Exploring the Teachings of Alan Watts

In this solo episode, Todd explores the teachings of Alan Watts, an English writer and speaker known for interpreting and popularizing Buddhism, Taoism, and Hindu philosophy for a Western audience. Todd plays videos of Alan Watts discussing religion, death, consciousness, and the nature of the universe. He reflects on the power of belief, the interpretation of scriptures, the importance of exploring different perspectives, and the idea of consciousness as a part of the universe experiencing itself. Todd encourages listeners to question their beliefs, embrace diversity, and treat others with kindness.

Created by Human hosted by Todd Stevens

Intro track "Rich and Strange" by The Threats.

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Transcript

Todd (00:01.39)
Welcome to Created by Human. I'm Todd. Today I'm flying solo. The guys and I were trying to do an episode earlier and for some reason it just didn't work. Everything was failing. Systems, software, all of it was making a dang mess. So today I wanted to give you guys something. And what we were going to talk about is Alan Watts. Alan Watts is a phenomenal guy.

I want to look up his Wikipedia here real quick so I can kind of give you just his actual stats. So, Alan Watts was born on January 6, 1915. That's a long time ago. Died November 16, 1973. He was 58 years old. He was born in Kent, England and died in Marin County, California.

He was an English writer, speaker, and self -styled philosophical entertainer known for interpreting and popularizing Buddhism, Taoism, and Hindu philosophy for a Western audience. Now this dude, this dude can talk. He's kind of got that old school dialect that just fascinating to sit there and listen to him. He's got a little bit of an English accent.

He's just a really cool guy to listen to, but his take on things such as spiritualism and Jesus and the Bible and just humanity is very fascinating. And I kind of feel like Alan Watts, although if you kind of live in the circle of the oddity and the strange, you've probably heard of Alan Watts, but if you don't, this might be a new guy for you to check out. So what I wanted to do today was just play a couple of videos from Alan Watts.

They're about 12 minutes each and I'm just going to kind of stop it and interject when he's saying certain things, just to talk about what he's saying, because I do find him so fascinating to listen to. So I'm just going to let it play through and just let you kind of listen and take it all in. And I'd love to hear what you guys think about it. So in the end, leave me some comments. Let me what tell me what you think about Alan Watts and his take and how it may be.

Todd (02:24.592)
relates to your vision of, you know, spiritualism or your religious beliefs or just your take on humanity. I would love to hear what you guys have to say. So we're going to start out with this one video. It's called, It's Time to Wake Up, Alan Watts on Religion. So I'm going to give it a play and you let me know if you like it.

Todd (04:36.625)
You can take that or leave it. Wow. So far, just talking about how, you know, the scriptures that we were given, you know, it took a decent amount of time for these certain groups of higher ups, these, these higher Arkes of, or not Arkes, but these higher arching leaders in the system. So these higher leaders made the decisions. Um,

Todd (05:14.897)
So these higher leaders were the ones who made the decisions of in the end, what would be put in these canons, the Old Testament and the New Testament. So when you think about that, that they had to say that anything that didn't fall in line with their particular beliefs was cut out. Didn't fall in line with what they wanted you to believe was cut out. So Alan is just pointing this out.

Yeah, in a great way. I mean, that's something to think about, too. I mean, there are other writings of the Bible that just never made it in. Other scripts, I mean, in certain areas like the Ethiopian Bible, there is so much more text in there, so many more pages that aren't included in our King's Jane version. So again, it's just something to listen to and just something to think about that

why wasn't that included and maybe for yourself you can go check out these other texts. Let's get back to what Alan's saying here.

Todd (08:13.01)
Such a fascinating take on this talking about that, you know, if you don't believe then the church has no authority anymore that there's there's no power that they have anymore. So back in the day, you were a churchgoer. Most people didn't read or write these highly scholars.

Pharisees from back in the day and then priests They told you What the Bible said and they told you their interpretation of the Bible now We've come a long way since then and I think that's why you've seen in Europe how They've for the most part not everyone but for the most part have abandoned Faith have abandoned the church

because now there's so much more information. Like if you were a Christian back in the day, a Catholic back in the day, maybe not educated, and you go to church and you're hearing these things and they're telling you how to interpret it, you don't know anything else. You don't know that there's, you know, in Hindu culture there's the Vedas. You don't know that in the Muslim culture there's the Koran. You don't know these things.

