Alan Watts’ View — Key Themes
Death as a return to nothingness, like pre-birthWatts often points out that the state of being dead is like the state before you were born: a timeless, formless blank. In that sense, death would not be an experience of suffering or darkness, because there would be no subject to experience anything. organism.earth+1
“If you went to sleep … for always and always and always, it wouldn’t be at all like going into the dark … it would be as if … you had never existed at all.” deathcafe.com+1
The illusion of a separate ego / selfWatts stresses that the conventional “I” (the ego, personality) is a kind of image or narrative, not the deepest reality. The real “you” is the cosmos or “universe I-ing” through many forms. organism.earthWhen the body and memory systems...
Alan Watts’ View — Key Themes
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Death as a return to nothingness, like pre-birth
Watts often points out that the state of being dead is like the state before you were born: a timeless, formless blank. In that sense, death would not be an experience of suffering or darkness, because there would be no subject to experience anything. organism.earth+1
“If you went to sleep … for always and always and always, it wouldn’t be at all like going into the dark … it would be as if … you had never existed at all.” deathcafe.com+1
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The illusion of a separate ego / self
Watts stresses that the conventional “I” (the ego, personality) is a kind of image or narrative, not the deepest reality. The real “you” is the cosmos or “universe I-ing” through many forms. organism.earth
When the body and memory systems “die,” that particular configuration dissolves — but the underlying awareness or “I-ness” is not bound to that form. organism.earth
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Death as part of a cosmic rhythm
He proposes that the universe “forgets” itself until it “remembers” again, in new forms. He sees death as a clearing, a blank slate, allowing new births. organism.earth
So death is not a final endpoint but a pause, or a shift in expression. organism.earth
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You never experience your own death
One of his arguments is that from the vantage point of consciousness, you never “live through” your death. Because the very “you” that would do the experiencing is what disappears (or changes). There is no subject left to witness “your own death.” YouTube+1
This is sometimes phrased: you will never have a memory of your death, because the act of dying is the cessation of the structure which would have the memory.
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“You were never born, so you never die”
In many Watts lectures, he invites us to see that the essential self — the silent awareness, the cosmic awareness — was never born in the first place, and therefore cannot die. The birth-death model applies only to the ephemeral forms (body, mind, ego). YouTube+1
A classic line: “You were never born, and you will never die.” YouTube
Reflection & Some Questions / Caveats
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Watts is not claiming immortality of the ego (that “you” in your usual sense lives forever). Rather, he's pointing to a shift in how we identify ourselves.
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His perspective is nondual — it dissolves the boundary between “me” and “others,” “life” and “death.”
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This view is more about liberating us from the fear of death than giving a metaphysical proof. It works if you “get it” experientially, but it can seem strange or unsatisfying from a strictly logical or empirical standpoint.
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It resonates with various Eastern spiritual traditions (Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism), which also teach that the sense of a separate self is illusory.
