ALAN WATTS
“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”
Alan Watts
Alan Watts was born in Kent in 1915. From an early age he was drawn to the Far East, to nature, and to spirituality (probably as a result of his mother’s religious influence). In his late teens and early twenties he studied philosophy, history, psychology, psychiatry, and Eastern wisdom, and developed a fascination with Zen.
He moved to the US in 1938, and in 1951 he moved to California where he began moving in spiritual circles, studying and working at various academic centres. In the 1950s he began giving talks and had a radio show which built a number of followers. Lectures and books gave him influence on the American intelligentsia of the 1950s–1970s as a counter-culture figure – he experimented with psychedelics and had an interest in child rearing, the arts, education, law & freedom, ecology, sexuality, and the uses and abuses of technology.
“We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”
“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
Watts taught that the Universe is playing a game of hide and seek with itself, dividing itself down into people & things and forgetting the Whole in being separate.
“Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.”
“We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.”
Books:
The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
Resources: