In the sixties the philosopher Alan Watts began radiocasting his ideas about philosophy, ideology, spirituality, religion and life. He was an English scholar of religions, well spoken with a beautiful and clear accent in English often spraying his language with a hint of sarcasm.
For a while he held weekly talks on radio discussing various topics. Though he touched on many subjects let us simplify and refer to his talks as touching on spirituality in general.
Though perhaps an over simplification it is in many ways close enough.
Thousands of people began to tune in to his radio talks. Soon he became a sought after lecturer and interviewer as well as a teacher and a scholar. He wrote a few books but mainly his attraction was his spoken talks.
Though his insights and ideas were interesting by themselves many of them were quite deep and developed and often – or almost often – controversial to the common mindset of his time.
I suspect that two factors influenced his popularity. One was his use of British English as opposed to the common US English, which often attracts to a degree of refinement and the second his manly and clear voice which has almost a hypnotic effect, as his voice is very pleasing to listen to.
Also he was an accomplished sage for when he began to outline his subjects and subsequently explaining them he had the ability to explain simply and clearly even the most complicated spiritual and religious ideas in such a way that the uneducated could both listen with ease and understand.
At first glimpse there is nothing special about something like this.
There are literally thousands of men and women giving talks on radio or on videos explaining different ideas to people. There are hundreds of TV stations where evangelists of various disciplines are handing out explanations to doctrines, encouraging inspirations of faith and preaching of various kinds.
Also there are thousands of people in the world at large who have built a great career – and usually a lucrative one at that – evangelising self empowerment, self healing and whatnot of the buffet of cheap ideas.
Sometimes the ideas are even expensive but they are often of the category; all your dreams will come true if you believe in them. Sadly they are not selling these ideas to prisoners in concentration camps or starving children in slums or in the third world.
Self empowerment evangelism was not new in the sixties. In fact there were already a growing number of literature, radio shows and TV shows offering self empowerment of various kinds. Most of which could trace their roots to work of notable men like Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightingale, Norman Vincent Peale. All these names bearing striking resemblance to the work of earlier men like James Allen who wrote the famous book “As a man thinketh”.
So what made Alan Watts so special and what has he to do with Jiddu Krishnamurti?
At the time of Alan Watts’s main work he was living in California. It was place on the planet where everything was allowed – so to speak. The Hippie movement was focused on San Francisco as their center point and in California there was a plethora of spiritual movements, healing centers and gurus at that time.
California was at that time already established as the entertainment capital of the world. Hollywood had already become the dream factory, dishing out movies, TV series and entertainment on an unprecedented scale. The industry of stardom and dreams employed hundreds of thousands of people which of course were in turn influenced by the buffet of spiritual food available.
Anyone who wishes to research the influence of the garden of spirituality at the time on the dream industry will find that the people facilitating our entertainment- and awareness on a subliminal scale – are still influenced by the buffet and many of our present perceptions are subliminally enforced by these people.
In the last four decades the ideas and perceptions which flourished in California in the late sixties and early seventies have been seeping into our minds, molding our way of life and that this has been on unprecedented scale in history. In fact we can see quite clearly how for the first time in history the common mindset has become a mindset of a global village.
Before this Seal of the Apocalypse was opened the world was a much more diverse garden of different ideas, perceptions – or worldview – than it is today.
One of the most astonishing factors in this set is that Alan Watts is better remembered – or his philosophy better preserved – than any of the ideas of the men and women who were active lecturers and gurus at the same time as his work was being done.
Also it is interesting to note that when his ideas – which are widespread on the Internet and particularly in audio and video format on youtube.com – are still ahead of the times. Four decades ago when he was teaching his worldview his ideas were far beyond anything that was going on around him.
Even today when his ideas are researched it becomes evident, that though they have actively shaped our current mindset and influenced heavily the transformation which has been brewing, there is still a lot to build on in the coming decades, perhaps centuries.
