WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.960 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Our mission here 00:00:01.960 --> 00:00:04.419 is simple. We take the sack of source material 00:00:04.419 --> 00:00:06.799 you've gathered, strip away the noise, and give 00:00:06.799 --> 00:00:08.919 you the quickest, most thorough path to deep 00:00:08.919 --> 00:00:11.359 understanding. And today, we are opening up the 00:00:11.359 --> 00:00:13.820 files on a man whose voice I think has become 00:00:13.820 --> 00:00:16.559 almost more famous than his ratings. It's achieved 00:00:16.559 --> 00:00:20.239 this kind of digital immortality. Yeah. Decades 00:00:20.239 --> 00:00:21.679 after he died. We're talking about Alan Watts. 00:00:21.780 --> 00:00:24.899 That's right. Born in 1915, a British -American 00:00:24.899 --> 00:00:27.780 writer and speaker who you could argue is the 00:00:27.780 --> 00:00:30.739 single most influential popularizer of Eastern 00:00:30.739 --> 00:00:33.100 thought for the modern West. I mean, his cultural 00:00:33.100 --> 00:00:36.079 longevity is just staggering. He died in 1973, 00:00:36.359 --> 00:00:38.399 but you hear his lectures everywhere. They're 00:00:38.399 --> 00:00:42.090 sampled in. Indie music and heavy metal. STRFKR 00:00:42.090 --> 00:00:44.469 architects. You hear him in the Marvel series 00:00:44.469 --> 00:00:47.469 Loki, the movie Her, video games. He's this foundational 00:00:47.469 --> 00:00:50.229 voice of the counterculture, for sure. But his 00:00:50.229 --> 00:00:53.590 real legacy seems to be as this auditory philosopher. 00:00:53.850 --> 00:00:56.170 His work just completely transcended the page. 00:00:56.429 --> 00:00:58.409 And that's really what we're digging into today. 00:00:59.340 --> 00:01:02.420 He called himself not a guru, not an academic, 00:01:02.520 --> 00:01:05.120 but a philosophical entertainer. So the mission 00:01:05.120 --> 00:01:08.379 is to unpack that. How did this man manage to 00:01:08.379 --> 00:01:12.599 interpret and popularize Buddhist, Taoist and 00:01:12.599 --> 00:01:15.819 Hindu philosophy for a massive Western audience? 00:01:15.939 --> 00:01:17.439 Especially for that emerging beat generation 00:01:17.439 --> 00:01:19.920 and the whole counterculture movement. And he 00:01:19.920 --> 00:01:22.359 was doing it all while kind of operating on the 00:01:22.359 --> 00:01:24.859 fringes of academia and formal religion. It's 00:01:24.859 --> 00:01:27.640 an incredible story. Our sources track this journey 00:01:27.640 --> 00:01:31.299 from. a very curious English childhood through 00:01:31.299 --> 00:01:33.920 all these academic and even religious detours, 00:01:33.920 --> 00:01:37.319 to his sudden fame on West Coast radio, his explorations 00:01:37.319 --> 00:01:39.680 with psychedelics, and of course his notoriously 00:01:39.680 --> 00:01:42.019 complex personal life. And what's so fascinating, 00:01:42.159 --> 00:01:44.340 based on the materials, is that he wasn't just 00:01:44.340 --> 00:01:46.879 translating old texts. You call him a master 00:01:46.879 --> 00:01:49.260 synthesizer. He absolutely was. He understood 00:01:49.260 --> 00:01:51.379 the Western mind. He took this ancient wisdom 00:01:51.379 --> 00:01:53.060 and he connected it to the most cutting -edge 00:01:53.060 --> 00:01:55.260 ideas of the 20th century. Things like general 00:01:55.260 --> 00:01:58.590 semantics and, believe it or not... early cybernetics. 00:01:59.150 --> 00:02:02.090 Cybernetics. Wow. Okay. So he was a bridge builder, 00:02:02.230 --> 00:02:05.370 not just East and West, but spiritual and technological. 00:02:05.629 --> 00:02:07.569 That's the perfect way to put it. Okay. Let's 00:02:07.569 --> 00:02:09.110 unpack this. We have to start at the beginning, 00:02:09.250 --> 00:02:12.490 right? Yeah. Understand the soil where this philosophical 00:02:12.490 --> 00:02:15.490 seed was first planted. So Alan Wilson Watts, 00:02:15.729 --> 00:02:19.469 he was born January 6, 1915, in a little village 00:02:19.469 --> 00:02:22.370 called Chislehurst in Kent, just outside London. 00:02:22.650 --> 00:02:24.870 And his parents were pretty firmly middle class, 00:02:24.909 --> 00:02:28.169 right? Very. His dad, Lawrence, worked for the 00:02:28.169 --> 00:02:30.849 Michelin tire company. And his mother, Emily 00:02:30.849 --> 00:02:33.650 Mary, her family was deeply involved in missionary 00:02:33.650 --> 00:02:36.770 work. And the sources really emphasize that their 00:02:36.770 --> 00:02:39.789 finances, or lack thereof, meant they had to 00:02:39.789 --> 00:02:41.949 live out in the countryside. That seems so crucial 00:02:41.949 --> 00:02:44.639 to who he became. It's everything. He was an 00:02:44.639 --> 00:02:47.099 only child, and that rural setting became his 00:02:47.099 --> 00:02:49.219 first teacher, his first, you know, philosophical 00:02:49.219 --> 00:02:51.659 laboratory. He wasn't just playing outside. He 00:02:51.659 --> 00:02:55.439 was observing. Deeply. He talks about spending 00:02:55.439 --> 00:02:58.479 hours just walking, observing wildflowers, identifying 00:02:58.479 --> 00:03:01.460 butterflies, just paying this meticulous attention 00:03:01.460 --> 00:03:03.819 to the patterns of the natural world. This wasn't 00:03:03.819 --> 00:03:07.039 a hobby. It was the beginning of his entire non 00:03:07.039 --> 00:03:10.719 -dualistic philosophy. Nature taught him interconnectedness. 