@Dr. Zebra I don't see how. All he is saying is that no one is obligated to maintain the trappings of their individual ego at any given time. He certainly isn't suggesting that you change everything about who you are every 5 minutes. Trying to do that would in fact lead to insanity.
I really like the inclusion of internet culture and animation to present philosophy in an entertaining manner. Keep up the good work, you have earned my subscription.
Just like folks enjoyed Watts' inclusion of Western culture and humor to present Eastern spiritualism and psychedelic inspired revelations in an entertaining manner.
Acting like your subscription is some kind of high honor lmao. I don’t like your tone, and for that I’m unsubscribing specifically to cancel out your subscription. May god have mercy on your wretched soul
That "maybe" Thing is so real. My GF broke up whit me at the start of the year. We were planning going on vacation but since we broke up the vacation was canceled. I used that time to look for a better job. I landed a great job that i wouldn´t have gotten if i sat down coftable organising vacation and going to the beach. Now my country is in hardlockdown and its really hard to find job. if she didn´t broke up whit me in that moment she would´ve broke up eventually but thanks god it was at the exact momento i heard about that new job oportinity. i was extremly motivated to get that job and i did everything right. In the moment i was sad for the break up. But now in retrospective i think it was a good thing
I had a similar experience, broke up in December and used the time I used to complain to her about myself to actually work on myself. Got a decent job, started reading again, picked up writing, cleaned up my apartment, basic stuff but it makes me feel better. Now the lockdown is kinda over in my country and I look back at it very positively because I did so much to improve myself and also because of the lockdown I was able not to bother her too much and now we're actually still friends. I just hope I can maintain this without the lockdown as well lol
This is a different thing than what was being discussed, you shouldn't attribute goodness or badness to any event when dealing with such outcomes of chance
@@Mrmijaggie It's a commentary on introspection and clearly lays out why it's useful/productive, all in one simple poetic sentence. You can claim it's obvious and something you already knew, but to claim he's "saying nothing" is just wrong
@@_WeDontKnow_ well you are wrong , it’s a part of longer text, you should look it up, it’s not about introspection at all. And i am curious in that context how profound and an epiphany you still found it if you read the whole damn quote 😉
I disliked Watts ever since I found him, but I think you did a great job showing what he was all about. Didn't label his ideas as universal truths, didn't completely disregard his ideas as nihilistic and dumb. Really unbiased and truthful.
I've always taken more of an interest in Watts over other philosophers. Some people might think he talks about nothing, but he's the only one who really makes sense to me. It kinda feels like everyone is just grasping at increasingly complex ways of justifying our reality, but Watts cuts straight through that and shows how vast and meaningless the universe is. It's kinda comforting to me to know that the matter making me up started out floating through space in a very sparse cloud, became "me", and in several billion years it'll just be floating through space again. Quantum mechanics suggests that determinism isn't possible. There's no way to know what happens next, except to experience the reality right now. It's all that matters. But I don't do a very good job of living in the moment soooo
I’ve been trying to get into other philosophers since hopping on the Alan Watts bandwagon. The only one I’ve been able to ease into was Christopher Phillips. I’ve tried Descartes and Plato but to no avail, I’ll try Nietzsche next but idk
I have had the same experience. It feels like Watts position is almost irrefutable and I certainly don’t see how you could disprove them in a meaningful way. I just wonder why more people haven’t recognised his ideas. They seem far more insightful than other bigger names.
He might have been an alcoholic, a bad husband, and a bad father. But you could consider how much worse of a human he could have been without his beliefs. Or that in order to enlighten others you might need to do sacrifices yourself. I see a broken man trying to figure life out and fighting his demons in a battle of the mind. Nobody is perfect, some worse than others, but to me it’s the effort that counts. In his suffering he fought to find meaning and purpose to leave a legacy behind that others could use to grow past his mistakes. For that we should be thankful.
But if we are to base our investments on the words of the pauper, who says he knows the easy way, shunning instead the rich man who says that riches requires sacrifice, we stand to gain zero but to lose.
I had no idea that Alan Watts knew Carl Jung personally?? Amazing. Now I know that all his references to Carl in his latter work were from first hand experiences with Jung. 😄
Fantastic. Even though I've watched several of his lectures I still learned a great deal from this video. Great sense of pacing, doesn't dwell on one aspect too long or lose its rhythm, really, well-done.
Alan Watts reminds me of a wise old turtle who once said: “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.”
Nobody likes to be very present with all those memories of past abuse and all those fears for the future and judgement of yourself.. Gives you the shakes.. The now offers constant grief to us, poor victims of fate. Don´t go to the now, intoxicate yourself and dance nonsensically, live in the there and never.. Or you can face every fear you ever had break through the shakes. Leaving fear behind.. It´s calm, serene and boring, no laughs, many calm smiles. Nice place to visit, but you don´t want to go live there. It´s like visiting home sometimes.. It can feel safe, but nothing ever happens. So you choose to go back out there and find something you want to be safe from again.