Really, but you've never studied them. Maybe you've heard of them, but you've never studied them. So now you're being told what to believe. And in being told what to believe, you have no other choice but to either believe it wholeheartedly or to throw it all out with the bathwater, right? So this is where we are. We're at a point in time to where you can read your own things. You have, again, Alexandria's library in your pocket at all moments.

at all times. So at any time you can pull it out and you can you can look up anything. You can look up other religious texts right that have been translated that you can sit there and go oh man that sounds similar or that sounds different. We have so much knowledge at our fingertips and that also goes to question with the Library of Alexandria that it was said it contained all written knowledge from so far in the past before we

Todd (10:36.982)
can even fathom, right, before maybe even the Sumerian text, there was so much knowledge, and that was destroyed. Destroyed for a purpose, right? Because you can't have people thinking freely, you can't have people thinking different, you can't have that. You have to have people who believe what you're telling them. And if there's any alternatives, then that poses a problem with your control. Now you no longer have control over the people.

Huge problem, right? So again, we're at a point in time to where you can study all these things yourselves and I think what you'll find because it's what I found is that you'll begin to find that there are so many similarities in all these different cultures and all these different belief systems are so many similarities that You have to say maybe there's truth to Some of them now are they far -fetched are they elaborate? Yes for sure, but there's truth to them

because they're found all over the world at a time where there wasn't supposed to be any communication between these distant lands. Take that as you will. I think it says a lot. So do your own studying. Go out there and check it out. And that's basically what Alan Watts is saying here, you know? Don't just believe what you're being fed. Look around, listen, pay attention, and form your own conclusion.

Todd (14:37.078)
It's liable to be distorted. That's where I lean, you know? That's where I lean. I lean in the direction that the words we are reading hold some truth because they were audible stories carried down for, we don't really know how long, but there were stories carried down over and over again. And you know, like any other story, it starts to change over time.

little things get added, they get changed, they get embellished. So it's an audible thing, man. And so when you think about it...

What is it telling us? What is it telling us? It's telling us that these are not exactly as they seem, that the words in this Bible are not meant to be taken literally. And that scares me. That scares me because we have many a group out there, especially here in the States, that it is very literal. It is very literal.

That's terrifying because a lot of it doesn't even make common sense. Like it doesn't fall under common sense. So common sense would tell you that that makes no, there's no logic to that. How could that even be possible? Even if you believed in like miracles and all these other things, how could that logically be possible? So instead of using our natural brains, and this is a thing that frustrates me so much that.

God is out there, God has given us these brains to be intellectual, right? We're not apes, we're not other animals. We are extremely intelligent beings on this planet. So that was gifted to us. Let's say that's gifted to us. So we're meant to use it. So when we question things, when we question that that doesn't seem right,

Todd (16:46.967)
I would say 98 % of the time when we have a gut feeling and we say that this doesn't feel right, our feelings are justified. We were right about whatever that was. You know, you hear a mother's instinct. All that stuff is super true. So something's telling us that we need to investigate this, that this can't be 100 % accurate. Like, you know, history has now shown us that these things tie together.

that these spots were true, that we found these locations and history starting to point to that and say, hey, there are some actual facts within these stories, but they are embellished stories and we have to understand that. You know, some are just parables. Really, they're just, they're stories to make you think, you know, and not to be taken literal. And that is terrifying. It's terrifying to think that there are people out there and a lot of people out there that take these things literal.

It does scare me. And that, I think, is over time where we kind of have that divide in the good and the bad of religion and Christianity. The bad is the fact that they take these things so literal that they'll burn people at the stake for them. The good is that in Christianity, I mean,

a lot of people have had a place to turn for help. I mean, really, the bad that, you know, people within those powers, within the power in the church have taken advantage of people for multiple things, financially, sexually. But the good, again, is that people have found inspiration. People have turned their lives around, you know. I think we all know somebody that

All of a sudden found Jesus and their life was a wreck. They maybe were addicted to porn, drugs, alcohol, you name it. And with this new found vision of life through their new faith, they've turned their lives around and they become better people and they become better husbands and better wives and parents and friends.