00:03:11.289 --> 00:03:13.909 And this spiritual curiosity, it started with 00:03:13.909 --> 00:03:16.750 his mother's religious family, but it took a 00:03:16.750 --> 00:03:18.789 sharp turn, didn't it, towards what he called 00:03:18.789 --> 00:03:22.069 the mysterious Far East. It did. And it wasn't 00:03:22.069 --> 00:03:24.449 just about books. For him, the entry point was 00:03:24.449 --> 00:03:26.629 visual. It was the aesthetic. What do you mean 00:03:26.629 --> 00:03:29.270 by that? He was completely captivated by Chinese 00:03:29.270 --> 00:03:32.090 and Japanese art landscape paintings, woodblock 00:03:32.090 --> 00:03:34.530 prints, embroideries that his mother had from 00:03:34.530 --> 00:03:36.990 her family's missionary connections. Those were 00:03:36.990 --> 00:03:39.210 the images that just unlocked his imagination. 00:03:39.879 --> 00:03:41.800 And what was it about that art that grabbed him 00:03:41.800 --> 00:03:44.090 so intensely? He used these wonderful words. 00:03:44.129 --> 00:03:46.870 He said it had clarity, transparency, and spaciousness. 00:03:47.090 --> 00:03:49.729 He felt that unlike a lot of Western art, these 00:03:49.729 --> 00:03:51.949 landscapes conveyed a sense of endless space. 00:03:52.310 --> 00:03:54.830 The subject and the empty space around it were 00:03:54.830 --> 00:03:57.469 equally important. A visual metaphor for non 00:03:57.469 --> 00:04:00.129 -duality, basically. Exactly. It's like the art 00:04:00.129 --> 00:04:02.569 seemed to float, which implied this lack of rigid 00:04:02.569 --> 00:04:04.909 definition. It was the opposite of the religion 00:04:04.909 --> 00:04:06.729 he was being taught in his boarding school. Right. 00:04:06.750 --> 00:04:09.530 It was this very specific brand of Anglican Christianity 00:04:09.530 --> 00:04:12.389 that he found. And I love this quote. rim and 00:04:12.389 --> 00:04:15.930 maudlin. I mean, could the contrast be any starker? 00:04:15.969 --> 00:04:18.490 On one hand, you have this rigid, guilt -ridden, 00:04:18.569 --> 00:04:21.610 dualistic religion, God versus man, soul versus 00:04:21.610 --> 00:04:24.209 body. And on the other, you have this art from 00:04:24.209 --> 00:04:26.889 the East that's offering expansive beauty and 00:04:26.889 --> 00:04:29.230 unity. So the teenager, he had to make a choice. 00:04:29.410 --> 00:04:32.370 A very definitive choice. He felt he had to choose 00:04:32.370 --> 00:04:34.810 between the faith of his birth and this Eastern 00:04:34.810 --> 00:04:38.430 wisdom he was just devouring. And, well. He chose 00:04:38.430 --> 00:04:40.769 Buddhism. And he didn't just dip a toe in. He 00:04:40.769 --> 00:04:44.279 dove right in. His incredible, zealous intensity. 00:04:44.639 --> 00:04:47.800 At just 16 years old, this is around 1931, he 00:04:47.800 --> 00:04:49.720 becomes the secretary of the London Buddhist 00:04:49.720 --> 00:04:52.860 Lodge. 16! That's amazing! It just shows you 00:04:52.860 --> 00:04:55.480 how headstrong and practical he was, but the 00:04:55.480 --> 00:04:57.079 most important thing is that he was a relentless 00:04:57.079 --> 00:04:59.589 autodidact. He never waited for a curriculum. 00:04:59.790 --> 00:05:02.850 He was reading everything, philosophy, psychology, 00:05:03.370 --> 00:05:05.930 history, and of course, these ancient Zen texts. 00:05:06.170 --> 00:05:08.649 And we can already see the seeds of his later, 00:05:08.709 --> 00:05:11.709 let's say, rascal nature in his choice of mentors. 00:05:11.990 --> 00:05:15.329 Yes. The sources point to this guy, Dmitry Mitranovich, 00:05:15.389 --> 00:05:17.889 who's described as a rascal guru. I love that 00:05:17.889 --> 00:05:20.310 term. And he was influenced by these esoteric 00:05:20.310 --> 00:05:23.829 Western thinkers, Gurdjieff and Uspensky. So 00:05:23.829 --> 00:05:25.709 this is really important. It shows that Watts 00:05:25.709 --> 00:05:28.300 wasn't just learning Buddhism. He was learning 00:05:28.300 --> 00:05:30.800 how to synthesize. So he's already connecting 00:05:30.800 --> 00:05:32.879 Eastern thought, not just to Western religion, 00:05:33.040 --> 00:05:37.040 but to the kind of rogue, psychological, esoteric 00:05:37.040 --> 00:05:39.259 fringes of the West. Exactly. He's learning to 00:05:39.259 --> 00:05:41.160 see patterns across different traditions from 00:05:41.160 --> 00:05:43.199 the very beginning. It kind of pre -programmed 00:05:43.199 --> 00:05:46.139 him to not be loyal to any single dogma. Which 00:05:46.139 --> 00:05:47.839 makes sense of what happened with his academic 00:05:47.839 --> 00:05:51.519 career. Yeah. Or, lack thereof, he had this shot 00:05:51.519 --> 00:05:53.860 at Oxford and completely fumbled it. He really 00:05:53.860 --> 00:05:56.259 did. He won a scholarship to the King School 00:05:56.259 --> 00:05:59.339 in Canterbury, a top tier school. But when he 00:05:59.339 --> 00:06:02.079 sat the exam for a scholarship to Trinity College, 00:06:02.459 --> 00:06:05.540 Oxford. He got too creative. That's a good way 00:06:05.540 --> 00:06:07.699 of putting it. He admitted it himself. He wrote 00:06:07.699 --> 00:06:09.899 an essay that was so unconventional it was just 00:06:09.899 --> 00:06:12.560 seen as presumptuous and capricious. He was too 00:06:12.560 --> 00:06:15.079 confident, too much himself to play the academic 00:06:15.079 --> 00:06:17.899 game. So it cost him Oxford, but it preserved 00:06:17.899 --> 00:06:20.600 his intellectual freedom. I think so. And despite 00:06:20.600 --> 00:06:22.980 that, he publishes his first book, The Spirit 00:06:22.980 --> 00:06:26.639 of Zen, in 1936. He's not even 21 yet. And what's 00:06:26.639 --> 00:06:29.300 fascinating about that book is how he felt about 00:06:29.300 --> 00:06:32.500 it later. Right. 