Thanks for making this. Watts was one of my favorite. When I am feeling down, I find his lectures and listen. I also discovered that WattsWave is a genre of music.
Yes. Gust tells this story to Charlie in "Charlie Wilson's War". His version uses "Zen Master" instead of "farmer" . Insightful story, great movie. ;-)
I wrote down "you are the universe experiencing itself" in my diary 3 years ago during self reflection only to have the truth of all ideas being unoriginal thrown in my face within a minute of this video as a man 90 years ago came up with the same exact quote.
He and you are the same universe experiencing itself in different ways. You, the universe, came up with the quote, and manifested it in various ways through various mouthpieces. One manifestation of the idea is no more or less valuable than the other.
I really feel that idea of living in the moment. It is when I give up on the rigidity of planning ahead and just see where life takes me that I am at my happiest. I also like that approach to a goal, instead of working to an end goal I will start working to do my very best in the moment and thus will inevitably reach that goal at some point. No need for time constraints or the toxicity of beating myself up for wasting time.
Animating my body. It really does always feel like that. Im glad this wasn’t some indescribable feeling. This honestly did help me understand my relation to everything else around me.
was pissed when i realized this wasn't about Alan Watts the professional climber who bolted most of smith rock in Oregon, but still a great video :) love your channel
This video made me think a lot about self improvement. I've stressed a lot in the past to try and improve myself through various means and it's exactly as you say, I was living for the future. I did a lot of cool things, but for what? Maybe there's a middle ground where I can strive to be better while enjoying where I am
@@randomstuff1534 The thing is when you realize that there's no such distinct activity as self improvement, because you only have one self (which wants to be improved and improve too) so it kinda has no meaning. What does happen is the natural course of events which can change your habits etc. So for me I feel like since I've accepted who I am at every point, no matter how I feel or do, I'm improving more actually because there's much less anxiety and resistance in general.
LOL, he WAS hypnotically charming. I'm head over heels in love with his brain (just his brain, though he was a bit of a looker in his day, too), and he was dead before I was even born.
Wow!! Well done thank you. I’ve been listening to him for a few years now even read spiritual east and west. This is a great video. I found it very helpful, or should I say enjoyable! Haha
The hardest thing to accept is that everything that happens to you is in your favour, the greatest meaning is that there isnt any and the highest power isn’t a greater being, but instead a greater being of one’s self, its all in your head, no one has any idea what there doing, we all just have temporary goals to reach which then makes us evolve and change, ergo new life is born just in a metaphysical manner. The meaning of death is to die, therefore the meaning of life is to live, suffering makes the little moments seem bigger, you just meed to suffer first, you cant have warmth without a little fire, you cant have cotton wothout shedding sheep, you cant have food without picking the fruits of lifes labour of a tree, Finding meaning is allot like speaking for the first time, you have no idea what youre talking about, you know what your mother is but not who, you know your father but you cant name it, then one day, after trying, blubbering and muttering you blurt out the word “mum” everyone gets excited and celebrates and you cant stop saying mum, the celebrations grow quiet as you learn more words, a plethora of knowledge yet all this celebration in the moment of finding knowledge of self as well as others. Youve gotta hate yourself in order to start loving yourself, we all have demons that need tending too just dont be contracted by them. Love everything as if it were you, as we are apart of everything. Most importantly love yourself as youre the only person youll ever truly know.
man every time i’m comin down of acid i always come to you, honestly just after a trip is the best for reflection because atleast for me i’m more honest with myself
This video explains really well the core concepts of Watts' philosophy, however I would like to add another of his ideas, that is the interdependence of opposites. He argued that black and white, hot and cold, good and bad, etc are not excluding opposites, but rather interdependent ends of one spectrum. This way cold needs hot to exist, because you only know one of them in contrast with the other. You wouldn't know what good is unless you could compare with something that is bad. This also applies to existence and non existence, that means you wouldn't know that you're alive if there wasn't such a thing as death. Being and non being are not opposites but part of the same spectrum, you need one to have the other and thus you could say they are one.
I wanted to say that I was having a very upsetting day mentally & the story of an indifferent response to what reality throws at me is a very happy thought
It's not teeth as a collective. Watts gave others examples, like clapping with one hand, seeing your eye (not using mirrors). You sure can feel your eye when it's sore or you have poor eyesight. But still, you can't hear your own ear. A finger can't feel itself. So what is it you actually feel, see and hear?
