Books I love - Out of your mind by Alan Watts (3 min)

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One book that I've absolutely loved over the years, and I think it is maybe the only one I have listened to instead of reading, is Out of your mind, by Alan Watts.

Out of your mind - Alan Watts

There is a warning I feel I owe to everyone I recommend this book to - It's a very terrible book, in the sense that it's so good it explains everything; it gives the entire show away. <insert the typical Alan Watts laugh>

Well now that I have got that out of the way, I can begin writing what I want to write about this book really. It is not a book per se, it is a collection of lectures delivered by Alan Watts at his home in the late 1960's. If you are not aware about Alan Watts, he was an author, philosopher and a self proclaimed spiritual entertainer who was based out of the US for most of his formative years. He has been instrumental in translating the core of eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism for the western audience. A casual search of his name on Youtube would give you a lot of material from and about him.

In this particular book, Alan Watts covers a host of different topics, ranging from different points of view about life in general to very specific and detailed discussions about the nature of human consciousness. He has dedicated entire sections of the book to go into a lot of details about Zen Buddhism as well as Hinduism - explaining each from a historical point of view as well as touching upon their core values and teachings. In more ways than one, this book opened me up to the idea of looking at religions, both eastern religions and western religions, from a completely different point of view than what I was used to before.

All said and done, the first time I listened to this book (Yes, I've revisited it multiple times since then), it was for none of the above reasons. Listening to short Youtube videos of Alan Watts would always fascinate me about exploring a complete book or a lecture series of his. His talks always had this vibe of ease and joy which is really hard to describe. And "Out of your mind" turned out to be just what I was looking for - a gallon of Alan! (If you got the Friend's reference, high five!) 

If you're somehow feeling that this is a very serious book, trust me it's anything but. In fact, I believe Alan Watts has totally lived up to his title of being a spiritual entertainer in this book. It's humorous, it's entertaining and it's absolutely delightful. I highly recommend it for everyone.

As an introduction to these lectures, Alan Watts goes, "When one speaks of awakening, it means de-hypnotization, or coming into your senses. But of course to do that you have to go out of your mind." And then laughs that beautiful laugh. You'll know when you've listened to him. Do give him a try once.

Out of your mind - Alan Watts

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