Alan Watts: Following the Taoist Way – Being in the Way Podcast Ep. 1 – Hosted by Mark Watts

In the premiere episode of Being in the Way – an Alan Watts podcast – Mark Watts and Raghu introduce a dharma talk on Taoism, the interdependence of nature, and dropping out of karma. This 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. Discussion with Mark Watts & Raghu Markus (0:00) Eastern Philosophy: Taoism & Confucianism (10:40) Mutual Arising: Polarity, Nature, & Interdependence (24:32) Dropping Out From Karma: The Way Through Now (33:16) "The world is a system of interrelated components, none of which can survive without each other. Just as in the case of bees and flowers, you will never find bees around in place where there aren't flowers, and you will never find flowers around in a place where there aren't bees. What that tells us secretly, is that although bees and flowers look different from each other, they're inseparable. To use an important Taoist expression: they arise mutually." – Alan Watts

Alan Watts: Dropping Out From Karma – Being in the Way Podcast Ep. 2 – Hosted by Mark Watts

In the second episode of Being in the Way – an Alan Watts podcast exclusively on the Be Here Now Network – Alan’s son, Mark Watts, shares background on Alan’s early life, before introducing two of his father’s specially curated dharma talks: Taoist Way of Dropping Out From Karma (Part III), and Wisdom of the Ridiculous. This 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. Beginners Mind, Zen Mind (0:00) Taoist Way of Dropping Out From Karma (7:40) Wisdom of the Ridiculous (34:45) “The whole conception of nature is as a self-regulating, self-governing, democratic organism. But it has a totality; it all goes together. This totality is the Tao.” – Alan Watts

Alan Watts: In Your Own Way – Being in the Way Podcast Ep. 3 – Hosted by Mark Watts

Alan Watts illuminates the connections between Taoism and relativity, technology and human evolution, culture and seperation, Saints and rascals, you and not-you, as well as difference and unity. This 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. Taoism & Relativity, Technology & Human Evolution (0:00) Seperation & Culture, Saints & Rascals (15:25) You & Not-You, Difference & Unity (28:10) “The principle of relativity is absolutely fundamental to an understanding of Taoist philosophy. That is to say, that wherever you are, whoever you are, and whatever you are: you’re in the middle.” – Alan Watts

Alan Watts: Our Place In The Universe – Being in the Way Podcast Ep. 4 – Hosted by Mark Watts

Uncovering how we arise mutually with all things, Alan Watts examines our place in the universe and how very natural it is to be human. This 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. Patterns of Energy: Being in the Way Pt. II (0:00) It Takes Two: You Arise Mutually with the Universe (16:30) Our Place In The Universe: Each One Contains Everything (28:35) “The world that you see outside you is a state of your own nervous system. In other words, it is because you have senses and a nervous organization of a certain particular structure, that the sky is blue, the sun is light, and vibrations in the air are sound. You turn them into color, light, sound, etc.” – Alan Watts

Alan Watts: On Being God – Being in the Way Podcast Ep. 6 – Hosted by Mark Watts

In ‘On Being God,’ Alan shares on therapy, religion, mystical experiences, & Jesus, before playing the hilarious and light-shedding role of a clinical patient who realizes they’re God. This 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. Mystical Experiences // Humanity & Nature // Psychiatry & Religion (0:00) Jesus & The Great Heresy // Democracy in the Kingdom of Heaven // Karma & Responsibility (23:23) On Being God: Alan Watts Clinical Experience (38:38) “To know that you are God is another way of saying that you feel completely with this universe, you feel profoundly rooted in it and connected with it, you feel that the whole energy which expresses itself in the galaxies, is intimate. It is not something to which you are a stranger, but it is that with which you are intimately bound up, that in your seeing, your hearing, your talking, your thinking, your moving, you express that which it is that moves the sun and other stars.” – Alan Watts

Alan Watts: Drugs: Turning the Head or Turning On – Being in the Way Ep. 7 – Hosted by Mark Watts

Can you get mysticism in a bottle? Alan Watts explores the drug question, in this psychedelically infused episode of Being in the Way. This 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. Mysticism in a Bottle // The Smell of Burnt Almonds (0:00) Psychedelics, Mystical Experiences, & Western Culture (28:18) Psychedelics as Instruments // Set & Setting (45:35) Morality & Legislation // Policing, Preaching, & Hypocrisy (49:25) “Lo and behold, I had what I simply could not deny being an experience of cosmic consciousness, the sense of complete fundamental total unity forever-and-ever with the whole universe. And not only that, but that what this thing was fundamentally—despite every thing and every kind of appearance in ordinary life to the contrary—that the energy behind the world was ecstatic bliss and love.” – Alan Watts

Alan Watts: Man and Nature – Being in the Way Podcast Ep. 8 – Hosted by Mark Watts