i feel like the idea in a way is about conformity, not of yourself, but of everything around you. I still think we should be more than the sum of our parts, regardless if its negative or positive, so this includes the ideas of self improvement, just in a more neutral way
Interesting view points from Alan Watts however it's clear he was a troubled man who didn't practice what he preached. But I do agree with his point on trying to kill the ego being something the ego is persuing. What Watts doesn't take into consideration in his philosophies (because he wasn't in the digital age) is how technologies can save humans and the environment from suffering and potentially end suffering for good. Humans are living in the safest and best times ever. We have something special that sets us apart from other animals. And with advancements in nano and bio technology, we can potentially live forever and remove suffering completely. We can achieve a "god" like existence. We can live for beauty and creativity. We can literally simulate any emotion, desire, euphoric state. We can build worlds from our imaginations and live in fantasy and magic and also transcend time itself if we choose. Or we can choose to simulate universes like ours but with different constraints leading to different events and variables happening and inject in and out of these universe's whenever we so choose. If you look how technology is exponentially increasing through Moore's law, it's almost inevitable. One more point on the "universe experiencing itself" Watts loves to say. If this were the case it must be pretty shitty and lonely for this one "conciousnesss" to be in a state of all knowing and being, otherwise we wouldn't exist. If the universe has to play "hide and seek" from itself like he also suggests and has to forget itself to experience reality is it really all knowing ? Surely it would simply be content in existing in a state of all knowing. So why bother with creating a reality if it already knows everything ? Why not create another copy of itself to have company? I do like Alan Watts though because his words make you think. But the problem is people take everything Alan says as gospel and 100 pecent a fact. It leads to non duality cults that are used a spiritual bypassing tool.
His philosophy bares uncanny resemblance to my own beliefs. Whenever I heard about him before I thought he was one of those spiritual but not religious types that imply some greater wisdom without ever getting to the point but it sounds like he was a pretty cool dude who I should start reading. I'm definitely going to use the story about the farmer in the future.
I've achieved that essential realization of what experience is, how it is independent of the memories and yet memories inform it. It's perfectly logical, just takes some rational thought over a while to understand it. Maybe some people have a better analytical intuition than others and so get there sooner.
It strikes me that we look for and tend to project spirituality and pureness onto others and then berate them for being human, for all their faults and failings. Instead of perhaps seeing others as a mirror to look upon ourselves.
It's the search for idealistic perfection in someone we personify as being one way. A curse and a blessing, really. I believe it's where the saying "don't meet your heros" comes from.
@@timbreakradio I agree! I think it ties in to how most conflict happens. A person does something that doesn't tie in with who we imagined they are. The person we perceive/invent in our own minds...
I love Alan watts. He is a good gateway into philosophy. At this point though, I think he is overly optimistic about a persons ability to “let it go, man”. It’s good to not take things too seriously but the way to psychological balance is through taking things as seriously as you should take them.
A very interesting contemporary and "parallel character" of Alan Watts is Fr. Seraphim Rose. I would be very interested to see a video on his philosophy too, especially since he studied under Watts for a time
I actually wish I was brought up with 'Muscular Christianity' that taught duty and and manliness, instead of the limp, soggy, Church Of England mush I was fed at school.
I'm glad you didn't gloss over his massive moral failures. What's the point in all this metaphysical know-how if you can't keep your relationships stable? He died miserable because of this. Brutal truth.
Indeed he had his faults, but what human doesn't? Humans are flawed creatures. Being hypocritical is inevitable, however there are thought provoking ideas he brought to the west and his voice was rather soothing. I could listen to him talk for hours. He would sometimes go round and round in what he was saying, but he said it in different ways which would have you rethink the thing you were already thinking about. Flawed or not, I have major respect for this man and footprint he left on this world. I do agree though, I'm glad that he brought up what kind of man Watts was outside of his work.
Arthur Bastos You seem to undermine the whole purpose of the video. It is what it is. “The audio is pretty low” is your own judgement that you have attached to the actual thing. It is the divine purpose of the universe unfolding in front of you in its own way and if I answer on behalf of the speaker, i shall say, “maybe “
4:47 I have also come to the conclusion that life is pointless. I hate that conclusion, because of all the pain and how I'm trying to find a reason not to off myself. 7:59 Or rather what would or would not produce income, productivity and survival today are completely unrelated. Most excellent video!
I wish your mic input was higher. I had the volume all the way up on my headphones and still couldn’t hear well. Other than that, you clearly worked hard for this video. Great job 👍 I’m a big Alan Watts fan
@@PikachuFilmz I'd agree on that, if you go with your own motions, not as something that is you and another thing that is moving but as one motion which you are an aspect of, then its possible to be depressed, to be sad, to be anxious without blockage. It's a kind of natural depression, sadness etc, not something that is forced onto you because of the false assumption of how reality is, its more an expression of how you are right now. You happen as you are with nobody standing aside from you who could be the "me", and therefore your (or Watts) feelings are a expression of the totality of being. Trying to change how you feel just builds up more tension, allowing to be as you are reliefes it.
@@WisdomOfInsecurity Then it's not depression, it's just sadness. Being sad is very different from depression because depression comes with the delusion that it can never change and it defines your entire perspective. Being sad is perfectly normal, depression is totally different. I spent over 20 years depressed, once I finally got rid of it I was terrified of becoming sad for a long time because I though that if I did it would be like before and it would make me want to kill myself. But it wasn't like before, being sad was actually nice and nothing I needed to be afraid of. Now it's just an experience that makes me feel more alive, it doesn't take away the color in the world it just adds to it, and that is a very different experience.
