Alan Watts explores the inseparable dance between structure and formlessness, revealing why the universe can never be fully captured by words alone.

Today’s episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/alan and get on your way to being your best self.

This time on Being in the Way, Alan Watts outlines:

• Two distinct schools of thought: those who focus on structure, and those who focus on what Watts calls ‘goo’
• How fixating on practicality is like knowing all the words to a song without ever truly hearing the music
• The difference between a scientific perspective and a spiritual perspective
• Why structure and formlessness are inseparable aspects of the same cosmic process
• Understanding that the universe cannot be explained with words alone

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.

"What is it? What is this universe? What is an atom? What is energy? The only answer that would really please me wouldn't be an ordinary answer, because it wouldn't be in words." –Alan Watts

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Inviting listeners to question the nature of reality, consciousness, and perception, Alan Watts explores the limits of what the mind can truly know.

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.

Today’s episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/alan and get on your way to being your best self.

This time on Being in the Way, Alan Watts explains:

• Solipsism and how it subtly shapes modern human consciousness
• The philosophical case for idealism and the nature of reality as mind-dependent
• Relativity and how things exist for the purpose of other things
• The mind as a mirror and the illusion of an objective, external viewpoint
• Considering how the spiritual world affects the material world
• The enduring philosophical question: What exists when no one is observing?
• The Four Buddhist Inconceivables and the limits of conceptual thought

"Being is always being for something; it is, in other words, relational. The sun is light for eyes. Eyes are organs of vision for a mind. If there are no eyes, the sun gives forth no light. If there are no nerve ends it gives forth no heat. If there are no muscles, nothing is heavy.” –Alan Watts

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In this new, technological age, Alan Watts explains how seeing reality via only one perspective can lead to a fragmented view of the world; instead, he encourages listeners to adopt both the analytical and the organic.

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.

Today’s episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/alan and get on your way to being your best self.

In this episode, Alan Watts dives into:

• Living in an age of technology in a culture obsessed with rational control
• How someone can easily be obstructed by their own cautiousness
• The problem of human ecology and how one should best relate to their environment
• Considering what our idea of heaven is and what desires we truly want
• The western model of the universe (intellectual, architectural, mechanical)
• Reductive thinking: seeing the world through a net and making everything into a comprehensible, geometrical unit
• The fundamental difference between a mechanism and an organism
• How understanding the world through only conscious attention can lead to seeing everything as parts rather than the whole picture
• Combining the academic, analytical mind with the organic, ‘gooey’ mind

“Go to the science of medicine. You get a specialist who really understands the function of the gall bladder. He studied gall bladders ad infinitum, and he really thinks he knows all about it. But, whenever he looks at a human being, he sees them in terms of the gall bladder.” – Alan Watts

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