Alan Watts about nature and our place in the universe

Voice: Alan Watts (extract of a conversation with myself)
Idea, music & editing: Raymond Brouwers

Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 -- 16 November 1973) was a British philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and popularizer of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Pursuing a career, he attended Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, where he received a master's degree in theology. Watts became an Episcopalian priest but left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies.

Living on the West Coast, Watts gained a large following in the San Francisco Bay Area while working as a volunteer programmer at KPFA, a Pacifica Radio station in Berkeley. Watts wrote more than 25 books and articles on subjects important to Eastern and Western religion, introducing the then burgeoning youth culture to The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism. In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), Watts proposed that Buddhism could be best thought of as a form of psychotherapy, not just a religion. Like Aldous Huxley before him, he explored human consciousness in the essay, "The New Alchemy" (1958), and in the book, The Joyous Cosmology (1962).

Towards the end of his life, he divided his time between a houseboat in Sausalito and a cabin on Mount Tamalpais. His legacy has been kept alive with the help of his son, Mark Watts, and many of his recorded talks and lectures have found new life on the internet. Critic Erik Davis notes the freshness, longevity, and continuing relevance of Watts's work today, observing that his "writings and recorded talks still shimmer with a profound and galvanizing lucidity."

This is an excerpt of Alan Watts "a conversation with myself" where he talks about nature, the universe and everything being interconnected. Eastern meest western filosofy.

In the animation you see the earth, our home, breathing just like us as a living organism. The seasons are pumping oxigen and CO-2 just like our lungs do and just like the trees do. Everything is part of one complex system like the Hinduist call "Om" or "AUM". Om or "AUM" is the reflection of the absolute reality, it is said to be "Adi Anadi", without beginning or the end and embracing all that exists.
Om or Aum is of paramount importance in Hinduism. This symbol is a sacred syllable representing Brahman, the impersonal Absolute of Hinduism — omnipotent, omnipresent, and the source of all manifest existence. Brahman, in itself, is incomprehensible; so a symbol becomes mandatory to help us realize the Unknowable. Om, therefore, represents both the unmanifest (nirguna) and manifest (saguna) aspects of God. That is why it is called pranava, to mean that it pervades life and runs through our prana or breath.

In Vedantic philosophy, prana is the notion of a vital, life-sustaining force of living beings and vital energy, comparable to the Chinese notion of Qi. Prana is a central concept in Ayurveda and Yoga where it is believed to flow through a network of fine subtle channels called nadis. Its most subtle material form is the breath, but it is also to be found in the blood, and its most concentrated form is semen in men and vaginal fluid in women. The Pranamaya-kosha is one of the five Koshas or "sheaths" of the Atman.

The universe is commonly scientifically defined as the totality of everything that exists,including all physical matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space, although this usage may differ with the context (see definitions, below). The term universe may be used in slightly different contextual senses, denoting such concepts as the cosmos, the world, or nature. Observations of earlier stages in the development of the universe, which can be seen at great distances, suggest that the universe has been governed by the same physical laws and constants throughout most of its extent and history.


Prana of our earth:
Dr. Keeling was the first scientist who started collecting carbon dioxide samples at a base in Mauna Loah (Hawaii) in 1958.[1] By 1960, he had established that there are strong seasonal variations in carbon dioxide levels with peak levels reached in the late northern hemisphere winter. A reduction in carbon dioxide followed during spring and early summer each year as plant growth increased in the land-rich northern hemisphere.

Every spring, when trees leaf out and grasslands and farmlands green, the carbon dioxide in the air decreases, reflecting the demand from photosynthesis. Conversely, in fall, when leaves and wilted plants are returned to the soil and decay, the carbon dioxide rises again. Gaia "breathes" on an annual cycle, and we can measure how deeply.

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One Word: **BEAUTIFUL** =)