Two factors are worthy of mention in this context. People in general – i.e. people who study philosophy, spirituality, religion and psychology – are still not beginning to grasp his idea of the wave. How everything that goes up will go down again, that sound is only audible because of the silence in the wave, the same with light and almost everything else. This concept is very deep in and worthy of study.
The other factor is that Alan Watts is the only one – in my opinion – who has been able to successfully explain Jung’s concept of The Shadow in an easily comprehensible way. An idea which is largely unknown to people yet to those who understand the concept and have used successfully it is one of profound wisdom.
And here we touch on Jiddu Krishnamurti.
He was an accomplished spiritual teacher whose ideas are still at least a century ahead of our times, perhaps more so. Alan Watts was one of the very few people who could easily and comprehensibly explain Krishnamurti’s quantum spirituality with success. Which K himself – as he liked to refer to himself as K – could do as easily, though he was very accomplished himself.
Alan Watts Talks About Carl Jung Spiritual Awakening Lectures
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX_P9jav4W0
A Critique of Carl Jung Alan Watts Seeing Through the Game
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtgNjBqUVgU
It goes without saying that to someone who wishes to follow my work and try to comprehend what the new version of monotheism – or The One Faith – represents would do well to research the teachings of those men.
They are not only useful to you as a person on a spiritual path but also it is very useful to take a look at how the mindset of Alan Watts has influenced and inspired a transformation of the human psyche in the last four decades and probably in the decades to come.
Jiddu Krishnamurti Interviewed On Love, Sex & Pleasure.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIe5HOj50uQ
It is a very interesting ideas, to do away with religion yet transform the mindset to transcendental spirituality and perhaps begin for the first time grasp pure science and make a leap into the future where space flight and exploration of the galaxy and even further would be more than a possibility.
Something I believe that we can do, but only if we transform. In the sense that we all become our own spiritual leaders, diverse yet united, leaderless yet with a clear path to tread.
The chapter of the Hippies
For centuries the civilized world of the west was subject to domination of thought and spirit. In many ways it still is. We have been indoctrinated to believe in a demigod – or an idol – representing a son deity from the creator.
This son deity is supposed to remove from us a responsibility to our spiritual wellbeing. Furthermore we’ve been taught that we are born in sin. Consequently we are to feel imperfect and for the reason of the inherited sin – original sin – we cannot become pure or perfect; neither in the eyes of God or in our own eyes.
Through those centuries, at least since the establishment of the churches, we’ve been trained to see God as a distant entity only accessible through his bureaucrats, the priests. Those priests have made sure that we only understand God from their viewpoints and sometimes it has even cost us our lives, or at least our place in society, if we deviate from their doctrines.
These doctrines are henceforth built on two foundations.
First being the foundation of the prophets and then the so called fathers of the church. Now it would be simple to use concept of the church to refer only to the Catholic Church but far from it. There are many church establishments in existence and have been at least since the fourth century CE and even from earlier times. The Catholic Church is well known in the west of Europe and in many colonial parts of the world, particularly South America but there are also other parts.
Eastern Europe has been under the influence of The Greek Orthodox Church for as long as the Catholic in the west. In Egypt the Coptic Church has been strong since the second century CE and it reaches into many parts of Africa and even India. The Coptics have a well established tradition and a proud history.
These three pillars of Christian history have all their own church fathers, respected and studied theologian or spiritual philosophers who spent their lives studying earlier texts, searching for knowledge from current and earlier philosophers and then writing – or teaching – about their own conclusions which often were built on empirical foundation as well.
Then following the renaissance in Europe there came a birth of a new breed of church fathers who broke away from the large establishments of the three pillars and consequently created their own churches. Some of them became large names – the most famous ones being Luther and Calvin – and their followers created large movements in many countries which still exist today.
All these church fathers are a common breed. They all believe that the Christ –Jesus from Nazareth – is a son of God and that because he was born from Holy Spirit and hence a perfect human, and sacrificed for the human sin that he owns a right for everlasting life and that he shares that right with anyone who confesses a faith in him.
