Hey Sup Forums, anyone enjoy Alan Watts?

Hey Sup Forums, anyone enjoy Alan Watts?

I'm not into fiction

Yeah

In what way is it fiction?

Thats Jim Carrey

Pretty much everything he says has no scientific basis. Not even remotely.
Same goes for Eckart Tolle.

The original psychnauts did things we haven't figured out yet.

Does that matter?
If people use it to better their life then why the fuck do you care?

Alan Watts was a visionary. As a Jungian mystic, I am well familiar with his work. People like Watts, Alan Moore, Aleister Crowley, Joseph Campbell, Julian Jaynes, Terence McKenna, and Grant Morrison have been helping to fill in the gaps between science, philosophy, and mysticism, showing that each provides context and perspective on the other.

Of course it's not scientific. It wouldn't be useful if it was. In the Aristotlian model, there are three ways of obtaining knowledge: empiricism, rationalism, and revelation. The application of pure empiricism is science, the application of pure rationalism is philosophy, and the application of pure revelation is mysticism. Science is a valuable tool, but has weaknesses which must be compensated for with other tools. For example, science can't speak to truth, since truth is a metaphysical quality and science is limited to empiricism; as truth is a pretty important existential concern of humanity, we must turn to philosophy and mysticism to address it.

OP here, I agree, it does not need to have a scientific basis for it to be true. Many people have used his philosophies and others to better their lives. I'm in college studying quantum physics yet I still abide by his teachings. user up top has yet to understand the middle path.

Well said, you sir/ma'am have a beautiful mind.

He's great

I like listening to him, but I don't really take anything away from his lectures.

I just like his voice, and what he's saying.

ASMR

Some physicists keep the number 137 on their walls as a reminder of the mysterious and mystical, and that there are connections beneath the surface which can be intuited but not understood rationally. As I understand it, the number 137 holds significance in wildly different mathematical and physics fields, though why that should be no one knows. It seems to hold special significance down on the factory floor of reality.

I'm not into ASMR. It's pretty boring.

Its related to to quantum electrodynamics, its an equation to solve simple processes like when one person meets another person in a busy train station. All other peoples in the vicinity beside the two that meet are irrelevant to the factor of 1/137. They use it for a more scientific basis though so keep that in mind.

To continue, you're perfectly correct, we use it as a way to understand there is more going on than what we can comprehend

I once read an interview with a physicist who said that humanity will never understand quantum physics for the same reason you can't teach algebra to a cat.

I love Alan Watts! I used to listen to him a lot as a teenager. Later I studied religion in college and now I'm a teacher. Someday I'd like to teach a course using some of his writings and recordings. No one can doubt his skill as a communicator, however, he described himself as a "spiritual entertainer". Many say he was "superficial" or "fake". Yet he was also largely responsible for making the practice of zen, Buddism and other asian philosophies accessible to the western mind. Still, I consider him a great man with a controversial life and career.

Completely true, humanity can never truly understand quantum physics because it is simply unknown. We can continue to theorize like we always have, but no matter how much we debate and study we will never grasp the truth. We'll never known if Einsteins theory of the big bang theory is true, whether it was void of all gravity and matter or if it was a simple combined state of the two. Nor will we ever know if the string theory is true and all forms that we know today were once entwined and after the big bang the first 4 dimensions were unraveled, height, width, length, and time. It theorizes that we will one day finally understand the 4th dimension. Then the 6 that follow, and after that we know all that there is to be known. Its fucking crazy.

OP here, along with my talk with the other user, I am in fact also Buddhist. Thanks to Alan Watts I was introduced to this lifestyle and he's helped me understand things that I could not find through science. Anyone who calls him fake or superficial has yet to either unlock their full potential or does not have the brain capacity to realize his teachings and apply them to life. People fear what they do not understand, society will continue to oppress the few who have unlocked the secrets to the spiritual world and realize true peace.

I'm not sure I agree. I'm a Jungian mystic, and I've talked to a lot of gods, demons, and other entities. They don't exist in the sense you and I do, but are rather built into the structure of the human brain, the primary colours from which we construct our own personalities. Through a variety of shamanic and Jungian active imagination disciplines it's possible to use the same mental machinery used to create dream characters to personify these archetypal personality fragments into entities with their own identity.

These entities are immensely old, wise, and powerful, some of them predating our species. Jung himself developed much of his psychelogical model in discussion with a demon, the manifestation of his own Shadow, with whom he used to take long walks in the woods.

Consider how difficult it is to sit down and consciously work out the trajectory of an object based on its speed and angle of release -- and yet our unconscious mind calculates where to place our hands to catch a ball instantly, and without effort, many times a day. These immensely powerful unconscious processes can be harnessed, and they have the benefit of not being restricted by formal logic.

I don’t think he ever claimed to be a scientist, nor claimed to be offering advice that could be tested empirically.

Dude was a philosopher

I agree with you, there is a way to harness your mind and unconscious thoughts. Whether you do it by Shaman disciplines or through meditation. Now do I believe that you can create a conscious yet non-physical being with your mind, no. That does not mean its not true because fuck, I dont know. Maybe I have yet to break the chains on that fragment of my brain.

I can teach you to do it. It's time-consuming, but not difficult. You need to alter the way your brain works through repetition, essentially reprogramming your own operating system. I live in Windsor, a 15 minute drive from downtown Detroit. If you can make it here, I'd be willing to train you to do it. I'm a tarot reader and mystic, so I do this professionally.

i do. i fiound his lectures really mind opening and they helped me a lot to deal with life troubles.
that said, i consider myself a pretty rational person, i find science fascinating, and spirituality just another way to see the world.