Editorial Review:
Since the publication of his first book, The Spirit of Zen in 1936, Alan Watts has brought the essential teachings of the East to generations of seekers, suggesting the need to "go out of your mind in order to come to your senses." Carefully distilled from hundreds of hours of never-before-released material, Out of Your Mind presents a philosophical tour de force from this legendary self-described "spiritual entertainer" – 12 lucid sessions sparking insights into the nature of reality; death and rebirth; the dilemma of polarity; the suspension of judgment; the art of contemplation; and much more.
Cached date: AWS Called=true
You may also be interested in these products:
These categories may also be of interest to you:
Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 
It's Not serious 2008-07-07
Great to hear Alan Watts speak. He has a wonderful laugh. This is a collection of many of his talks. It is organized well and easy to follow. Each cd is about 1 hour; each segment about 5 minutes. The segments blend into each other to make a coherent hour. Very enjoyable and beneficial.
Alan Watts even more candid than usual 2008-07-06
In general, recordings of Alan Watts lectures, even more than his books, convey his playful approach to his teachings. The rare gift of being serious and yet not being too serious is a rare quality that makes his legacy enduring. This collection was mostly recorded on his houseboat, on his own turf so to speak. I have heard many hours of Alan Watts lectures from LP, tape, CD, and mp3 sources. In these "houseboat lectures" he is even more clear, lucid, candid, relaxed, and spontaneous than usual. Whether he is talking about cultural myths and approaches to how the universe was created to sex and a hundred other topics you just get the feeling you are in his living room talking to a bunch of friends and worrying even less than usual, if this is possible for him, about what the officials at a college lecture hall, ministers at a church, or a business conference center would think. This collection is superb in giving you the feeling of what it was like to hear Alan Watts in the most informal of settings. If you are a fan of Alan Watts this CD collection is highly worth the price. I do not know who dug up these recordings and edited them but they did a great job. Thank you.
Alan Watts has cured my fear of death 2007-11-24
Alan's lectures are at once charming, mind-blowing and gratifyingly substantial. A person like me, trained in Western thought and material objectivity, needs rational exposition on the subject of Zen rather than new age psychobabble. Perhaps it's the high british accent, but Alan delivers the Gospel of Nothingness with commanding intellectualism and endearing modesty. There is just as much bullsh** in Eastern religion as Western; Alan cuts to the chase and finds a Zen ethos that embraces both 'spiritualism' and modern psychology.
Basically, DNA biology and particle physics teach us that we are quite literally one and the same as everything else in the universe. Like waves are 'made of' ocean and 'are' the ocean and return to ocean, we are 'made of' the universe and 'are' the universe - now, before we were born, and after we die. Our apparent individuality is a counterproductive artificial construct. Peace, sartori, enlightenment, whatever you wish to call it, comes when we accidentally happen to see the Matrix - when we suddenly reach an understanding that nothing perceived by our senses is real - when, out of nowhere, we lose all fear of death and all desires and simply exist. The lessons of this state of being are to fully live every day as a grateful node of sentience belonging to the entire universe and to help others release themselves from desire and fear. There is no winning in life or defeating death; we are natural parts of the universe that arise, form, flourish and are recycled. Since we are the universe we do not perish - if we detached from desire there would be no sense of time and we would not fear anything, including death.
After listening to all of these lectures, I continue to look around for more from Alan Watts. He is jolly and cool and sparkling - he reminds me of a old-style British officer from India regaling us with tales of the Raj and the ways of the strange and wonderful subjects of the Empire!
ABOUT SOMETHING 2007-11-17
I first heard "Big Al" listening to Roy of Hollywood play his talks on KPFK 90.7 the Something's Happening late night radio show down in Southern California. Alan Watts changed my life! It broke my heart when I moved away to go to school and could no longer receive the signal. Roy encouraged me to make tapes off the air and I still donate with gratitude! (KPFK is commercial free/listener sponsored.) I can stream the show over the web now and the local public radio station broadcasts Alan now, but finding this deal here blew my mind! Check the price if you were to buy the discs and get this.
I wanted to listen to Watts' voice 2007-02-13
After reading the transcripts of his talks, I wanted to hear Watts' voice. There had to be more to what was being said than what could be seen in the page. With my assignments on Watts in college three decades ago, I had just given them a cursory reading for classes on Zen and Taoism. I never gave a lot of consideration about them until recently. Having listened to the CD's and my readings, I was surprised at how much my view points on life were either shaped by those writings or helped along.
Like him, I was raised a Protestant. I was felt comfortable about Zen Buddhism because of Watt views. His Buddhism, though, is his own form of Buddhism because down to his bones Watt really is quite the Anglican. You won't understand that until you hear him lecture, his inflections or his jokes.
Working through my third round of the CDs, I'm in awe of him. In these discussions he lays out the philosophical basis for the environmental movement. There is a discussion of Basho's poetry that makes me wonder how much impact he had in shaping Beat poetry then and our poetry now. There discourse on bits, bytes and nets that anticipated our digital world and information technology. He was much ahead of his philosophical contemporaries and spiritually unlike them he doesn't hide anything from his audience.
What a fine mind and spirit he was.
These CD's are worth the purchase.
Eric Otto
Cincinnati
|
|
|
|
