Alan Watts on Escaping the Trap of Overthinking
The late philosopher Alan Watts had profound insight into the human condition, exploring existential questions about the nature of reality and our relationship to the universe. In his lecture "Alan Watts – Don‘t Think Too Much," summarized in a YouTube video by True Meaning, Watts offers a compelling perspective: much of human suffering stems from compulsive, anxious thinking that disconnects us from reality. Through the practice of meditation, Watts argues, we can escape this trap, connect with the present moment, and rediscover the peace that comes from understanding our interconnectedness with all existence.
The Problem of Mistaking Concepts for Reality
According to Watts, one of the deepest problems facing humanity is that we confuse the actual world with the abstractions and concepts we hold in our minds. As he puts it, “Reality is not a concept, and there is no way in which reality can be understood through words.” Yet we constantly attempt to reduce reality to names, labels, and linguistic definitions. In doing so, we lose touch with the suchness of the universe – its direct, unmediated is-ness that exists beyond language.
The fact is, Watts argues, the real world does not actually contain “things” as such. It also does not consist of distinct events. Rather, it is a unified process, an infinite dance and flux of relationships. The universe, Watts colorfully puts it, is a “system of wiggles.” Out of this system, our minds carve up different patterns, divide the wiggles into conceptual boxes, and perceive separation where there is interconnectivity. As a result, we impose an illusory chasm between ourselves and the outside world. The conviction that we exist independently from the universe is merely an idea created by our anxious, language-oriented minds.
How Meditation Reveals Our Interconnection With the Universe
So how can we wake up from the dream that divides us from reality? Watts extols meditation as the path back to unity. When we sit quietly and observe our breath and sensations instead of getting caught up in compulsive thinking, we begin to directly encounter the universe once again. Instead of labeling the world through filters of mental abstraction, we experience phenomena cleanly and immediately. Our anxious interior chatter starts to fade into the background. In this state, boundaries dissolve away. The imagined gap between self and other is exposed as a mere product of thought. Instead of rational analysis, we come to feel our inherent belonging to the whole.
Watts uses a memorable metaphor to get this point across. Imagine a person standing by the seashore, digging their toes into the sand while waves crash at their feet. This person insists that they have no relationship with the sea – that the two entities are utterly separate. Clearly this would be delusional. In the same way, Watts suggests, it is delusional for us human beings to deny our deep, physical interconnection to all existence. When we quiet the noise of conceptual thought through meditation, this truth reveals itself to us viscerally.
The Dangers of Living in a Conceptual World
Another key point Watts makes is that when we spend too much time trapped in compulsive thinking and inner dialogue, we end up estranged from reality and living in a world largely of symbols. Of course, it’s necessary to think conceptually to survive. But when taken to an extreme degree, abstract mental reflection cuts us off from contact with life in its fullness. We spend our days enclosed in echo chambers of verbal reflection. The sights and textures of the actual surroundings where our bodies are situated barely register. Caught up in the drama of our own narratives, we ignore the vivid totality of the here and now.
As Watts warns rather sharply, “If you talk to yourself all the time, you’re living in a symbolic world and not really living in nature.” He advocates meditation as a balance to restore our ability to drink in the is-ness of reality, before concepts chop it up. By regularly quieting our internal conversations through mindfulness of the breath, we place ourselves back within the rhythms of existence where thinking plays only one part. We release ourselves from bondage to the world of symbols in our heads. No longer enthralled by abstractions, we awaken to the simple miracle of being present.
The “Pointless” Practice of Meditation
In another counterintuitive twist, Watts argues that meditation is one of the only human activities that has no point or purpose guiding it. This lack of aim or reason, he suggests, is exactly what makes the practice so essential.
After all, in almost everything else we do in life, we are trying to achieve some improved future state. Even self-improvement practices like exercise ultimately aim to take us somewhere we are not already. Meditation is different. By guiding us into deep contact with this timeless instant, it liberates us from constant hankering after some other moment. Through mindfulness, Watts says, “we are able to discover an eternal present that is constantly changing.” By aligning ourselves with the reality of now, we lose interest in chasing conceptual phantoms.
This is why Watts stresses that we should never approach meditation as a grim obligation, or solely as a means to get something in the future – even if that “something” is peace of mind. After all, why defer serenity to a tomorrow that never arrives when we have the capacity to rest in stillness now? Meditation shows us that the purpose we seek is always immediately at hand. As Watts puts it, “The now, the present, the eternal present, is the ultimate and the supreme point, the point of life. Because…life is always now. There is no other life than now.” Out of touch with this truth, we live in constant anxiety, awaiting some eventuality that will finally make things right. Through mindfulness that opens our eyes afresh in childlike wonder to the aliveness of each moment, we rediscover equanimity and joy.
Escape the Trap of Overthinking Through Mindfulness of Now
In a fast-paced, information-overloaded modern society, Alan Watts’ message serves as a crucial wake-up call. When we lose touch with the refreshment of the present by compulsive abstraction and future-fantasizing, we generate our own stress. We sweat profusely within self-woven cocoons of thought, oblivious to the beauty always at hand – impervious to the unified dance of reality to which we essentially belong.
Yet the habits of restless thinking and disconnection from our surroundings are so culturally ingrained that breaking free can seem impossible. Fortunately, as Watts makes clear in his stirring address, liberation from the chatterbox of the anxious mind lies within easy reach. Through dedicating small periods each day, or even a few mindful minutes, to anchor our attention firmly within the sensations and perceptions appearing before us right now, we come home to where we already are, and always have been: at one with All That Is.