@@daniel4647 thank you for your explanation, i experienced depression in a more cyclic fashion. I, personally, had a few weeks where life was so meaningless that I only could lay in my bed and do nothing. It vanished after a week or two, but it wasnt that I thought that it would never change. Maybe it was just a longer sad phase, It was really destructive though. Im really happy for you that you got rid of your depression and can live through your sadness as just another experience!
I love his quote "You're under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago."
I love this, it made me laugh
You have 69 likes and I don't wanna ruin it but I must!
@Dr. Zebra I don't see how. All he is saying is that no one is obligated to maintain the trappings of their individual ego at any given time. He certainly isn't suggesting that you change everything about who you are every 5 minutes. Trying to do that would in fact lead to insanity.
@Dr. Zebra i don't see how. care to explain this zebra?
@Dr. Zebra or maybe he means we are all allowed to be who we want to be without being constricted by the character we've trapped ourselves within.
"Hallowed be thy gains."
-aiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaihaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiahaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaihaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaians-UH!
Amen
@@TheStarksRegards ultimate power
Awomen
Thy gymdom come, thy will be plum.
I really like the inclusion of internet culture and animation to present philosophy in an entertaining manner. Keep up the good work, you have earned my subscription.
Just like folks enjoyed Watts' inclusion of Western culture and humor to present Eastern spiritualism and psychedelic inspired revelations in an entertaining manner.
@@austinyoung3315 Buddhist huh interesting
@@austinyoung3315 buddhism is shit liek christianity
Acting like your subscription is some kind of high honor lmao. I don’t like your tone, and for that I’m unsubscribing specifically to cancel out your subscription. May god have mercy on your wretched soul
Watts saved my life. Say what you want, but his ideas helped me find reasons to live.
That "maybe" Thing is so real. My GF broke up whit me at the start of the year. We were planning going on vacation but since we broke up the vacation was canceled. I used that time to look for a better job. I landed a great job that i wouldn´t have gotten if i sat down coftable organising vacation and going to the beach. Now my country is in hardlockdown and its really hard to find job. if she didn´t broke up whit me in that moment she would´ve broke up eventually but thanks god it was at the exact momento i heard about that new job oportinity. i was extremly motivated to get that job and i did everything right.
In the moment i was sad for the break up. But now in retrospective i think it was a good thing
it was a good thing...maybe =)
life is a funny thing, my guy
I had a similar experience, broke up in December and used the time I used to complain to her about myself to actually work on myself. Got a decent job, started reading again, picked up writing, cleaned up my apartment, basic stuff but it makes me feel better. Now the lockdown is kinda over in my country and I look back at it very positively because I did so much to improve myself and also because of the lockdown I was able not to bother her too much and now we're actually still friends. I just hope I can maintain this without the lockdown as well lol
This is beautiful. Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.
This is a different thing than what was being discussed, you shouldn't attribute goodness or badness to any event when dealing with such outcomes of chance
Wait wait wait. Did you just say Muscular Christianity? Reps for Jesus?
yup, it's a thing
One more rep for JEZUSS!!!
id like this comment but its at 69
Consider that late 19th century Victorian era trend when looking at the *unabbreviated* version of 'YMCA' (Young Men's Christian Association).
_My crew is big and it keeps getting bigger_
_That's cause Jesus Christ is my n-_
"A man who does nothing but think has nothing to think about except thoughts" -Alan Watts
@Chicklindo wow bro 🤓
My head hurts
Yeah sounds cool but actually says nothing , that’s whole Alan watts mumbo jumbo philosophy , word salad of
Nothing
@@Mrmijaggie It's a commentary on introspection and clearly lays out why it's useful/productive, all in one simple poetic sentence. You can claim it's obvious and something you already knew, but to claim he's "saying nothing" is just wrong
@@_WeDontKnow_ well you are wrong , it’s a part of longer text, you should look it up, it’s not about introspection at all. And i am curious in that context how profound and an epiphany you still found it if you read the whole damn quote 😉
Muscular Christianity sounds like a religion for Über-Chads
One must bear one's cross... It really works the hammies, bro!
Try my new Jesus Christ Pose workout, and I'll include the Pontius Pilates bonus!
Uber - an American company
Chad - an American
Uber-Chad - MERICUH
Virgin atheists vs Chad Jesus dying for your gains
UbërChavs
@@divad7137 a favorite
You are the universe experiencing itself.
Thank you mr. watts
Dru king cmon
I disliked Watts ever since I found him, but I think you did a great job showing what he was all about.
Didn't label his ideas as universal truths, didn't completely disregard his ideas as nihilistic and dumb.
Really unbiased and truthful.
As somebody who has a rather positive opinion of Alan Watts, may I ask what it is that you dislike about Watts' character or ideas?