20 years later, when he publishes 00:06:32.500 --> 00:06:34.879 his masterpiece, The Way of Zen, he basically 00:06:34.879 --> 00:06:37.290 throws that first book under the... bus, calls 00:06:37.290 --> 00:06:40.170 it unscholarly and misleading. That's some serious 00:06:40.170 --> 00:06:42.389 self -awareness. It is. He says it was just a 00:06:42.389 --> 00:06:44.350 summary of the ideas of the man who would become 00:06:44.350 --> 00:06:46.870 his mentor, D .T. Suzuki. Which brings us to 00:06:46.870 --> 00:06:50.449 this huge turning point. The 1936 World Congress 00:06:50.449 --> 00:06:53.050 of Faiths in London. This is where the 21 -year 00:06:53.050 --> 00:06:56.019 -old Watts meets the man himself. D .T. Suzuki 00:06:56.019 --> 00:06:59.220 was the academic voice of Zen in the West. Meeting 00:06:59.220 --> 00:07:02.620 him, hearing him speak, it just solidified everything 00:07:02.620 --> 00:07:04.839 for Watts. This wasn't just an interest anymore. 00:07:05.019 --> 00:07:08.000 No, this was his calling. And two years later... 00:07:08.060 --> 00:07:10.579 In 1938, he's on a boat to the United States. 00:07:10.779 --> 00:07:13.240 The intellectual adventurer had found his new 00:07:13.240 --> 00:07:17.100 continent. But the path he took next was not 00:07:17.100 --> 00:07:18.959 at all what you'd expect. Right. So he gets to 00:07:18.959 --> 00:07:21.120 New York. He's now surrounded by this traditional 00:07:21.120 --> 00:07:23.319 Zen circle. His mother -in -law was deeply involved. 00:07:23.699 --> 00:07:27.279 His mentor is a Zen master named Sokai and Sasaki. 00:07:28.019 --> 00:07:31.060 The logical next step is, you know, go full monk. 00:07:31.220 --> 00:07:33.720 It's the logical step. Yeah. But Watts, he was 00:07:33.720 --> 00:07:35.879 rarely logical in that way. He found the formal 00:07:35.879 --> 00:07:38.709 strict monastic training. It just didn't suit 00:07:38.709 --> 00:07:41.009 him. He wasn't a joiner. Not in that way. The 00:07:41.009 --> 00:07:42.810 sources say he didn't want to be a monk. He wanted 00:07:42.810 --> 00:07:45.050 a vocational, a public and intellectual outlet 00:07:45.050 --> 00:07:47.370 for all these ideas. So instead of the monastery, 00:07:47.509 --> 00:07:49.930 he goes to the seminary. He enrolls in an Episcopal 00:07:49.930 --> 00:07:51.769 seminary in Illinois. I mean, that feels like 00:07:51.769 --> 00:07:54.089 such a hard pivot. Well, it wasn't really a pivot 00:07:54.089 --> 00:07:56.110 for him. It was another attempt at synthesis. 00:07:56.569 --> 00:07:59.009 He was convinced there was a mystical core to 00:07:59.009 --> 00:08:01.290 Christianity that had just been lost. The part 00:08:01.290 --> 00:08:04.970 that wasn't. Grim and maudlin. Exactly. He wanted 00:08:04.970 --> 00:08:07.430 to use his Eastern knowledge to strip away the 00:08:07.430 --> 00:08:10.050 dogma and find that universal truth he believed 00:08:10.050 --> 00:08:12.269 was at the heart of the Christian tradition too. 00:08:12.509 --> 00:08:15.430 And this becomes his master's thesis, which gets 00:08:15.430 --> 00:08:18.949 published in 1947 as Behold the Spirit. And that 00:08:18.949 --> 00:08:20.949 book gets him established as a serious intellectual. 00:08:21.839 --> 00:08:24.240 He's ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1945. 00:08:24.699 --> 00:08:27.100 He actually served as a chaplain for a while. 00:08:27.220 --> 00:08:29.959 But the sources are clear. He was always a philosopher 00:08:29.959 --> 00:08:32.279 first. He was never actually ordained as a Zen 00:08:32.279 --> 00:08:35.200 monk. Never. And he keeps exploring this synthesis 00:08:35.200 --> 00:08:39.259 idea. In 1953, he publishes Myth and Ritual in 00:08:39.259 --> 00:08:41.440 Christianity, where he uses Eastern philosophy 00:08:41.440 --> 00:08:44.600 to sort of decode medieval Catholic rituals. 00:08:44.980 --> 00:08:47.080 What was his argument there? His thesis was that 00:08:47.080 --> 00:08:49.220 those old rituals contained profound psychological 00:08:49.220 --> 00:08:53.639 meaning, had just lost the key. It had become 00:08:53.639 --> 00:08:56.279 too literal, too dualistic. He saw parallels 00:08:56.279 --> 00:08:58.580 to Asian thought everywhere, but they were buried. 00:08:58.779 --> 00:09:01.559 This detour as a priest, though, it was temporary. 