This Is It, Alan Watts
This Is It, Alan Watts
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This Is It
and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience

Author: Alan Watts

Narrator: Sean Runnette

Unabridged: 3 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/19/2018


Synopsis

This inspiring audiobook contains six revolutionary essays exploring the relationship between spiritual experience and ordinary life—and the need for them to coexist within each of us.

With essays on “cosmic consciousness” (including Alan Watts’ account of his own ventures into this inward realm); the paradoxes of self-consciousness; LSD and consciousness; and the false opposition of spirit and matter, This Is It: and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience is a truly mind-opening audiobook collection.

About Alan Watts

Alan Watts, one-time professional meteorologist, spent considerable time studying wind changes and short-term alterations in the weather. This, combined with his enthusiasm for sailing which began with the sea scouts, enabled him to assist people to read the weather from the signs in the sky. He died in May 2020.

About Sean Runnette

Sean Runnette, a multiple AudioFile Earphones Award winner, has produced several Audie Award–winning audiobooks and has also narrated works by John Steinbeck and Richard P. Feynman. Of his performance of The Courage to be Free, AudioFile Magazine wrote "Runnette’s tender approach to every sentence and paragraph helps the author’s wisdom glow. Along with the understated power of the author’s writing, Runnette’s performance makes this one of the most arresting and thought-provoking audiobooks available today". He is a member of the American Repertory Theater company and has toured internationally with Mabou Mines, an avant-garde theater company. Sean's television and film appearances include Two If by Sea, Copland, Sex and the City, Law & Order, Third Watch.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sanjay on February 17, 2016

To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, “I am listening to this music,” you are not listening". Recognizing that the experience of presence is the only experience, is also a reminder that our “I” doesn’t exist beyond this present moment - a Paradox. There is n......more

Goodreads review by Tom on March 18, 2020

Alan Watts is a cool-down jog for a mind that spends all day racing. Alan Watts is a relaxing soak for a brain that's feeling strained. Alan Watts is a soothing balm for an ego running hot. 3 stars. Some essays here are good, most just fair-to-middling, but all are worth the little bit of time they tak......more

Goodreads review by Mohit on June 25, 2017

I discovered the book casually placed on a bookshelf in a Hrishikesh cafe and considered it as just-another-rhetoric on living in the present moment. Still I decided to give it a go: the book was thin and I had nothing to do but watch the Ganges flow while sipping my lemon ginger tea. And boy, was I......more

Goodreads review by Erik on November 16, 2014

I wasn't raised within a religious tradition. Mother was a member of the Lutheran Church by birth as are all Norwegians unless they sign out of the state religion. Dad, although Norwegian by ancestry, had never had any affiliation with a religious confession, nor had his parents. My brother Fin and......more

Goodreads review by Mark on August 09, 2012

I'm so pleased I finally read this pseudo-intro to Zen. It's not comprehensive or a how-to or anything like that. It's more like happening to sit next to someone at a bar who has traveled somewhere you'd like to go. It's casual and approachable, but still serious. It gives you a sense of things and w......more