The One Thing Alan Watts Forgot to Tell Us

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Let me tell you a story.

It’s about a man who spent his life telling people there’s nowhere to go. And yet, people traveled miles, physically and mentally, to hear him say it. His name was Alan Watts.

You’ve probably heard his voice. Smooth, British, a bit mischievous. Like a philosopher who just had a really good martini. He’d lean into the microphone and say things like:

“Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.”

Which, to be fair, is more fun than most self-help books that basically say, “Drink water and atomize your habits.”

But here’s the thing about Alan Watts.

He showed us a map. A gorgeous, hilarious, mind-bending map of reality. He’d draw it with stories about waves that aren’t separate from the ocean. About selves that are illusions. About how you’re not you, but the whole universe playing a game of hide and seek with itself.

And I’d hear him talk, nod, and think: “Yes! That’s it! I get it now.”

Only to finish listening… and promptly go back to arguing with my wife about whether she really needs a new purse.

That’s the problem with maps. They feel like movement, but they’re just paper.

Reading Watts is like admiring a perfect travel brochure for a place you’ll never visit. It makes you smile and nod and want to go there, but here’s the thing he never talked about.

HOW to get there.

The Scheinfeld Approach

People keep telling me that my new world view, based on the teachings of Robert Scheinfeld, isn’t really new. That it repeats tropes of Daoism, Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, and… the teachings of Alan Watts, who translated all of those eastern thoughts into western language.

And those people are right, in a sense there’s nothing new here. But it’s damn difficult to hear a Zen koan and have it lead to a knowing of the truth. It sounds pretty, it sounds meaningful, but it’s not a guide. In fact, none of the ancient mystics or prophets who figured it out ever gives you a guide. Just a series of mysterious, poetic, maddeningly accurate but impractical clues.

Even if you believe we live in an illusory world, that the ego is an artificial construct, and that a larger entity is controlling it all, that doesn’t help you believe it, deep down inside, where it can make a difference and reduce your struggle and suffering.

This is where Scheinfeld comes in.

First in teaching a technique for separating your emotions from the meaning you (inaccurately) assign to them. That’s the most powerful outcome of reading Busting Loose from the Money Game.

And second in collapsing the entire illusion, which comes from his video series or his live workshop.

He forces you to notice, through a series of exercises and examples, that you’re not in control of anything. That what is going to happen is what is going to happen, and that what you “think” about it or “choose” to do has no bearing on anything.

Sound depressing? No, it’s liberating.

I haven’t encountered any other world view that doesn’t require some level of faith or belief. Scheinfeld’s world view, which he refers to as Ultimate Freedom, comes to you naturally, and it works whether you treat it like a metaphor or like it’s the actual underlying operating system of the universe.

Ultimate Freedom doesn’t require decades of meditation practice or five grams of psilocybin pulsing through your brain. It just requires you to pay attention, and knowing what to pay attention to.

Watts Was the Original Tease

Don’t get me wrong, I love Alan Watts. He got me interested in his map, in his world, and did it in an entertaining way.

“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone,” he’d say.

But then, everyone immediately tries to “leave it alone” really hard, which is, of course, not leaving it alone at all. That’s the joke. And I think Watts knew it.

For all his brilliance, Watts wasn’t in the business of hand-holding people through the collapse of the illusion of control.

He’d point at the moon, but he wasn’t going to give you a telescope, or an orbital insertion trajectory.

The Map Isn’t Broken. It’s Useless.

The problem isn’t that Watts’ map was inaccurate. It’s that maps, by their very nature, are representations, not experiences.

It’s like trying to eat a menu.

Scheinfeld takes away the menu and shows you that you’re already mid-bite. His 5-Day Experience isn’t a course, or a retreat, or a seminar.

It’s a demolition.

He doesn’t give you new tools to fix yourself. He shows you that you were never broken. He doesn’t help you search. He makes you realize that the seeking is part of the illusion.

Because every time you think you’ve arrived, the Voice in your head, the ultimate Unreliable Narrator, slides in and whispers, “Not yet. A little more fixing, a little more learning, and then you’ll be there.”

I ran that treadmill for decades.

The five days (either the 30 hour video, or the live experience) is when that Voice finally shuts the hell up. Because you notice it.

The collapse of the illusion isn’t dramatic, it’s stupidly simple. It’s like you’re at a party. You think you’re not on the guest list. You spend hours trying to sneak in, strategizing, asking people how they got in.

Finally, someone taps you on the shoulder and says,

“You’ve been inside the whole time. This is the party.”

Everything Watts Said Is True, But.

So, if you’ve been nodding along to Watts for years, feeling like you “get it” but also wondering why life still feels like a self-improvement treadmill, maybe it’s time to stop reading the map.

Watts is brilliant when he says, “Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.” But how do you take it less seriously?

The collapse of the illusion isn’t hiding in aphorisms. The illusion will collapse when you notice. And then, for the first time, life becomes what it was always meant to be, a story.

Nothing to learn, no meaning to be interpreted. No karmic points to be gained.

Simply an experience to be enjoyed.

My life has changed for the better because a friend told me to read a book.

1. Read my article about the book. It’s the most popular thing I’ve ever written.
   After reading the book, I spoke to the author, and he told me there was a lot more to the story.
   

2. Watch the free video masterclass on the updated worldview. It eventually points to the full video course.
   I found this masterclass really annoying because it delayed me getting to the “buy” link for another hour.
   

3. Buy the full 30 hour video course. This is what I did. Not an affiliate link.
   I got so excited that I convinced Robert Scheinfeld to come out of retirement to do a live workshop about his worldview, for me in Toronto Sept 13–17, 2025.
   

4. Click here if you’re interested in the live experience.

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