00:09:01.820 --> 00:09:04.720 He leaves the priesthood by 1950, and the next 00:09:04.720 --> 00:09:08.580 big move is to California. Yes. In 1951, he joins 00:09:08.580 --> 00:09:10.799 the faculty of the American Academy of Asian 00:09:10.799 --> 00:09:14.360 Studies in San Francisco. And this. This was 00:09:14.360 --> 00:09:16.399 his intellectual playground. It must have been 00:09:16.399 --> 00:09:18.220 the perfect environment for him. It really was. 00:09:18.299 --> 00:09:20.519 He was a professor and an administrator there 00:09:20.519 --> 00:09:23.519 until 57. The faculty was just this incredible 00:09:23.519 --> 00:09:26.620 mix of people and his own interests just exploded. 00:09:26.879 --> 00:09:29.299 It goes way beyond Zen at this point. Oh, far 00:09:29.299 --> 00:09:32.179 beyond. He's absorbing Vedanta, the new physics, 00:09:32.440 --> 00:09:34.399 you know, quantum mechanics, relativity process, 00:09:34.519 --> 00:09:37.419 philosophy, anthropology of sexuality. He's trying 00:09:37.419 --> 00:09:39.840 to synthesize the entire intellectual world of 00:09:39.840 --> 00:09:42.000 the 1950s. And there are two areas that you said 00:09:42.000 --> 00:09:43.980 were absolutely critical. for what he does next. 00:09:44.059 --> 00:09:46.700 Yeah. General semantics and cybernetics. Yes. 00:09:46.940 --> 00:09:49.259 These are the tools that allow him to modernize 00:09:49.259 --> 00:09:51.879 ancient wisdom for a new generation. He's reading 00:09:51.879 --> 00:09:54.240 Alfred Korzybski, who's famous for the idea that 00:09:54.240 --> 00:09:56.700 the map is not the territory. And Norbert Wiener, 00:09:56.759 --> 00:09:59.240 the father of cybernetics. Exactly. Cybernetics 00:09:59.240 --> 00:10:01.600 is the science of control and communication in 00:10:01.600 --> 00:10:03.940 systems, whether they're machines or animals. 00:10:04.279 --> 00:10:07.039 Okay, I have to stop you. Why is a spiritual 00:10:07.039 --> 00:10:10.120 philosopher getting deep into cybernetics? That 00:10:10.120 --> 00:10:12.279 just seems like such an odd turn. It was a stroke 00:10:12.279 --> 00:10:15.620 of genius, really. Cybernetics, with its focus 00:10:15.620 --> 00:10:18.179 on feedback loops, gave him a scientific non 00:10:18.179 --> 00:10:20.799 -mystical language to talk about interdependence. 00:10:20.860 --> 00:10:23.320 To talk about non -duality. Precisely. He saw 00:10:23.320 --> 00:10:26.039 the human body, the nervous system, and the outside 00:10:26.039 --> 00:10:29.379 world as one single, massive, interconnected 00:10:29.379 --> 00:10:32.700 feedback system. It gave him the technical vocabulary 00:10:32.700 --> 00:10:36.240 to dismantle the idea of the skin -encapsulated 00:10:36.240 --> 00:10:39.200 ego. So he could say, look, science itself is 00:10:39.200 --> 00:10:41.179 proving that the organism and its environment 00:10:41.179 --> 00:10:43.860 are not separate things. Yes. It's one system. 00:10:43.960 --> 00:10:46.899 That was a revolutionary intellectual leap. And 00:10:46.899 --> 00:10:48.679 at the same time, he's deepening his artistic 00:10:48.679 --> 00:10:51.870 side. He studies Chinese calligraphy with a scholar 00:10:51.870 --> 00:10:54.350 named Saburo Hasegawa. Which wasn't just about 00:10:54.350 --> 00:10:56.629 learning to write. No, no. Through calligraphy, 00:10:56.629 --> 00:10:58.710 he learned about the Japanese perception of nature, 00:10:58.850 --> 00:11:01.389 of spontaneity, of embracing accident in art. 00:11:01.570 --> 00:11:03.590 It showed him that philosophy wasn't just an 00:11:03.590 --> 00:11:06.389 idea in your head. It was an aesthetic. It was 00:11:06.389 --> 00:11:09.269 an applied, holistic way of living. So this period 00:11:09.269 --> 00:11:11.370 of the academy gives him all the tools he needs. 00:11:11.529 --> 00:11:14.210 The philosophy, the aesthetics, and now these 00:11:14.210 --> 00:11:16.590 scientific analogies to communicate it all to 00:11:16.590 --> 00:11:18.710 the masses. And that's exactly what he does next. 00:11:19.080 --> 00:11:21.820 He leaves the Academy in 1957, but he's already 00:11:21.820 --> 00:11:23.759 found the medium that's going to make him famous. 00:11:24.399 --> 00:11:28.740 Radio. In 1953, he starts this weekly, unpaid 00:11:28.740 --> 00:11:32.220 volunteer radio program on KPFA in Berkeley, 00:11:32.480 --> 00:11:35.399 a Pacifica station. And his voice was just perfect 00:11:35.399 --> 00:11:38.070 for it. That warm, articulate, slightly British 00:11:38.070 --> 00:11:41.450 conversational style. It was. And those broadcasts, 00:11:41.450 --> 00:11:44.389 which ran until 1962, they attracted what the 00:11:44.389 --> 00:11:47.909 sources call a legion of regular listeners. The 00:11:47.909 --> 00:11:50.090 Bay Area was already this hotbed of new ideas, 00:11:50.190 --> 00:11:52.409 and he became the voice of it. And the legacy 00:11:52.409 --> 00:11:54.970 of those shows is just, it's monumental. They 00:11:54.970 --> 00:11:56.570 were recorded, they're still broadcast today, 00:11:56.769 --> 00:11:58.610 and now they're all over YouTube and streaming 00:11:58.610 --> 00:12:00.850 services. That's what cemented him as an auditory 00:12:00.850 --> 00:12:02.950 philosopher. Absolutely. And that radio fame 00:12:02.950 --> 00:12:04.929 happens at the exact same time as his landmark 00:12:04.929 --> 00:12:08.009 book. 1957, The Way of Zen. Which was so much 00:12:08.009 --> 00:12:09.929 more than a book. It was a cultural event. Yeah. 00:12:10.029 --> 00:12:12.309 One of the first ever bestsellers on Buddhism. 