In this intimate session, Alan Watts shares distinctive philosophical vantage points outlining humankind’s relationship to nature. This 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. Man & Nature, Here & Now (0:00) The Three Theories of Nature (11:53) The Undefinable Order of Nature (35:30) Trust, Play, & Purposelessness (45:00) “All music is purposeless. Is music getting somewhere? If the aim of a symphony were to get to the final bar, the best conductor would be the one who got there fastest. When you dance do you aim to arrive at a particular place on the floor? The aim of dancing is to dance, is the present. It’s exactly the same with our life.” – Alan Watts

Alan Watts: Inevitable Ecstasy – Being in the Way Podcast Ep. 9 – Hosted by Mark Watts

Illuminating the truth of the relationship between awareness and self, Alan Watts naturally opens us to the inevitable ecstasy of surrender. This 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. Consciousness, Discrimination & Ego (0:00) Awareness & Self // Chasing the Universe (16:00) Buddhas From the Beginning // Searching & Surrender (26:00) Vibration, Meaninglessness, & Inevitable Ecstasy (39:00) “You don’t know what consciousness is because consciousness is present in every conceivable kind of experience. It’s like the space in which we live, which is everywhere. It’s like a fish being in water, and presumably a fish doesn’t know it’s in the water because it never goes out. A bird presumably knows nothing of the air, and we really know nothing of consciousness.” – Alan Watts

Alan Watts: Veil of Thoughts – Being in the Way Podcast Ep. 10 – Hosted by Mark Watts

Alan Watts explores the ‘veil of thoughts’ in money, civilization & progress; before shifting gears to the ‘divine madness’ of marriage & falling in love. This 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. 0:00 - Veil of Thoughts // What Do You Desire? 20:22 - Civilization, Progress, & Meaning // Divination, Gurus, & Responsibility 45:00 - Divine Madness // Marriage & Falling in Love “Is it only when you’re in love with another person, that you see them as they really are And in the ordinary way, when you’re not in love with people, you see only a fragmented version of that being. Because when you’re in love with someone, you do indeed see them as a Divine Being. Suppose that’s what they are truly, and your eyes by your Beloved have been opened; in which case your Beloved is serving to you as a kind of guru, an initiator.” – Alan Watts

Alan Watts & Ram Dass: Essential Teachings from the Gita – Being in the Way 11 – Host: Mark Watts

Ram Dass joins Alan for a look at the tools that the Bhagavad Gita offers us to face life’s most difficult challenges. This 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. The Inner Battlefield (0:00) Essential Teachings from the Gita (14:15) Root and Ground (30:18) “At a symbolic level, what the Gita is, is a dialogue between God and the seeker. And the battlefield turns out to be the inner battlefield, the battlefield of our own evolutionary being.” – Ram Dass “The essential teaching which the Gita is trying to convey is that the real center and soul, the basic reality of you and I, is not the superficial consciousness which we ordinarily call, ‘myself.’ What we are, fundamentally, is this unthinkable source of life and existence named Brahman, the expansive.” – Alan Watts

Alan Watts: Cosmic Drama – Being in the Way Podcast Ep. 12 – Hosted by Mark Watts feat. Cory Allen

This time on the Being in the Way podcast, Alan Watts explores the concepts of identity and consciousness, looking at the role we play in the greater ‘Cosmic Drama’. This 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. The Apple Tree (0:00) Sinking into the Soil of the Self (8:58) Going with the Flow (24:31) The Illusion of the Cosmic Drama (40:03) “All sentient beings are God in disguise.” – Alan Watts

Alan Watts: Psychology of Mystical Experience – Being in the Way Ep. 13 – Hosted by Mark Watts

Binding contrast into paradox, Alan takes us on a journey through the psychology of mystical experience in relation to life and death, followed by a jaunt through the power of nothingness. This 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. Psychology of Mystical Experience (0:00) The Paradox of Life & Death // Nature & the Anxiety to Survive (13:00) Nothingness // Contrast as Oneness (33:00) “I’m now 57 years old, and a lot of people are dead at 57. I look at this problem with complete fascination. You all have to face it. We’re all going to evaporate and turn into bones and dust. Instead of avoiding that, instead of looking the other way, instead of saying, ‘Oh, well, later…’ Let’s look at it! What would it be like to go to sleep and never wake up?” – Alan Watts

Alan Watts: Aesthetics and Mystical Vision – Being in the Way Podcast Ep. 14 – Hosted by Mark Watts

This time on the Being in the Way podcast, Alan Watts explores the concepts of identity and consciousness, looking at the role we play in the greater ‘Cosmic Drama’. This 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. Functional Art (0:00) Creating Works of Nature (23:49) Meaning and Insanity (48:43) “You and I have all conspired with ourselves to pretend that we are not really God, but of course we are. That is perfectly obvious. We are all apertures through which the universe is looking at itself. Only it is so arranged that we don’t know that in exactly the same way as we don’t look at our own eyes.” – Alan Watts

Changes: The Houseboat Summit - Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg & More - Being in the Way

Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, & Allen Cohen join Alan Watts on his houseboat to discuss change, the evolution of society, and the practicality of ‘dropping out.’ This 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. No Leadership Underground // Dropping Out & Earning Bread (0:00) Nature, Food, Tribes, & Psychedelics // How to Drop Out (21:08) Family & Marriage // Writing New Myths // Dropping Out, Turning On,Tuning In (43:33) Dropping Out From Karma: The Way Through Now (33:16) “What we need to realize is there can be a movement, a stirring among people, which can be organically designed instead of politically designed.” – Alan Watts

