Lesson 5: You Are the Universe Experiencing Itself — Alan Watts, We As Organism

Lesson 5 of 25 — We As Organism

The most quoted idea in all of Watts — you are the universe experiencing itself — gets its full, careful treatment here, and it’s much more precise than the bumper sticker.

An apple tree apples. That’s what it does. And in exactly the same grammatical sense, Watts says, the universe peoples. You are not something that was inserted into reality from outside; you are something reality is doing, locally, temporarily, spectacularly. The feeling of being an isolated fragment is a trick of attention, not a fact of biology — your body is a continuous transaction with air, light, food, and other people, and the boundary of the skin is a convenience, not a wall.

This is the authentic recording from the Official Alan Watts Org, the archive preserved by the Watts family. The complete remastered collections are at alanwatts.com.

Sit with this: If the universe is “peopling” you the way a tree apples — what exactly is there to be anxious about?

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