00:12:12.570 --> 00:12:14.990 It was basically the instruction manual for the 00:12:14.990 --> 00:12:17.750 beat generation. It really was. For Kerouac, 00:12:17.909 --> 00:12:21.840 for Ginsburg, for Snyder. While they were exploring 00:12:21.840 --> 00:12:25.039 spontaneity and freedom from social norms, Watts 00:12:25.039 --> 00:12:28.159 gave them the philosophical framework. He validated 00:12:28.159 --> 00:12:30.779 their rebellion as a genuine spiritual quest. 00:12:31.120 --> 00:12:33.299 So what made the way of Zen so different? We 00:12:33.299 --> 00:12:35.460 touched on it, but how did he use those modern 00:12:35.460 --> 00:12:37.600 analogies you mentioned? this is the core of 00:12:37.600 --> 00:12:40.759 his genius he knew that a western audience which 00:12:40.759 --> 00:12:42.840 was becoming more and more scientific would be 00:12:42.840 --> 00:12:46.000 wary of purely mystical language so he used their 00:12:46.000 --> 00:12:48.779 language he used semantics and cybernetics so 00:12:48.779 --> 00:12:51.659 with semantics he used that idea the map is not 00:12:51.659 --> 00:12:55.779 the territory to explain zen yes he argued that 00:12:55.779 --> 00:12:58.259 our language especially english forces us into 00:12:58.259 --> 00:13:00.500 a dualistic view of the world we have to have 00:13:00.500 --> 00:13:03.649 a subject and a verb I see the tree. That little 00:13:03.649 --> 00:13:06.070 sentence grammatically separates the I from the 00:13:06.070 --> 00:13:08.610 tree. But Zen would say that separation is just 00:13:08.610 --> 00:13:12.230 a trick of the language. Exactly. Watts saw Zen 00:13:12.230 --> 00:13:14.629 as a way to get beyond the mental traps of our 00:13:14.629 --> 00:13:17.289 own grammar. It was a way to experience reality 00:13:17.289 --> 00:13:20.610 directly before you slap a label or a category 00:13:20.610 --> 00:13:24.149 on it. And then there's cybernetics. How did 00:13:24.149 --> 00:13:26.669 he use the idea of a feedback loop to explain 00:13:26.669 --> 00:13:29.480 enlightenment? He argued that our nervous system 00:13:29.480 --> 00:13:32.159 is just this incredibly complex feedback loop. 00:13:32.360 --> 00:13:34.759 When you think you're an ego inside your skin, 00:13:35.000 --> 00:13:38.139 you're misidentifying where the control is. So 00:13:38.139 --> 00:13:41.440 the feeling of I am controlling my body is an 00:13:41.440 --> 00:13:43.279 illusion. It's a misplacing of the boundary. 00:13:43.539 --> 00:13:45.799 He'd say, think of a thermostat. It gets data 00:13:45.799 --> 00:13:47.980 from the room. It's cold and it acts. It turns 00:13:47.980 --> 00:13:50.860 on the furnace. But that action changes the room, 00:13:50.980 --> 00:13:53.559 which feeds back new data, which prompts a new 00:13:53.559 --> 00:13:56.830 action. The thermostat and the room are one single 00:13:56.830 --> 00:13:59.029 operating system. And he applied that to us. 00:13:59.070 --> 00:14:01.029 He said, we are the same. We don't come into 00:14:01.029 --> 00:14:02.990 the world, we come out of it, like a wave comes 00:14:02.990 --> 00:14:04.970 out of the ocean. The wave and the ocean are 00:14:04.970 --> 00:14:08.029 one system. Cybernetics was the modern technical 00:14:08.029 --> 00:14:10.190 proof of that ancient idea. It's brilliant. It 00:14:10.190 --> 00:14:12.710 made Zen feel cutting edge, not ancient. And 00:14:12.710 --> 00:14:15.190 the establishment even started to recognize him, 00:14:15.230 --> 00:14:18.000 even though he was an outsider. He got an honorary 00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:21.500 doctor of divinity degree in 1958. Which is pretty 00:14:21.500 --> 00:14:23.759 ironic for a guy who'd quit the priesthood and 00:14:23.759 --> 00:14:26.080 was teaching a non -theistic philosophy. Very. 00:14:26.440 --> 00:14:29.960 And he toured Europe. He met Carl Jung. He then 00:14:29.960 --> 00:14:32.600 mastered television with two seasons of a show 00:14:32.600 --> 00:14:34.879 for public TV called Eastern Wisdom and Modern 00:14:34.879 --> 00:14:37.779 Life. He was everywhere. Yeah. And all this fame 00:14:37.779 --> 00:14:40.620 forced him to define what he was. Not a guru, 00:14:40.759 --> 00:14:44.220 not a professor. He chose philosophical entertainer. 00:14:44.480 --> 00:14:46.860 and that term is so important he rejected the 00:14:46.860 --> 00:14:49.139 seriousness and the moral baggage of a title 00:14:49.139 --> 00:14:52.100 like guru He knew his own flaws, which we'll 00:14:52.100 --> 00:14:54.960 get to. He saw his job as catalyzing thought, 00:14:55.120 --> 00:14:57.799 not leading a flock of devotee. And the entertainer 00:14:57.799 --> 00:15:00.639 part speaks to his style. It was witty. It was 00:15:00.639 --> 00:15:03.480 accessible. It was full of marable analogies. 00:15:03.559 --> 00:15:06.080 He knew you as an outsider to academia, and he 00:15:06.080 --> 00:15:08.080 leaned into it. He knew that freedom from the 00:15:08.080 --> 00:15:09.919 institution allowed him to speak directly to 00:15:09.919 --> 00:15:12.379 you, the listener, and your own spiritual hunger. 