Author: Mike Colagrossi / Source: Big Think
- Alan Watts believed that we can comprehend a greater sense of the self.
- The self is not alienated from the universe, but a part of the whole process.
- Scientists have conceptualized a similar idea that sounds like it’s straight out of the Indian Vedanta.
Western cultures rooted in scientific thinking and reductionist philosophies have always flirted with the tempting holism of the East.
It was during the 1950s and ’60s that these philosophies finally burst through the dividing cultural membrane and finally became a permanent fixture in our culture. Alan Watts was one such philosopher and lecturer of the time that is largely responsible for this popularization of Eastern spiritual ideas.Whether it was on the way we view education or money — Watts masterfully weaved a synthesis of ancient Eastern philosophy to contend with and understand our chaotic mode of modern life.
One such topic that he touched upon at length was the idea of the self. Many great philosophers have pondered on this great question — what is the self? It is within this sphere of questioning that Watts proposed that all roads of inquiry lead to one central idea, even if they’re not aware of it. That the self is an illusion, all is inseparable and part of a continuous wave of existence from beginning to end and back again.
… the prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East.
Alan Watts and the self
Alan Watts touched upon this subject at length in a talk titled “Self and Other.” Watts believed that we could shed the illusion of self and other through simple comprehension. No need for any difficult yoga meditations or even mind-shattering psychedelics.
It is plain to see that in our modern civilization many people lack meaning. As the scientific method has unraveled old mysteries and religions have lost their hold on ontological truth, there is no longer a binding authority to look toward for guidance on the nature of reality.
Great existentialist thinkers heralded this onslaught of meaning in the past two centuries. Science offers us no solace with its nihilistic undertones of blind chance and our supposed infinitesimal place in an infinite and indifferent universe….
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