An acclaimed philosopher shows us how—in an age of unprecedented anxiety—we can find fulfillment by embracing the present and living more fully in the now. He is "the perfect guide for a course correction in life" (from the Introduction by Deepak Chopra).The brain can only assume its proper behavior when consciousness is doing what it is designed for: not writhing and whirling to get out of present experience, but being effortlessly aware of it.Ala...

**“You’re trying to straighten out a wiggly world—no wonder you’re in trouble.” —Alan WattsIn an age when all knowledge is at our fingertips, Alan Watts reminds us that wisdom is something else entirely. He invites us to rediscover the vitality, spontaneity, and deep unity that underlies everything.**Alan Watts was not just a philosopher and entertainer; he was a bridge between worlds. Drawing from the spiritual traditions of both East and West, Watts illuminated ancient tr...

Alan Watts noted author and respected authority on Far Eastern thought studied Taoism extensively and in his final years moved to a quiet cabin in the mountains and dedicated himself almost exclusively to meditating and writing on the Tao. This new book gives us an opportunity to not only understand the concept of the Tao but to experience the Tao as a personal practice of liberation from the limitations imposed by the common beliefs within our culture. The philosophy of the Tao offers a w...

Mark Watts compiled this book from his father's extensive journals and audiotapes of famous lectures he delivered in his later years across the country. In three parts Alan Watts explains the basic philosophy of meditation how individuals can practice a variety of meditations and how inner wisdom grows naturally.

Six revolutionary essays from "the perfect guide for a course correction in life, away from materialism and its empty promise" (Deepak Chopra), exploring the relationship between spiritual experience and ordinary life—and the need for them to coexist within each of us.

Western thought and culture have coalesced around a series of constructed ideas—that human beings stand separate from a nature that must be controlled; that the mind is somehow superior to the body; that all sexuality entails a seduction—that in some way underlie our exploitation of the earth, our distrust of emotion, and our loneliness and reluctance to love. Here, Watts fundamentally challenges these assumptions, drawing on the precepts of Taoism to present an alternative vision of man a...

A revelatory primer on what it means to be human and a mind-opening manual of initiation into the central mystery of existence, by “perhaps the foremost interpreter of Eastern disciplines for the contemporary West" (Los Angeles Times).At the root of human conflict is our fundamental misunderstanding of who we are. The illusion that we are isolated beings, unconnected to the rest of the universe, has led us to view the “outside” world with hostility, and ha...

Modern Civilization, Watts maintains, is in a state of chaos because its spiritual leadership has lost effective knowledge of man's true nature. Neither philosophy nor religion today gives us the consciousness that at the deepest center of our being exists an eternal reality, which in the West is called God. Yet only from this realization come the serenity and spiritual power necessary for a stable and creative society. One of the most influential of Alan Watts's early works, The Supreme I...

Deep down, most people think that happiness comes from having or doing something. Here, in Alan Watts’s groundbreaking third book (originally published in 1940), he offers a more challenging thesis: authentic happiness comes from embracing life as a whole in all its contradictions and paradoxes, an attitude that Watts calls the “way of acceptance.” Drawing on Eastern philosophy, Western mysticism, and analytic psychology, Watts demonstrates that happiness comes f...

A penetrating and wide-ranging study of mythological processes and their particular manifestation in Christian religion, Alan Watt's Myth and Ritual in Christianity is widely considered a classic. Using the lens of the "doctrine of mystical tradition", Watts explores the development of church doctrine in relation to the procession of seasons and finds, contrary to many contemporary critics, that Christianity cultivates virtue and promotes living in the now.

Explores language and mysticism, Buddhism and Zen, Christianity, comparative religion, psychedelics, and psychology and psychotherapy.Gold Winner, 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards in the Philosophy categoryTo commemorate the 2015 centenary of the birth of Alan Watts (1915–1973), Peter J. Columbus and Donadrian L. Rice have assembled a much-needed collection of Watts's scholarly essays a...

"Although Alan Watts' famous voice and happy laughter are missing now, his penetrating vision of Buddhism remains, and his lectures become brilliant prose in book form." —Publishers WeeklyBuddhism: The Religion of No-Religion presents six powerful essays by Alan Watts, the guru for an entire generation of 20th century thinkers, writers and poets. Watts was an engaging speaker and an icon of America's Beat and Counterculture movements. His friends ...