Alan Watts Being in the Way

Taking a trip through the constructs of form and labeling, Alan Watts philosophizes about the limits of language.This series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit play.alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alanThis time on Being in the Way, Alan Watts philosophizes about:Unexamined systems of belief underneath languageIdeas that are built into our common senseThe substance of form, pattern, and organizationThe profound mystery of matterLimitations in trying to use language to define the ineffable‘Matter’ as a root word for many thingsChinese views of natureWhy verbs do not necessarily need subjectsBeing at peace with ourselves in a world of formRecognizing the universe as a process“When we divide the world into operations and agents, doers and doings, then we ask such silly questions as ‘who knows, who does it, what does it?’ When the what that is supposed to do it is the same as the doing. You could very easily see that the whole process of the universe may be understood as process, nobody is doing it.” – Alan WattsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

6 Feb 202453min

In celebration of the waters that bring life to all things, Alan Watts reflects on the separation between human civilization and the natural world.This series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit play.alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alanIn this unique and experimental recording, Alan Watts discusses:The beauty of life on the waters in Sausalito, CaliforniaThe rhythms of natureTime and timelessnessThe transformation of one form into anotherThe separation of man from the natural worldObjecting and Objectifying the worldIdentity and being able to know knowingThe spacious environment of the ocean“Although the rhythm of the waves beats a kind of time, it’s not clock or calendar time, it has no urgency. It’s timeless time, because I know I am listening to a rhythm which has been just the same for millions of years.” – Alan WattsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

15 Jan 202423min

Using wisdom from Eastern philosophies, Alan Watts explains why Westerners should let go of any preconceived notions of God.This series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.This Alan Watts lecture features a discussion on:Comparative studies on religionThe absurdity of Christian imperialismSuperiority and lack of faithThe difference between faith and beliefBlasphemy and those who claim to be GodThe political image of God in the westThe ceramic model of the universe (material and form)Hindu mythology and dramaSelf-discovery of supreme realityThe meaning of MayaPunitive reasons why people say that God is deadFixed notions of God as idolatryContemplative prayer and letting go of our ideas of GodExistence as relationshipBuddhist vows versus western obedienceLooking beyond the skin-encapsulated ego“It must be understood that the crux of the Hindu and Buddhist disciplines is an experience, not a theory, not a belief.” – Alan WattsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

22 Nov 20231h 1min

Bringing awareness to ecstatic grace, Alan Watts enlightens us on the sexual archetypes formed by religion.Two cultural icons. Two unique perspectives... One understanding of the presence of the way.Ram Dass' Love Serve Remember Foundation and the Alan Watts Organization invite you to open your mind, open your heart, and tap into the living truth of Alan Watts and Ram Dass. Learn more about this special 4-week Virtual Course:"The Presence of the Way: The Dharma of Alan Watts and Ram Dass" Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alanIn this recording, Alan Watts lectures on:Baptism, confirmation, and religious initiationMasturbation and other supposedly sinful behaviorsDefiance and wickednessThe material world and sexualityThe Semitic vs. Greek perspective on sexSexual energy for reproduction rather than pleasureThe fall in the Garden of EdenThe institution of marriageWomen throughout western literatureLove and the illogical promises we makePrudism and extreme monogamySubtle eroticism in the Victorian eraHow repression may lead to being overcameLibido as a fundamental realitySexuality in religious iconographyThe function of sexual play beyond utilitarianismSex as a sacramental expression of loveSeeing the divine aspect in a loverThis series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.“The function of sexual play is not merely the survival and utilitarian function of reproducing the species as it is among animals to a very large extent. What peculiarly distinguishes human sexuality is that it brings the partners closer and closer to each other in an intense state of united feeling. In other words, it is a sacrament, the outward invisible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, bringing about love.” – Alan WattsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

15 Sep 202328min

This time on the Being in the Way Podcast, Alan Watts delves into questions of identity, purpose and buying into the ‘Myth of Myself’.Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alanIn this episode, Alan Watts explores:The question of our own identity and our place in the worldMyths of the self handed down through historyViewing ourselves and the world with a “floodlight consciousness” – rather than the narrow “spotlight consciousness” we are taught to see the world throughHow we are not born into this world, but grow out of it – “In the same way an apple tree apples, the Earth peoples.”“The most fascinating problem in the world is who am I? What do you feel when you say the word I? I myself?This problem has fascinated me for many years. Most Western people locate their ego inside their heads. This is the ordinary average conception of what is oneself.” – Alan WattsThis series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit https://Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

2 Aug 202343min

Picking up from our last episode, Alan elucidates faith versus belief, and how our individual existence is connected with the totality of the universe.Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alanFrom his houseboat in Sausalito, CA, Alan Watts explores:The two great myths which underly our Western sense of identity: the Judeo-Christian myth of an overly intelligent universe founded by a cosmic king; and the material myth of a universe which is mechanical, un-intelligent, and emptyThe problem of “believing” in God, versus the real attitude of faith which is being open to whatever reality isFinding out who we are beyond social institutions like time, money, value, language, and survivalHow you as an individual implies by your existence everything else in the universe“The problem about believing in God, incidentally, is that believing is the wrong attitude. Believing is a form of mistrust, because it’s saying, ‘I fervently wish that you exist, and if you don’t, I don’t know what to do with myself.’ The real attitude of faith is not believing, but simply being open to whatever reality is, and to say you don’t know.” – Alan WattsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

23 Jun 202329min

Delving into the historically complicated human relationship to divinity, Alan Watts describes the trap of separateness. Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alanIn this episode, Alan Watts explores:The sensation of our own existence Jewish Christian mythology Identifying with the tribeUniversal law and the roots of justiceFreud and the energies of the psyche Man as a product of nature versus the supernaturalThe idea that we were all subjects of a divine king you might say was a political model based on the organization of the great city-states of the ancient near east. That image, you see, has absolutely haunted Western man throughout his whole development because he has felt that he is in the universe on probation and sufferance. He doesn't quite belong here." – Alan WattsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

24 Mai 202331min

Offering us the possibility of waking up, Alan Watts contemplates the joyous cosmology that we are God playing the roles of ordinary people.Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alanIn this episode, Alan Watts explores:If there could be a theory of the world that justifies and makes worthwhile the difficulties and suffering that we undergoThe contemplation that an infinite omnipotent being would eventually get bored with being everything, so would begin to shield itself from this knowledge, and pretend to play the role of separate beings so it could experience the full thrill of waking up to itselfThe idea of reality as God playing a game of hide and seek with itself for it’s own excitement and cosmic jokeThe difference or potential complete non-difference between the experience and the experiencerThat what you think of as outside yourself is actually just a hidden you“We have within us a higher self who is pretending to be the ordinary everyday person that we are, who’s acting it. In other words, our everyday life is a dream from which we have the possibility of waking up.” – Alan WattsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

13 Mar 20231h 9min