Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion

One of the first titles I every bought by Alan Watts. My older brother had ' Psychotherapy: East & West' on the shelf and I had browsed through it after reading Watt's contribution to Solomon's LSD anthology. I purchased a paperback copy of BEHOLD THE SPIRIT in a small bookstore on Queens Boulevard near Lefrak City in the early 1970's and read it while still a teenager, magnetized by psychedelics. This book was my introduction to the approach of Zen Buddhism and was very important in helping me make the transition from being raised Lutheran to more non-dual, mystical, and eastern spiritual perspectives. Of course, it all depends on what you are ready to hear. doesn't it? I passed the book around to my young friends who could sense that show more it represented a real watershed in my life, but it never seemed to move them in the same way. show less

Though Alan Watts was a "must read" during the 1960s-70s, exactly as it was expected that one must read and enjoy Henry David Thoreau, it appears old today. Most of his other works don't fare any better.

Instead of Watts for an understanding of Zen, that which is claimed to be such so often being instead Americanist consumer voracity, an excellent translator and writer who presents Buddhism without the irrelevant "beat" -- a deliberately self-alienated elite -- trappings, from the clueless about actual Buddhism, is Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

One wonders why Watts in the 1950s when there was the alternative of D. T. Suzuki. Later, of course, his rationalizations in behalf of psychedelics were useful to many who didn't have their own show more rationalizations. show less

It has just confirmed the journey - I do not know and I cannot know but I am compelled to have a relationship with God who gave me back life.

ZAPAD