Curious about your negative position on his worldview as well, No judgement; everyone's entitled to an opinion. Pure curiosity 👍🏻
I see. You’re a prickly person
I'd be interested in knowing too
allan watts' philosophy is the very opposite of nihlistic
I've always taken more of an interest in Watts over other philosophers. Some people might think he talks about nothing, but he's the only one who really makes sense to me. It kinda feels like everyone is just grasping at increasingly complex ways of justifying our reality, but Watts cuts straight through that and shows how vast and meaningless the universe is. It's kinda comforting to me to know that the matter making me up started out floating through space in a very sparse cloud, became "me", and in several billion years it'll just be floating through space again. Quantum mechanics suggests that determinism isn't possible. There's no way to know what happens next, except to experience the reality right now. It's all that matters. But I don't do a very good job of living in the moment soooo
I’ve been trying to get into other philosophers since hopping on the Alan Watts bandwagon. The only one I’ve been able to ease into was Christopher Phillips. I’ve tried Descartes and Plato but to no avail, I’ll try Nietzsche next but idk
@@notisaac8367 try John N. Gray
@@notisaac8367 Try Montaigne, Spinoza, Huston Smith or Rene Guenon
I have had the same experience. It feels like Watts position is almost irrefutable and I certainly don’t see how you could disprove them in a meaningful way.
I just wonder why more people haven’t recognised his ideas. They seem far more insightful than other bigger names.
@@kublakhanican7486 yeah its so weird
He might have been an alcoholic, a bad husband, and a bad father. But you could consider how much worse of a human he could have been without his beliefs. Or that in order to enlighten others you might need to do sacrifices yourself. I see a broken man trying to figure life out and fighting his demons in a battle of the mind.
Nobody is perfect, some worse than others, but to me it’s the effort that counts. In his suffering he fought to find meaning and purpose to leave a legacy behind that others could use to grow past his mistakes. For that we should be thankful.
But if we are to base our investments on the words of the pauper, who says he knows the easy way, shunning instead the rich man who says that riches requires sacrifice, we stand to gain zero but to lose.
@LiL Speng It is a gift seldom seen in this world.
He might have been an alcoholic, a bad husband and a bad father, but he was not a pornstar!
@@timucinharkonnen2699 😂
Maybe.
I had no idea that Alan Watts knew Carl Jung personally?? Amazing. Now I know that all his references to Carl in his latter work were from first hand experiences with Jung. 😄
A slaying of the beast
do some more research, philosophers regularly met eachother, big names in the same room
Watts also once dropped acid with Ram Dass. To be a fly on that wall...
"Boioioioioioioinnggg" -Alan Watts, every time I turn the volume up.
A double wamby
bro that gets me everytime he just sounds like he lost his mind for ten seconds then perfectly regains composure its hilarious
You blew my fucking mind with that Allen watts quote “ there is no past , just the present memory of the past “
Fantastic. Even though I've watched several of his lectures I still learned a great deal from this video. Great sense of pacing, doesn't dwell on one aspect too long or lose its rhythm, really, well-done.
The slaying of the beast
It's just a gooey prickly universe
Id say its more prickly gooey
No, no, you're both wrong. It's just goo.
“And the gooey people always see goo, the prickly people always see prickles”
Don't forget the wiggles, oscillations, and the _diggy diggy diggy BOOP diggy diggy diggy BOOP_
What do you mean by "just"? Is "just" not a word used to denigrate something, as if we wanted it to be more?
Alan Watts reminds me of a wise old turtle who once said: “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.”
Nobody likes to be very present with all those memories of past abuse and all those fears for the future and judgement of yourself.. Gives you the shakes..
The now offers constant grief to us, poor victims of fate.
Don´t go to the now, intoxicate yourself and dance nonsensically,
live in the there and never..
Or you can face every fear you ever had break through the shakes.
Leaving fear behind..
It´s calm, serene and boring, no laughs, many calm smiles.
Nice place to visit, but you don´t want to go live there.
It´s like visiting home sometimes.. It can feel safe, but nothing ever happens.
So you choose to go back out there and find something you want to be safe from again.
A monk to war
The 90s called. They said they want their aspect ratio back.
The 50s called... Said they want their lame jokes back
Hey Creed, your teeth called, "Your breath stinks."
I like it, kinda reminds me of educational TV shows when I was a kid.
Hank Benson it was a prank call loll plenty of fucking shrimp
2020 called. said "Maybe"
Maybe
I totally love Alan. I feel like he would say, what is there to love me, then he would laugh the way he does and begin to explain to what he meant.
Happy ess
Thanks for making this. Watts was one of my favorite. When I am feeling down, I find his lectures and listen. I also discovered that WattsWave is a genre of music.
Boping
What?!
@@luisochoa7 if you haven't found it yet, search "overthinker Alan watts" into UA-cam. Fucking beautiful
The Chinese farmer story.
If you know what I mean :)
Maybe..