Alan Watts: A Coincidence of Opposites – Being in the Way Podcast Ep. 16 – Host: Mark Watts

Contemplating the coincidence of opposites within the ‘human game,’ Alan ponders the simple yet thought-provoking question: is existence serious? This 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. Waves & Troughs // Coincidence of Opposites (0:00) Learning the Human Game // Is Existence Serious? // Cause & Effect (11:08) Existence is Spontaneous // Letting Go // The Playful Universe (24:08) “Any experience we have through our senses—whether of sound, or of light, or of touch—is a vibration. And a vibration has two aspects: one called ‘on,’ and the other called ‘off.’ Vibration seems to be propagated in waves, and every wave system has crests and it has troughs. So life is a system of ‘now you see it, now you don’t.'” – Alan Watts

Alan Watts: Learning the Human Game – Being in the Way Ep. 17 – Hosted by Mark Watts

Contemplating the coincidence of opposites within the ‘human game,’ Alan ponders the simple yet thought-provoking question: is existence serious? This 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. Language & Ethics (0:00) The Game of Balance (13:33) Culture, Control & Spontaneity // The Art of the Controlled Accident (24:20) “What would you think of the heavens were the stars were all arranged at even intervals and concentric circles? Would you like to go out at night a see that? No. We like the stars scattered as they are. We also like to see when the waves break on the shore, the patterns of foam. The funny thing is you can look at those patterns hour after hour and realize that they never make an aesthetic mistake. They never do anything inelegant; just like a cat, it never makes a bad move.” – Alan Watts

Alan Watts: The Unpreachable Religion – Being in the Way Podcast Ep. 18 – Hosted by Mark Watts

Exploring modern culture as actually anti-materialistic, Alan tackles matters of sedentariness, sensuousness, isolation, work, play, God, and sexuality. This 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. Western Culture as Anti-Materialist (0:00) Screen to Sensuality // Crowd vs Community // Work & Play (5:55) Work, Play, Sex, & God (12:08) “For the vast majority of American families, what seems to be the real point of life—what you rush home to get to—is to watch an electronic reproduction of life. You can’t touch it, it doesn’t smell, and it has no taste. You might think that people getting home to the real point of life in a robust material culture would go home to a colossal banquet, an orgy of love making, or a riot of music and dancing. But nothing of the kind—it turns out to be this purely passive contemplation of a twittering screen.” – Alan Watts

Alan Watts: Improbable and Magical – Being in the Way Podcast Ep. 19 – Hosted by Mark Watts

In this unique episode of Being in the Way, Alan Watts offers tribute to the life, humor, magic and ‘nonsense wisdom’ of writer, G. K. Chesterton. This 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. 00:00 - G.K. Chesterton & Wonder // God, Surprise, & the Universe 11:08 - Improbable and Magical // Nonsense & Humor 24:00 - Meaning, Music, & the Dance of God // Singing Hallelujah with the Angels “I read G.K. Chesterton’s works very carefully, and I have by osmosis imbibed an enormous amount of wisdom from him. Funny thing is, not so much in terms of specific ideas, as in basic attitude to life. This is a man, who above all virtues, has what I think is one of the greatest virtues which we don’t usually find catalogued—he had a sense of wonder.” – Alan Watts

Alan Watts: Man is a Hoax – Being in the Way Ep. 20

Sifting down behind the cultural myth of man as separate, Alan explores how we are all actually Earth, the Universe, and the Big Bang. In this episode of Being in the Way, Alan takes us on a journey from childhood to adulthood, highlighting how we are trained into separation from a young age, and forced to focus on the never-arriving “future,” rather than being present in the moment. Through this lens, he further spelunks the “hoax of man” and offers insight into how this sense of ego identity creates tension and frustration. 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. In this episode Alan discusses: How from childhood onward we are constantly preparing for something in the future, rather than being present for life The culture’s division of work and play, and the confused idea that money can buy you pleasure Growing up in society, identity, defining a person, and being a “genuine fake” How the sense of ego creates tension, separation, alienation, and frustration The inseparable connection of the polarity of self and other The dawn of creation and how we are not actually separate from the Big Bang The 19th-century myth that man is a fluke in an unintelligent, automatic universe “Your actual self—what is finally and fundamentally you—is not a separate and lonely part of the world, but the real you is the world itself, everything that there is, expressing itself as this particular organism here and now.” – Alan Watts

Alan Watts: Joyous Cosmology – Being in the Way Podcast Ep. 21 – Hosted by Mark Watts

Offering us the possibility of waking up, Alan Watts contemplates the joyous cosmology that we are God playing the roles of ordinary people. This 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. In 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 undergo. The 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 itself. The idea of reality as God playing a game of hide and seek with itself for it’s own excitement and cosmic joke. The difference or potential complete non-difference between the experience and the experiencer. That what you think of as outside yourself is actually just a hidden you.