Todd (19:14.776)
So there's a good and a bad. And we just have to honestly find our own way. And I just don't think you can be a zealot. You got to be careful with that, you know, with anything. You just can't be a zealot, you know. If you smoked all your life and then you quit smoking, don't start bashing on people who are smoking, you know. Don't start putting them down. Remember that you were there, right? Pump them up. Tell them they can do it if they want to quit. And if they don't want to quit, then that's their choice.

Let them let them do that. You know, I hate when I see people go to the extreme and we have to stop doing that. Now, let's get back to what Alan's saying here.

Todd (21:59.996)
This goes back to what I was saying.

You've never explored any other options. You've never looked outside of your circle. You know, it's equivalent to, I live here in Georgia. I live in this just north of Atlanta. I've never been anywhere else, right? Like, let's say I've never even been to Atlanta, the big city. That's a different world to me, right? I can't even understand that. So I stay within my bubble and I stay close to the people that are more like me that, um,

that live within my community, think more like me, look more like me. That's scary. That's terrifying. So if you haven't, again, explored the world around you or looked at these other texts, you've got to. There's no way you can make a sound opinion on anything until you've explored all the other options. You can't sit there and even say, I'm 100 % diehard, this is what I am. OK.

Have you looked at any of the other options? I mean, just even read them to do comparisons, just to even understand those other worlds, right? Like, you know, again, the Vegas from the Hindus and the Islamic text, you know, any of these things, have you ever looked at these things, read them, studied them, not because you want to change your belief system.

But because you want to understand it, how does it work against your belief system? Or are you going to find that a lot of it is entangled, that there are slight differences, right? But you don't know. I mean, it's the same thing with like these extreme Islam characters that are going on. And they're so into what they believe that there's no other way. I mean, we are truly the enemy, right? Like if you're a Westerner,

Todd (23:53.757)
You're just the enemy. And that's how it is. And then they raise their kids that exact same way. All of that's got to change. We have to expand our minds. We have to look outside of it. We have to start looking at other things that we just don't agree with so that we can at least understand them, so that we can at least start to have conversations with people about these things, you know, instead of just immediately shutting people off.

And even with that, you know, most of the people who are Christ followers that believe in Jesus Christ and that's who they follow. And they're so diehard not to get their hands dirty. They don't. Oh, my gosh, I can't be in that place and I can't do this and I can't listen to that music. And if that's not a Christian movie, I can't watch it. That's insane to me. And the reason that's insane to me, too, is because the guy you follow. Was doing all those things. He was hanging out with whores. He was hanging out with.

drunkards and druggies, tax collectors. He was hanging out with the worst of the worst because that's where he needed to be. Why did he need to be there? Let's take the spirituality, let's take the son of God thing out of it entirely. Let's just say he's a prophet. Let's just say that he's a prophet spreading the word of peace and love and that's what he's doing. Okay, well.

If that's all he's doing, he's in the right space, right? He's going out with people who, let's say a whore, for an example, a prostitute, not a whore, a prostitute. She's out there living her life to do the best she can. Probably her upbringing was tough, right? She doesn't know any other way to make any money, right? Except for selling her body. So within that, she has really kind of beat herself up inside.

When she lays her head down at night all by herself, right? She's probably tormented by what she has to do and what she's been through. So then this guy, Jesus, shows up and just loves her for nothing. She said, what do you want from me? I don't want anything from you. Okay. That's it. I don't want anything from you. I just want to be your friend. I just want to show you that I love you for no other reason. I don't need anything from you. And that's foreign to people. We even do that today. That's what we do today.

Todd (26:20.411)
I need something from you, right? Am I Christian enough? Right? Like, am I Christian enough? Do I go to church every week? Do I make sure that I don't watch any R -rated movies? Do I make sure that my music is clean? You know, like, are you Christian enough? And I just, I think in the end, what it's all supposed to be is just truly enjoying who you are, where you are.

and loving people and just, I mean, it's not like you have to like, you know, like everybody, but I mean, just show some common courtesy for people. I mean, who cares? Who cares if they're different than you? There's, there's something to embrace there and there's something to either learn or to teach. And we've just got to start doing that. And I don't even know if that's what Alan Watts is talking about here. He's talking about some different stuff, but his point, my point is, uh, how do you know?

unless you've explored all the options.

Todd (31:08.16)
I don't know about you guys, but... I think that's pretty cool. I mean, it's just... mind -boggling, right?

Todd (31:26.623)
I just, I'm trying to think of the right words to say. It literally is mind -boggling.