No i don't...😅
6:45
Yes. Gust tells this story to Charlie in "Charlie Wilson's War". His version uses "Zen Master" instead of "farmer" . Insightful story, great movie. ;-)
Perhaps.
I wrote down "you are the universe experiencing itself" in my diary 3 years ago during self reflection only to have the truth of all ideas being unoriginal thrown in my face within a minute of this video as a man 90 years ago came up with the same exact quote.
He and you are the same universe experiencing itself in different ways. You, the universe, came up with the quote, and manifested it in various ways through various mouthpieces. One manifestation of the idea is no more or less valuable than the other.
Carl Sagan said it too
perhaps you should be proud you came up with the idea independently…
I really feel that idea of living in the moment. It is when I give up on the rigidity of planning ahead and just see where life takes me that I am at my happiest. I also like that approach to a goal, instead of working to an end goal I will start working to do my very best in the moment and thus will inevitably reach that goal at some point. No need for time constraints or the toxicity of beating myself up for wasting time.
"Man suffers because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun!" ~ Alan Watts
Animating my body. It really does always feel like that. Im glad this wasn’t some indescribable feeling. This honestly did help me understand my relation to everything else around me.
Money
Enjoyed your presentation on Alan Watts. I remember his talking about the, "Natural Accident."
He was a great source of Eastern Philosophy.
Religion war
This man helped me get out of depression and I could not be more grateful!
why did young watts look like agent smith of The Matrix?
wait he actually does
i can smell conspiracy theories brewing
holy shit
it's a glitch yo!
@@hundreddollarbiller fun facts
"You are under no obligation to be the same person 5 minutes past."
Appreciate you ✊
I love love love Alan watts and I think you’ve done a fabulous job in providing a little micro bio here. Thank you sir
Dooop
you've turned me into an alcoholic
Or did you come out of the alcoholic?
Watts turned himself into an alcoholic too.
try mushroom iits better for mutilple reason but you can drink if you want. i tell you that because of my experience!:)
educate youre self to this drug if you try it before
but are you the alcoholic you were 6 moths ago?
was pissed when i realized this wasn't about Alan Watts the professional climber who bolted most of smith rock in Oregon, but still a great video :) love your channel
This video made me think a lot about self improvement. I've stressed a lot in the past to try and improve myself through various means and it's exactly as you say, I was living for the future. I did a lot of cool things, but for what? Maybe there's a middle ground where I can strive to be better while enjoying where I am
That's exactly what I thought I like this philosophy but I think self-improvement is still important
@@randomstuff1534 The thing is when you realize that there's no such distinct activity as self improvement, because you only have one self (which wants to be improved and improve too) so it kinda has no meaning. What does happen is the natural course of events which can change your habits etc. So for me I feel like since I've accepted who I am at every point, no matter how I feel or do, I'm improving more actually because there's much less anxiety and resistance in general.
Watts and Jung are the 2 names I know who I would say truly understood life and lived it sincerely
i genuinely was feeling awful and anxious and i gotta say i feel much better after watching this video
Thank you, Alan, for everything.
Time for some war
LOL, he WAS hypnotically charming. I'm head over heels in love with his brain (just his brain, though he was a bit of a looker in his day, too), and he was dead before I was even born.
You deserve way more subscribers.
What’s in it
Sick vid dude. Been listening to Watts a bunch last few months I enjoyed your synopsis
I really felt a connection with the 'good' and 'bad' me part. Maybe I'll try living for the present moment and see what happens...
Back to the world
You can never live in present
Watts needs to be integrated as mandatory learning alongside math and science. Fantastic summary of his general philosophy!
Wow!! Well done thank you. I’ve been listening to him for a few years now even read spiritual east and west. This is a great video. I found it very helpful, or should I say enjoyable! Haha
love your content! big fan. keep doing great man
The hardest thing to accept is that everything that happens to you is in your favour, the greatest meaning is that there isnt any and the highest power isn’t a greater being, but instead a greater being of one’s self, its all in your head, no one has any idea what there doing, we all just have temporary goals to reach which then makes us evolve and change, ergo new life is born just in a metaphysical manner.
The meaning of death is to die, therefore the meaning of life is to live, suffering makes the little moments seem bigger, you just meed to suffer first, you cant have warmth without a little fire, you cant have cotton wothout shedding sheep, you cant have food without picking the fruits of lifes labour of a tree,
Finding meaning is allot like speaking for the first time, you have no idea what youre talking about, you know what your mother is but not who, you know your father but you cant name it, then one day, after trying, blubbering and muttering you blurt out the word “mum” everyone gets excited and celebrates and you cant stop saying mum, the celebrations grow quiet as you learn more words, a plethora of knowledge yet all this celebration in the moment of finding knowledge of self as well as others.
Youve gotta hate yourself in order to start loving yourself, we all have demons that need tending too just dont be contracted by them.
Love everything as if it were you, as we are apart of everything.
