge" then Alan was the man to see. Hence, on the term man.. Not super human. Love Watts
 
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