Todd (31:39.167)
So the way that Alan Watts puts his thoughts together and the way that he interprets the...

Todd (32:03.903)
So the idea here is that in a sense, we are all one.

Todd (32:14.943)
that inherently we are these pure souls that basically...

all go back to our source. We all go back to the place where we came from. Call it heaven. Some people call it multiverses or different dimensions. I think what we're going to find out is they're all one in the same, but we all go back there. But here we choose different paths. Here we decide whether we're going to be

these players in this game that either play the game cautiously or we play the game a little bit, I guess in a way throwing out the rules, you know, a little defiant, just to see how much we can get away with. And sometimes that bites us. Sometimes we make big mistakes, but we learn from those mistakes, hopefully.

I think most of us do. I think there's actually a very few amount that don't.

So we learn from our mistakes. And then we go back to this source, back home, back to heaven. And our souls take these experiences. I for one believe in reincarnation. I believe that we have the choice to do this over and over again. And then we look at the Hindus.

Todd (33:52.415)
The Hindus believe, and this isn't right or wrong, I honestly have no idea. I choose to believe one thing. But the Hindus believe that we keep coming back, reincarnation keep coming back each time until we've learned exactly what we needed to learn. So at some point you've learned exactly what you needed to learn, there's no point to come back and now you ascend further into...

I believe that, you know, we're given this choice. I think we can go back as many times as we want, you know? I think there is a part of lessons, you know, they say, when you die, you have a life review. And in this life review, you are basically shown this current life. You're shown how your actions have affected other people in conversations or just the way you treat people. But not only that, you feel...

not how you feel, you do, but you also feel that person that you interacted with. You also feel down the line, their people that they interacted with, right? So if you go to the grocery store and there's a person helping you that works there and you treat them like crap and you've made them have a really bad day, they go home, they talk to their kids, they treat their kid.

awful as well just because that's how their day has gone. So you're part of this cycle. Right. So I believe that in this life review that you're going to feel every one of those you're going to feel how you felt in that moment. You're going to feel how that employee felt in that moment. You're going to feel how their child felt in that moment. And it's just going to go on and on for there and trickle down. Right. So let's say that child goes off being something else and doesn't have a good life. You know you're going to be.

one of those moments that helped that path go sideways.

Todd (35:55.167)
What do you do with that? Right? So what do you do with that? Try to treat people well. So, you know, again, back to that in the, I believe you can come back and do it over and over again. I believe that you're going to look at not only your current life and, and everything in your life review, you're going to review all your lives, everything that you've done. And I think each time we do this, our souls come back and they get a little bit better, a little bit better, a little bit better. Right?

And it's also for the experience, you know, I think where we come from, you can't nothing is tangible like all this isn't to feel sorrow to feel like we it doesn't we don't know what that means. So we have to come down here to feel those things, to feel sorrow, to feel joy, to feel pain, to feel lost, to feel all these things, because where we come from, we can't feel those things. Everything just is right, like all knowledge just is.

but we don't know feeling, right? Like I think we don't know what it means to be hurt, angry, and just these huge swings and you know, we've all had those moments where you're happy, you're joyful, and then the next saying, you're just sad because in that happy, in that joy, something struck a chord.

that reminded you of something that maybe you no longer have. A loved one, a parent. Something that immediately gets sad. Those are such extreme expressions that I don't believe exist on the other side, so we have to come here and get those experiences. Anyways, I tend to ramble on when it's just me. I apologize. Here's another video that I want to play for us. It's called, This Will Give You Goosebumps.

And it is also by Alan Watts on Death. And hope you enjoy it.

Todd (40:10.081)
So what Alan's saying here, pretty cut and dry, that if, you know, I guess the fear is, you better believe in something or there's gonna be nothing. It's just gonna be darkness. Doesn't that scare you? And what Alan's saying here is no, that shouldn't scare you because if there's nothing...

and there's nothing, right? So we know what dark is. We know what fear is, right? A lot of us are scared of the dark. But what Alan's saying here is like, in this next phase when you die, if there is nothing, then you're not going to be, there's nothing to be scared of. There's no dark. There's no anything. So I don't think he's saying that for certain there's not a heaven. I think what he's saying is,

If your fear is that there's nothing, you shouldn't have a fear of nothing because you won't know. Like you, you won't be in darkness for forever. You won't have that. If consciousness doesn't exist, you won't be there. Right. So, um, I get it. I mean, it makes perfect sense that there's nothing to fear if you don't believe in an afterlife.

