Member-only story

15 Reality-Dissolving Insights from Alan Watts That Will Make Your Universe Implode

Fahri Karakas
4 min readJan 26, 2025
Photo by Arnaud Mariat on Unsplash

Alan Watts didn’t just explain Eastern wisdom — he revealed patterns so fundamental they make both Eastern and Western frameworks look superficial.

Here are his most mind-melting discoveries.

1. The Cosmic Game Theory

Watts’s most shocking insight: The universe is deliberately playing hide and seek with itself.

The game structure:
God/Universe = Actor
Humans = Role
Life = Performance
Reality = Stage
Time = Plot Device
Death = Costume Change

Mind-breaking implication: You are the universe pretending to be you.

2. The Now Illusion

Most radical time insight: There is no past or future — only an eternal now pretending to be time.

The proof:
Past = Memory (happening now)
Future = Imagination (happening now)
Time = Measurement (happening now)
Movement = Change (happening now)
Life = Eternal present pretending to be temporal

--

--

Fahri Karakas
Fahri Karakas

Written by Fahri Karakas

Associate Professor in Business & Leadership at University of East Anglia. Passionate about doodling, imagination, and creativity. Author of Self-Making Studio.

No responses yet