I will not go into a theological discussion of this belief or the doctrine which establishes it.
Let us keep in mind that “God’s Will” does not mention this. Also that I’m not sure if the holy Quran rejects it (promise to look into that) but Islam promises everlasting life in a spiritual paradise for its believers much like the Christianity as was known at the time of the prophet.
What we see here is a world of three main systems of Monotheism, what I wish to name The One Faith. The Faith in a One God. These main systems are Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All three are strongly related as the first one is generally considered the father of the other two. All three belief systems recognize the same original prophets and then add their own.
Generally these three systems are classified as The Abrahamic religions for their common roots belong to the mission of the great prophet Abraham from Ur.
If my reader has followed other of my writings regarding my prophet’s service – or mission – then it is already clear that I regard Hopi and Zoroastrianism also to belong to the long tradition of monotheism, but that discussion is out of scope for this article.
Let it suffice to say that in the prophetic era when the seven seals of the Apocalypse where opened the humanity belonging to the Abrahamic religions had belonged to and shared a spectacular mindset. Mainly that you cannot know God unless you follow the teachings of the prophets and particularly that scholars of the faiths must interpret these teachings, furthermore it is generally rejected that a new prophet arises.
People have therefore felt subdued spiritually and psychologically.
If someone would feel inspired – in the sense which I feel I’ve been – it would be a social suicide to claim so openly. In some Islamic societies a new prophet is often tolerated but in others often killed. In Judaism they are not accepted at all and within scopes of Christian churches there is no acceptance of any prophet arising after the resurrection of the Christ.
All this goes to explain a rigid and closed mindset focusing on a deity and its representatives and consequently its system or doctrine, distancing the worshipper from the worshipped, incarcerating in the spiritual senses of the public.
Hence the seal opens:
Suddenly springs forth in the western world an explosion of a new set of thinking. It is born in the middle of the time period between 1965 and 1975 CE. It begins to dawn in early 1960, reaches its heights around 1970 and has almost disappeared before 1980. Four decades later the people who belonged to the movement – which spanned the globe, particularly the industrial world – hardly admit that they were part of it and their children understand little about it.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obsAUJHMOZs
It would be easy to reject this spiritual reformation – or revolution – as a temporal fashion and dismiss it. But that would be a folly for it had far reaching consequences and the ripples of it are still felt. Mainly I interpret it as one of the seven seals of the Apocalypse in the following way:
First we must keep in mind that all the seven seals combined represent a sign.
The sign is large and unmistakable to anyone who has his mind, spirit and insight open – of two simultaneous events in human history. One being that the Christ has returned in the same fashion as he went away – in spirit and as a thief in the night – and secondly that the End of The World is over!
We must be able to interpret all spiritual knowledge as a spiritual knowledge and wisdom. The End of World doesn’t mean the literal physical world but an end to an era or to a time of a mindset. The End of the World means the end of a mindset which ruled the world of humans for thousands of years.
The time of the industrial revolution, beginning with industrialization of weaving cloth and early years of the coal machines, ended when it climaxed with the flights to the moon. All this time the mindset of men where beginning to revolt.
The Hippie movement was precisely that climax: The pursue of values regardless of deities, reinforcing that you as a person are responsible for your spiritual wellbeing and maturity and that there is no priest or a prophet who has an authority over your soul.
When you begin to view the time that has passed since, you will see how the ideas and aspirations born with that movement have in fact inspired and transformed much of modern thinking.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4qZB2ytq10
Lastly I place for you – perhaps inappropriately – link to a documentary about Charles Mason who – though hated worldwide as a mass murderer – he based most of his teachings to his followers on the Hippie ideas. I do this firstly because some of those ideas are apparent in the documentarie, and also to remind us that there is always a dark side to most idealogies.
This is part of a series of articles about the Seven Seals.