00:15:12.559 --> 00:15:14.240 And this is where he fully syncs up with the 00:15:14.240 --> 00:15:16.970 counterculture he's helping to create. his exploration 00:15:16.970 --> 00:15:20.129 of altered states of consciousness. Right. Starting 00:15:20.129 --> 00:15:22.830 in the mid -50s, he gets very interested in using 00:15:22.830 --> 00:15:25.590 psychedelic drugs for mystical insight. He wrote 00:15:25.590 --> 00:15:28.289 about it in The New Alchemy and then, more famously, 00:15:28.429 --> 00:15:32.049 in The Joyous Cosmology in 1962. He experimented 00:15:32.049 --> 00:15:34.669 with mescaline, LSD. With research teams, yes, 00:15:34.850 --> 00:15:38.529 and also cannabis. But he was much more cautious 00:15:38.529 --> 00:15:41.220 than, say, Timothy Leary. He had that famous 00:15:41.220 --> 00:15:43.440 analogy about psychedelics. If you get the message, 00:15:43.500 --> 00:15:46.139 hang up the phone. That's the one. It's a perfect 00:15:46.139 --> 00:15:48.379 summary of his view. He saw them as instruments, 00:15:48.480 --> 00:15:50.980 like a microscope or a telephone. Use them to 00:15:50.980 --> 00:15:52.740 get an insight, but you don't stay glued to them 00:15:52.740 --> 00:15:55.919 forever. The insight is the point, not the drug. 00:15:56.100 --> 00:15:59.220 Right. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently 00:15:59.220 --> 00:16:01.419 glued to the microscope. He goes away and works 00:16:01.419 --> 00:16:03.990 on what he has seen. They can show you reality, 00:16:04.210 --> 00:16:06.750 but they are not reality itself. And all this 00:16:06.750 --> 00:16:08.710 exploration, whether through drugs or meditation, 00:16:09.090 --> 00:16:11.909 it leads him to articulate his complete worldview. 00:16:12.370 --> 00:16:14.929 This is the core of his philosophy, which you 00:16:14.929 --> 00:16:17.870 find in books like the book, on the taboo against 00:16:17.870 --> 00:16:20.230 knowing who you are. This is where he weaves 00:16:20.230 --> 00:16:23.440 it all together. Hinduism, Taoism, Western science 00:16:23.440 --> 00:16:27.379 into this grand unified theory. And it starts 00:16:27.379 --> 00:16:29.460 with a fundamental attack on the Western idea 00:16:29.460 --> 00:16:32.379 of identity. The skin encapsulated ego. That 00:16:32.379 --> 00:16:34.870 myth, as he called it. The idea that you are 00:16:34.870 --> 00:16:37.610 a little isolated consciousness stuck behind 00:16:37.610 --> 00:16:39.730 your eyes, constantly fighting to control your 00:16:39.730 --> 00:16:41.909 body and the world around you. He thought this 00:16:41.909 --> 00:16:44.789 idea was the source of all our anxiety. So what's 00:16:44.789 --> 00:16:46.870 the alternative he offers? The alternative is 00:16:46.870 --> 00:16:49.970 a grand cosmic game. He pulls from Hindu concepts 00:16:49.970 --> 00:16:53.909 like Leela and Maya. Explain that. Okay. So he 00:16:53.909 --> 00:16:56.549 posits that the universe is fundamentally one 00:16:56.549 --> 00:16:59.269 single consciousness. He just called it IT. And 00:16:59.269 --> 00:17:01.309 this IT is playing a massive game of hide and 00:17:01.309 --> 00:17:04.200 seek with itself. So Leela is. the game hide 00:17:04.200 --> 00:17:07.240 and seek and maya or illusion is the hiding the 00:17:07.240 --> 00:17:09.880 cosmic self hides from itself by becoming everything 00:17:09.880 --> 00:17:12.099 in the universe stars mountains butterflies you 00:17:12.099 --> 00:17:14.140 me and then this is the key part deliberately 00:17:14.140 --> 00:17:16.599 forgetting that it's all one so the point of 00:17:16.599 --> 00:17:19.579 life then is to remember to wake up to realize 00:17:19.579 --> 00:17:23.000 that your individual self your ego is just i 00:17:23.000 --> 00:17:25.779 .t wearing a disguise the ultimate realization 00:17:25.779 --> 00:17:29.650 is what the hindus call tatavam asi Thou art 00:17:29.650 --> 00:17:32.670 that. You are not a separate part fighting the 00:17:32.670 --> 00:17:35.250 universe. You are the universe experiencing itself. 00:17:35.650 --> 00:17:38.650 And he connects this huge cosmic idea back to 00:17:38.650 --> 00:17:40.970 those patterns he saw in nature as a kid. Yes, 00:17:41.029 --> 00:17:43.109 the fractal patterns, the branching of a tree, 00:17:43.210 --> 00:17:45.869 the shape of a galaxy, the coastline. He saw 00:17:45.869 --> 00:17:48.490 those repeating patterns as the visual signature 00:17:48.490 --> 00:17:51.289 of the cosmic self, proving that the smallest 00:17:51.289 --> 00:17:53.710 part reflects the whole. Which means that all 00:17:53.710 --> 00:17:55.950 those opposites we struggle with, life and death, 00:17:56.069 --> 00:17:58.390 good and bad, they're not really opposites. They're 00:17:58.390 --> 00:18:00.710 two sides of the same coin. They're the necessary 00:18:00.710 --> 00:18:03.609 tension that makes the game possible. For Watts, 00:18:03.750 --> 00:18:05.849 understanding that the contradiction of opposites 00:18:05.849 --> 00:18:08.579 is the fundamental method of life. That's the 00:18:08.579 --> 00:18:10.519 key to peace. And in his later years, he really 00:18:10.519 --> 00:18:12.559 tried to make this practical. He did. He called 00:18:12.559 --> 00:18:15.039 himself a Zenist in spirit. His last book was 00:18:15.039 --> 00:18:17.700 Tao, The Watercourse Way. And he was focused 00:18:17.700 --> 00:18:19.859 on how you apply these ideas to child rearing. 