There's nothing. No darkness, because you don't know what darkness is. Like the blind woman, she has no idea what darkness is. She has no idea what light is. She's never experienced that. So in the same phase that if life and consciousness just stops at death, nothing to worry about.

Todd (43:36.672)
I love this. I just do. I mean, think about that. And until I heard this, I couldn't wrap my head around this for a second just because I've never thought about it. That in our view, right, as you expand out, move your hands out, then eventually your hands disappear. But you're not scared. You don't feel like there's nothing. There's not nothing behind me.

But I can't see it. Right. But I'm not scared that it doesn't exist. So it's the same thing that he's saying, like even behind your eyes. Right. That we take in all these things. But is there nothing inside here? Is there nothing behind this this this visual perception of what's going on just in my view? No, I know. And also assume.

that there's more going on.

Pretty cool.

Todd (46:46.85)
So if we believe that there was life before us, then we believe that there is life after us.

then how can we not believe that there could be more to this universe, more to this consciousness, more to, I guess, just even spirituality. How can we believe that there's not? Because again, like he just stated, we believe that there was a world before us. We never saw it.

I don't have proof of it other than some images, right? But I never saw them. I never put my hands on them. I've had stories of my parents telling me things they did before I was around. I don't know, right? I didn't see it. So if seeing is believing, yet we still believe even though we never saw these things, then that leaves a lot of room open to...

believe in other worldly things that we've never seen.

Todd (52:21.155)
That as well is mind -boggling. Like we are not aware at all, at all, of what's happening with our bodies. And we can feel pain, right? Like, oh gosh, something hurts in my side, my back soared, da da da da da. But there are functions happening within our body that we can't tell on a daily basis. They just happen, right? So as far as consciousness goes, we're not aware at all that these things are happening.

Right? So again, that is, is there a physical and actual separation between consciousness and body? Right? We've talked about this before that the mind, the body and consciousness are separate from each other. Right? Consciousness and the body are separate from each other.

that the mind is just this this fine -tune biological radio or antenna that picks up our signal, our consciousness signal. So for me, my consciousness is outside of me, but it's tuned to this body, just to this body. As far as I know, I mean,

could be multi -universal type things that are happening, but it's tuned to this body. And...

I at any point when this physical body dies, there's that separation that they call it the silver cord is now severed and you know, you're no longer attached to this body, but it just poses a question. Are we, are we these bodies or are we something entirely different that just inhabits this body for the experience, right? Um, at inception.

Todd (54:15.522)
And again, you know, don't want to get in political things. You know, you start talking about, you know, when is life, you know, as far as birth goes. I don't know, to be honest with you. I don't know for certain, but I want to say that it's at the moment that that seed and that egg come together and there is that spark. There's a literal spark. I believe that is consciousness entering at that moment.

Maybe that's life. I don't know, but maybe it is. So again, talking here about the ego. The ego is self -awareness here, right? From what other people are saying, from what I think about myself, but outside of that is consciousness that lives on.

Todd (58:18.949)
I hope I'm not bacteria. Maybe a baby rabbit would be fun. I don't know. Yeah, so.

Todd (58:32.197)
Is consciousness, is this physical form, is this universe as a whole really being aware of itself? I guess meaning...

Todd (58:51.941)
If the universe exists and it can't witness itself, right? It can't witness its glory, do we exist in a physical form so that we can witness it for the universe? Maybe. Maybe. Is consciousness just a part of the universe? Maybe. Don't really have a clue, but...

I do find it fascinating to think that we are these, again, the most intellectual species on this planet that we know of, that's witnessing the world around us and creating and witnessing just the creation of everything. Are we a part of the universe being able to witness itself, being able to experience itself?

Is the word universe, can it be swapped with God? Are we a piece of God that's able to experience the physical world? Well, yeah, I think so.

Todd (01:00:05.797)
Well, again, I love listening to Alan Watts. His mind, to me, is just simply brilliant. And if you get a chance, check out more of his stuff. And so, you know, today was just me. So I figured I'd kind of share with you somebody that I like to listen to and have you listen to him with me and share my thoughts. So that's it. Have a great day.

Love you guys.