Most importantly love yourself as youre the only person youll ever truly know.
man every time i’m comin down of acid i always come to you, honestly just after a trip is the best for reflection because atleast for me i’m more honest with myself
@Charles Pearce Nice haiku man definitely gonna stop me
This video explains really well the core concepts of Watts' philosophy, however I would like to add another of his ideas, that is the interdependence of opposites. He argued that black and white, hot and cold, good and bad, etc are not excluding opposites, but rather interdependent ends of one spectrum. This way cold needs hot to exist, because you only know one of them in contrast with the other. You wouldn't know what good is unless you could compare with something that is bad. This also applies to existence and non existence, that means you wouldn't know that you're alive if there wasn't such a thing as death. Being and non being are not opposites but part of the same spectrum, you need one to have the other and thus you could say they are one.
I had a spark of selfconcious dread earlier this day. I always found Alan had a calming effect on me. Thanks for the reminder!
Every goal
I wanted to say that I was having a very upsetting day mentally & the story of an indifferent response to what reality throws at me is a very happy thought
Wooop
Love Alan Watts, he is the voice of my evenings
Now I want to play Everything again
We Am Already Are
All of your videos are genuinely amazing wow
I have actually bitten my own teeth, and it is exactly as uncomfortable as you imagine it would be.
If this means you accidentally bit a tooth that fell out, same. >~
It's not teeth as a collective. Watts gave others examples, like clapping with one hand, seeing your eye (not using mirrors). You sure can feel your eye when it's sore or you have poor eyesight. But still, you can't hear your own ear. A finger can't feel itself. So what is it you actually feel, see and hear?
@@uninstaller2860 money
New to your channel, but long time Watts fan. Good work and great summary!
Very, very good video! Precise and clear. Well, done!
That was an amazing summary, thank you.
How it all fallen down
i feel like the idea in a way is about conformity, not of yourself, but of everything around you. I still think we should be more than the sum of our parts, regardless if its negative or positive, so this includes the ideas of self improvement, just in a more neutral way
We are more than the sum of our parts! We are the eternal energy of the universe! That includes nothing, and everything 😀
@@TheBestofJuan numlites
Thanks. My right ear enjoyed the whole video
This is GOLD. Beyond gold.. this is the formula to a "good" life
Interesting view points from Alan Watts however it's clear he was a troubled man who didn't practice what he preached. But I do agree with his point on trying to kill the ego being something the ego is persuing. What Watts doesn't take into consideration in his philosophies (because he wasn't in the digital age) is how technologies can save humans and the environment from suffering and potentially end suffering for good. Humans are living in the safest and best times ever. We have something special that sets us apart from other animals. And with advancements in nano and bio technology, we can potentially live forever and remove suffering completely. We can achieve a "god" like existence. We can live for beauty and creativity. We can literally simulate any emotion, desire, euphoric state. We can build worlds from our imaginations and live in fantasy and magic and also transcend time itself if we choose. Or we can choose to simulate universes like ours but with different constraints leading to different events and variables happening and inject in and out of these universe's whenever we so choose. If you look how technology is exponentially increasing through Moore's law, it's almost inevitable. One more point on the "universe experiencing itself" Watts loves to say. If this were the case it must be pretty shitty and lonely for this one "conciousnesss" to be in a state of all knowing and being, otherwise we wouldn't exist. If the universe has to play "hide and seek" from itself like he also suggests and has to forget itself to experience reality is it really all knowing ? Surely it would simply be content in existing in a state of all knowing. So why bother with creating a reality if it already knows everything ? Why not create another copy of itself to have company? I do like Alan Watts though because his words make you think. But the problem is people take everything Alan says as gospel and 100 pecent a fact. It leads to non duality cults that are used a spiritual bypassing tool.
His philosophy bares uncanny resemblance to my own beliefs. Whenever I heard about him before I thought he was one of those spiritual but not religious types that imply some greater wisdom without ever getting to the point but it sounds like he was a pretty cool dude who I should start reading. I'm definitely going to use the story about the farmer in the future.
This was a good edit, but the only way to fully experience Alan Watts is to read his books, and listen to some of his lectures in full.
I've achieved that essential realization of what experience is, how it is independent of the memories and yet memories inform it. It's perfectly logical, just takes some rational thought over a while to understand it. Maybe some people have a better analytical intuition than others and so get there sooner.
Thanks for that cool synopsis, Brother
This video is it. great job
It strikes me that we look for and tend to project spirituality and pureness onto others and then berate them for being human, for all their faults and failings. Instead of perhaps seeing others as a mirror to look upon ourselves.
Proving
It's the search for idealistic perfection in someone we personify as being one way. A curse and a blessing, really. I believe it's where the saying "don't meet your heros" comes from.
@@timbreakradio I agree! I think it ties in to how most conflict happens. A person does something that doesn't tie in with who we imagined they are. The person we perceive/invent in our own minds...