00:18:23.759 --> 00:18:25.819 He was trying to bring the philosophy out of 00:18:25.819 --> 00:18:28.380 the clouds and into the kitchen. Exactly. Dissolving 00:18:28.380 --> 00:18:30.440 that boundary between the sacred and the everyday. 00:18:30.940 --> 00:18:33.180 And if you really believe you're the universe, 00:18:33.480 --> 00:18:35.640 then you have to treat the universe with respect. 00:18:36.349 --> 00:18:39.089 which naturally led him to social ethics and 00:18:39.089 --> 00:18:41.750 the environment. He was so ahead of his time 00:18:41.750 --> 00:18:44.089 on that, talking about an ecological predicament 00:18:44.089 --> 00:18:47.009 way back in the early 60s. Incredibly prescient. 00:18:47.250 --> 00:18:50.890 He argued that our spiritual belief that man 00:18:50.890 --> 00:18:53.589 is separate from nature is what allows us to 00:18:53.589 --> 00:18:55.769 destroy it without feeling like we're harming 00:18:55.769 --> 00:18:57.910 ourselves. He had that amazing quote about our 00:18:57.910 --> 00:19:00.769 consumerism. about the ever -rising mountains 00:19:00.769 --> 00:19:03.529 of ruin. Especially when the things we make and 00:19:03.529 --> 00:19:05.730 build are beginning to look more and more like 00:19:05.730 --> 00:19:08.789 rubbish even before they're thrown away. He saw 00:19:08.789 --> 00:19:11.390 our industrial output becoming trash in real 00:19:11.390 --> 00:19:13.710 time. Okay, so now we have to get into the complexity 00:19:13.710 --> 00:19:16.869 of the man himself. Because for any honest deep 00:19:16.869 --> 00:19:18.990 dive, you have to talk about the contradictions. 00:19:19.230 --> 00:19:21.789 The entertainer who was also, as the sources 00:19:21.789 --> 00:19:24.549 say, a bit of a rogue. A bit of a rogue is putting 00:19:24.549 --> 00:19:27.950 it mildly. He was open about it in his autobiography. 00:19:28.509 --> 00:19:32.009 in my own way he calls himself a sedentary and 00:19:32.009 --> 00:19:35.289 contemplative character a mystic and also somewhat 00:19:35.289 --> 00:19:38.329 of a disreputable epicurean who has three wives 00:19:38.329 --> 00:19:41.970 seven children and five grandchildren that disreputable 00:19:41.970 --> 00:19:44.710 epicurean part is doing a lot of work the sources 00:19:44.710 --> 00:19:47.809 confirm he struggled three marriages seven kids 00:19:47.809 --> 00:19:50.490 a lot of conflict and he had issues with substance 00:19:50.490 --> 00:19:53.200 use He was a heavy smoker his whole life, and 00:19:53.200 --> 00:19:55.660 after the mid -50s, he developed a serious problem 00:19:55.660 --> 00:19:57.839 with alcohol. And people close to him called 00:19:57.839 --> 00:20:00.640 him out on it. His lover, the poet Jean Burden, 00:20:00.720 --> 00:20:03.319 she called him a rogue and pointed out his moral 00:20:03.319 --> 00:20:05.920 hypocrisy. Right. And this is the central tension 00:20:05.920 --> 00:20:08.160 of his legacy. How could the great philosopher 00:20:08.160 --> 00:20:10.859 of non -duality live such a messy, dualistic 00:20:10.859 --> 00:20:14.339 personal life? But his family defended him. His 00:20:14.339 --> 00:20:16.460 daughter, Anne, admitted that people knocked 00:20:16.460 --> 00:20:17.880 him off the pedestal when they learned about 00:20:17.880 --> 00:20:20.400 the alcoholism and womanizing. But she insisted 00:20:20.400 --> 00:20:23.119 the work stands on its own. And that's the big 00:20:23.119 --> 00:20:25.759 question for you, for the listener. Can you separate 00:20:25.759 --> 00:20:28.880 the message from the messenger? This played out 00:20:28.880 --> 00:20:31.880 in the Zen community itself with a huge backlash 00:20:31.880 --> 00:20:34.339 from formal practitioners. They felt he was all 00:20:34.339 --> 00:20:37.420 talk, no walk. Pretty much. The core criticism 00:20:37.420 --> 00:20:40.319 was his dismissal of Zazen, formal sitting meditation. 00:20:40.940 --> 00:20:43.839 Masters like Philip Kaplow, even D .T. Suzuki 00:20:43.839 --> 00:20:46.539 to some extent, they felt he was misinterpreting 00:20:46.539 --> 00:20:49.319 key concepts. Just getting a superficial intellectual 00:20:49.319 --> 00:20:52.680 understanding. Exactly. They hated his casual 00:20:52.680 --> 00:20:55.480 approach. He famously said Zazen was just sitting 00:20:55.480 --> 00:20:58.549 but not sitting. said he only understood half 00:20:58.549 --> 00:21:01.289 a koan he was using it to justify not doing the 00:21:01.289 --> 00:21:03.670 hard work and his most infamous quote about it 00:21:03.670 --> 00:21:06.289 was a cat sits until it is tired of sitting then 00:21:06.289 --> 00:21:09.349 gets up stretches and walks away which to a zen 00:21:09.349 --> 00:21:11.430 master must have sounded like an endorsement 00:21:11.430 --> 00:21:14.170 for just being lazy it was seen as offering an 00:21:14.170 --> 00:21:17.150 easy way out a zen light for people who wanted 00:21:17.150 --> 00:21:19.839 the philosophy without the discipline The prominent 00:21:19.839 --> 00:21:22.359 Zen teacher Robert Aitken said that D .T. Suzuki 00:21:22.359 --> 00:21:25.319 himself told him flat out, Mr. Watts did not 00:21:25.319 --> 00:21:28.740 understand that story. Ouch. But he had his defenders, 00:21:28.819 --> 00:21:32.240 too. And a very powerful one. A very powerful 00:21:32.240 --> 00:21:35.019 one. Shunri Suzuki, the founder of the San Francisco 00:21:35.019 --> 00:21:38.619 Zen Center, a man famous for his rigor. When 00:21:38.619 --> 00:21:41.359 one of his students dismissed Watts, Suzuki apparently 00:21:41.359 --> 00:21:45.079 got very serious and called Watts a great bodhisattva. 