7/26/2023 0 Comments Allan watts![]() ![]() In this, it was a forerunner of alternative colleges like Schumacher, the Garrison Institute and Esalen. It was a new type of higher education institution –participatory, open to the mystical, seeking consciousness-transformation rather than abstract knowledge. He moved to California, and helped to set up the American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco, which introduced Zen to the 50s beats and the 60s hippies. He foresaw, in the 1930s, that Western Christianity could do with a contemplative and mystical revival, but split from the church when facing ejection for his unconventional views and lifestyle – he lived in a threesome, preached free love, and was finally divorced by his wife for being a ‘sexual pervert’ (boarding school had apparently given him a taste for flogging). ![]() He wrote in his autobiography: ‘If I am asked to define my personal tastes in religion I must say that they lie between Mahayana Buddhism and Taoism, with a certain leaning toward Vedanta and Catholicism, or rather the Orthodox Church of Eastern Europe.’ Like the other ‘mystical expatriates’ (Huxley, Heard and Isherwood), he was really a perennialist, a prophet of contemporary pick n’ mix spirituality. ![]() He then moved to the US in the 1930s, and surprised everyone by becoming an Episcopalian priest (his daughter suggests he may have done this to avoid the draft). He struck adults, back then, as an angelic prodigy, like the child Jesus lecturing in the temple. At 20 he published his first book on Zen. At 16, Watts became secretary of the Buddhist Lodge, then the leading (or only) Buddhist organization in the UK. He won a scholarship to the oldest boarding school in the country – Kings Canterbury – and there announced his conversion to Buddhism aged 13. Watts was the only child of a suburban English couple. It’s poignant that a restless nomad who never found a home in traditional institutions should find digital immortality on the Net. He’s become a guiding voice for the internet age - indeed, in Jonze's film Her, Watts has been resurrected as a hyper-intelligent operating system. He's the favourite guru of Jarvis Cocker, Spike Jonze and Jonny Depp, and – pinnacle of pinnacles - even made the intro to Cheryl Cole's last album. Watts’ talks from the 50s, 60s and early 70s have millions of views on YouTube, and are often edited to the accompaniment of orchestral or ‘ chillstep’ soundtracks and jazzy collages of modern life. The only thinker whose popularity on YouTube comes close to prophet-of-rage Jordan Peterson is Alan Watts, the British popularizer of Eastern wisdom. ![]()
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