@@Irishpascal Exactly! Great minds think alike as they say :)
Damn, I'm crying. Thank you so much
I love Alan watts. He is a good gateway into philosophy. At this point though, I think he is overly optimistic about a persons ability to “let it go, man”. It’s good to not take things too seriously but the way to psychological balance is through taking things as seriously as you should take them.
one of your best videos well done
Just finished my paper on this, before I saw this. Jeeeeeeeeeees
Happiness
Amazing video and a very actual topic
A very interesting contemporary and "parallel character" of Alan Watts is Fr. Seraphim Rose. I would be very interested to see a video on his philosophy too, especially since he studied under Watts for a time
Well done. I subscribed. The problem is thinking. For all of us.
Excellent work
I actually wish I was brought up with 'Muscular Christianity' that taught duty and and manliness, instead of the limp, soggy, Church Of England mush I was fed at school.
You are under no obligation to be the limp soggy individual that you were growing up
It’s still so overwhelming and confusing but I think I need the ideas to help me be happy
Just found your channel. Thanks for the content yo.
I'm glad you didn't gloss over his massive moral failures. What's the point in all this metaphysical know-how if you can't keep your relationships stable? He died miserable because of this. Brutal truth.
Indeed he had his faults, but what human doesn't? Humans are flawed creatures. Being hypocritical is inevitable, however there are thought provoking ideas he brought to the west and his voice was rather soothing. I could listen to him talk for hours. He would sometimes go round and round in what he was saying, but he said it in different ways which would have you rethink the thing you were already thinking about. Flawed or not, I have major respect for this man and footprint he left on this world. I do agree though, I'm glad that he brought up what kind of man Watts was outside of his work.
Great video as usual but the audio is pretty low.
Arthur Bastos You seem to undermine the whole purpose of the video. It is what it is. “The audio is pretty low” is your own judgement that you have attached to the actual thing. It is the divine purpose of the universe unfolding in front of you in its own way and if I answer on behalf of the speaker, i shall say, “maybe “
@@kolonko4425 nice
Thought it was only me
Frederick Sharon same
The world around you is just to loud/noisy
Man, nicee it's very unfrequent to find some people talking about him, maybe a lot of people don't get him
Constant
4:47 I have also come to the conclusion that life is pointless. I hate that conclusion, because of all the pain and how I'm trying to find a reason not to off myself.
7:59 Or rather what would or would not produce income, productivity and survival today are completely unrelated.
Most excellent video!
Instant like for my fav philosopher thanks Sisyphus dude
I wish your mic input was higher. I had the volume all the way up on my headphones and still couldn’t hear well. Other than that, you clearly worked hard for this video. Great job 👍 I’m a big Alan Watts fan
I love you, Sisyphus
Very concise summarization!
Excellent as usual.
Absolutely brilliant summary!
"The biggest ego trip going, is getting rid of your ego"
Alan Watts is my hero.
I love this man as I love myself
love your channel man
“Parasitic appendage to a mass of clockwork”... That about sums up my relationship to my my smartphone. 😂🍻😎 What a visionary!!
I really needed this
Your channel is Ace man, subbed!
Someone explain to me how Allan watts was known to have died as a depressed alcoholic when he clearly wasn’t even capable of that?
if there's anything i learned about watts, it's that he was very capable of something of that nature
@@PikachuFilmz I'd agree on that, if you go with your own motions, not as something that is you and another thing that is moving but as one motion which you are an aspect of, then its possible to be depressed, to be sad, to be anxious without blockage. It's a kind of natural depression, sadness etc, not something that is forced onto you because of the false assumption of how reality is, its more an expression of how you are right now. You happen as you are with nobody standing aside from you who could be the "me", and therefore your (or Watts) feelings are a expression of the totality of being. Trying to change how you feel just builds up more tension, allowing to be as you are reliefes it.
@@WisdomOfInsecurity id even go as far as saying that "natural depression" is the worst kind
@@WisdomOfInsecurity Then it's not depression, it's just sadness. Being sad is very different from depression because depression comes with the delusion that it can never change and it defines your entire perspective. Being sad is perfectly normal, depression is totally different. I spent over 20 years depressed, once I finally got rid of it I was terrified of becoming sad for a long time because I though that if I did it would be like before and it would make me want to kill myself. But it wasn't like before, being sad was actually nice and nothing I needed to be afraid of. Now it's just an experience that makes me feel more alive, it doesn't take away the color in the world it just adds to it, and that is a very different experience.
@@daniel4647 thank you for your explanation, i experienced depression in a more cyclic fashion. I, personally, had a few weeks where life was so meaningless that I only could lay in my bed and do nothing. It vanished after a week or two, but it wasnt that I thought that it would never change. Maybe it was just a longer sad phase, It was really destructive though.
Im really happy for you that you got rid of your depression and can live through your sadness as just another experience!
Listening to watts is like taking a Power Nap after a very long hot day
You are not the *universe* experiencing itself. You are the *experiencing*
Bro u deserve a mill subs