00:21:45.160 --> 00:21:48.359 A bodhisattva, wow. Yeah, he insisted the student 00:21:48.359 --> 00:21:50.940 was missing the point, that Watts' vital work 00:21:50.940 --> 00:21:53.259 was opening the door for countless Westerners 00:21:53.259 --> 00:21:55.420 who would have never found it otherwise. So his 00:21:55.420 --> 00:21:57.980 mission was dissemination, not discipline. It 00:21:57.980 --> 00:22:00.359 was about building that bridge. And his life 00:22:00.359 --> 00:22:04.480 ended in 1973. He was only 58. And the circumstances 00:22:04.480 --> 00:22:07.200 of his death are almost like a final Zen teaching. 00:22:07.420 --> 00:22:09.740 He'd just gotten back from this grueling European 00:22:09.740 --> 00:22:11.940 lecture tour. Right. He was exhausted. He died 00:22:11.940 --> 00:22:14.339 in his cabin in Druid Heights, California. But 00:22:14.339 --> 00:22:17.299 what happened next was unusual. His body was 00:22:17.299 --> 00:22:20.000 cremated almost immediately on a woodpire on 00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:23.380 Muir Beach by Buddhist monks before the authorities 00:22:23.380 --> 00:22:25.730 could even get there. His son Mark later found 00:22:25.730 --> 00:22:27.690 out that his father had planned the whole thing 00:22:27.690 --> 00:22:30.890 meticulously. It was this deliberate, immediate 00:22:30.890 --> 00:22:33.609 return to nature, a final act of letting go. 00:22:34.109 --> 00:22:36.930 His wife, Mary Jane, said of him, the secret 00:22:36.930 --> 00:22:39.740 of life is knowing when to stop. And he stopped 00:22:39.740 --> 00:22:43.079 on his own terms. He's gone. But that cultural 00:22:43.079 --> 00:22:45.779 echo is louder than ever. All the music sampling, 00:22:45.839 --> 00:22:48.819 the movies. He provided the language for questioning 00:22:48.819 --> 00:22:51.480 reality. And that's a quest more people are on 00:22:51.480 --> 00:22:53.460 today than ever before. He was a philosopher 00:22:53.460 --> 00:22:56.240 who mastered audio. He recorded these talks that 00:22:56.240 --> 00:22:58.519 have become, in a way, a new kind of scripture 00:22:58.519 --> 00:23:00.799 for people seeking accessible wisdom outside 00:23:00.799 --> 00:23:03.640 of any institution. So wrapping this all up, 00:23:03.700 --> 00:23:05.839 what's the final takeaway? Yeah. Alan Watts' 00:23:05.980 --> 00:23:08.690 singular achievement was what? Taking Eastern 00:23:08.690 --> 00:23:10.470 philosophy out of the temple and putting it on 00:23:10.470 --> 00:23:12.390 the airwaves. I think so. Making the profound 00:23:12.390 --> 00:23:14.910 accessible. Making non -duality understandable 00:23:14.910 --> 00:23:17.789 to a profoundly dualistic and anxious Western 00:23:17.789 --> 00:23:20.809 culture. He was that crucial bridge. And he did 00:23:20.809 --> 00:23:23.630 it by trying to resolve that feeling of alienation, 00:23:23.650 --> 00:23:25.369 by insisting that you aren't just this fragile 00:23:25.369 --> 00:23:27.650 little ego, but an inseparable part of the whole 00:23:27.650 --> 00:23:30.750 cosmic dance. Exactly. That understanding the 00:23:30.750 --> 00:23:33.670 contradiction of opposites up and down life and 00:23:33.670 --> 00:23:36.170 death. That's the key. That's the path to real 00:23:36.170 --> 00:23:38.450 psychological peace. Which brings us right back 00:23:38.450 --> 00:23:41.269 to the man himself, the entertainer and the rogue, 00:23:41.549 --> 00:23:45.009 the mystic and the alcoholic. If Watts taught 00:23:45.009 --> 00:23:47.410 that the contradiction of opposites is the fundamental 00:23:47.410 --> 00:23:49.890 method of life. Then what does it mean for us 00:23:49.890 --> 00:23:51.930 that his most profound, most liberating teachings 00:23:51.930 --> 00:23:55.950 came directly from his own deeply flawed, contradictory 00:23:55.950 --> 00:23:58.769 and troubled personal life? It makes you wonder, 00:23:58.890 --> 00:24:02.829 was the rascal nature essential to his role as 00:24:02.829 --> 00:24:05.730 the entertainer? Did it allow him to sidestep 00:24:05.730 --> 00:24:07.549 the kind of spiritual arrogance that can come 00:24:07.549 --> 00:24:09.710 with being a pure teacher? He delivered this 00:24:09.710 --> 00:24:11.970 message of cosmic unity through a very messy, 00:24:12.109 --> 00:24:14.750 very human vessel. So we'll leave you with that 00:24:14.750 --> 00:24:17.369 provocative thought. Maybe the pursuit of this 00:24:17.369 --> 00:24:19.569 kind of transcendental knowledge can't be separated 00:24:19.569 --> 00:24:21.630 from the messy reality of the person pursuing 00:24:21.630 --> 00:24:24.380 it. Maybe the contradictions in Watts' life weren't 00:24:24.380 --> 00:24:26.740 a flaw in his teaching, but were actually the 00:24:26.740 --> 00:24:29.660 final, human, complicated evidence of it. Something 00:24:29.660 --> 00:24:31.460 to mull over until our next deep dive.