This Is It

We treat life like a symphony where the grand finale is the only part that matters. We endure the opening movements, tolerate the slow adagios, and tap our feet impatiently through the scherzos, all in anticipation of the final, crashing chord. The education we rush through, the career we climb, the family we raise—all are seen as necessary steps toward a future payoff, a moment of arrival where we can finally say, “This is it.” But what if that finale never comes? What if the point of the music was never the last note, but the experience of each note as it was played? This frantic pursuit of a future climax turns the present moment into a mere stepping stone, something to be used and discarded. We live in a state of constant psychological postponement, always preparing for a life that we never quite live.

This very predicament—the human tendency to sacrifice the present for an illusory future—was the central concern for Alan Watts. A former Episcopal priest who became one of the foremost interpreters of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience, Watts saw this compulsive future-chasing as a deep-seated cultural habit. He didn't write "This Is It" as a complex theological argument or a set of rules to follow. Instead, he crafted a collection of essays to illuminate a single, profound realization: the mystical experience, the feeling of being truly alive, is a reality that's already here, perpetually available the moment we stop striving for it.

Module 1: The Great Fallacy—Unifying Spirit and Matter

We live with a fundamental misunderstanding. We believe the spiritual and the material are two different things. One is lofty, pure, and found in quiet moments. The other is messy, practical, and part of our daily grind. Alan Watts argues this is a fallacy. It’s a linguistic habit that has become a prison for our consciousness. The truth is much simpler. The spiritual and the material are one and the same reality.

This is a direct challenge to how we operate. Think about the "pretentious nonsense" of our worldly ambitions. We pursue high ideals, often justifying conflict, stress, and sacrifice in their name. Watts suggests these ideals are often empty substitutes for a much deeper reality. They are placeholders for the "unheeded miracles" that surround us every day. The texture of a leaf. The sound of rain. The complex dance of a team solving a problem. These are the spiritual path itself.

So how do we access this unified reality? It starts with a radical shift in self-perception. This brings us to a powerful, counterintuitive insight. Spiritual awakening can arise from complete self-acceptance, even of your "worst" parts. Most spiritual traditions emphasize overcoming our flaws. We fight our selfishness, our anger, our desires. Watts points to a different way. He references Jesus preferring the company of "publicans and sinners" over the self-proclaimed righteous. The point is to stop fighting our worst impulses internally.

He uses a Turkish proverb: "He who sleeps on the floor will not fall out of bed." When you accept your own base nature—your selfishness, your anxiety, your imperfections—you stop the exhausting internal battle. You can't fall from a place you already are. This complete acceptance, without guilt or deception, is what leads to wholeness. It is in this state of non-resistance that a profound shift can occur. A moment where you realize "everything is as wrong as it can be" suddenly flips. It becomes a moment where "everything is as right as it can be."

This leads to a common concern. If we fully accept everything as it is, won't we become passive? Won't we lose our drive to improve the world? But flip the coin. Watts argues the opposite is true. Awakening to this unified reality enhances your energy and your desire to share. When you experience the world as a single, miraculous event, you want to share that feeling. As Watts says, "half the delight of it... is to share it with others."

And because the spiritual and material are one, this sharing is about life, things, and tangible support. This transformation comes from the direct experience of the vision itself. Feeling you should be more generous or present just adds another layer of anxiety. It spoils the whole thing. The generosity, the connection, the action—they become the natural overflow of seeing reality as it is.

Now, let's turn to the experience of this vision itself. Watts calls it an experience of "Cosmic Consciousness."

Module 2: The Universal Insight—Experiencing "This Is It"

Across cultures and throughout history, people have reported a sudden, overwhelming experience. It’s a moment of insight where the universe, just as it is, feels utterly perfect and self-sufficient. This is a direct perception. Watts calls this the experience of "Itness."

In this state, the world can appear luminous. The boundaries between you and your surroundings can dissolve. You feel a profound certainty that everything, including the things you normally label "bad" or "wrong," is perfectly right. This experience is universal, but its expression is not. The core experience of unity is universal, interpreted through different cultural lenses.

For example, a Christian like the philosopher Pascal might interpret this intense clarity as the presence of God. A Zen Buddhist might describe the same feeling as an insight into sunyata—the dynamic, ungraspable openness of reality. The labels are different. God, Tao, Brahman, the Void. But the underlying experience is the same. It's the direct, non-conceptual realization of the intense reality of the present moment. It is the raw, unfiltered experience of "This Is It."

And here's the thing. We often chase the emotional high of these moments. The ecstasy, the bliss, the feeling of profound love. But Watts cautions against this. The core of the experience is the insight itself, not the emotional ecstasy that comes with it. The feelings are secondary. They will come and go, like any other emotion. Chasing the feeling is like a musician focusing so much on the applause that they forget to enjoy the music.

The real value is the enduring understanding that remains. Once you truly learn a skill, like riding a bike, the facility remains even if you don't feel excited about it every time. Similarly, once you have a clear enough insight into the nature of reality, that understanding persists. It changes your baseline. The initial blissful sensation might fade, but the perspective it granted becomes integrated into your consciousness.

Building on that idea, this new perspective reframes our entire normal mode of being. From the vantage point of this insight, our everyday consciousness looks very different. Our normal, problem-solving mind is revealed as a constructed "nightmare" of selective attention. Our ordinary "Monday morning" reality is a filter. It's a system of attention we learned from our society. It screens out anything that doesn't fit the rules of "civilized," productive life. We are taught to see the world as a collection of separate things and problems to be solved.

But the vision of unity reveals this for what it is. A useful, but severely limited, mode of perception. The paradox is that even this limited, constructed consciousness is part of the perfect whole. A Zen saying puts it this way: the legs of a duck are short, and the legs of a crane are long. You can't make the duck's legs long or the crane's legs short without causing them pain. Things are perfectly "such as they are," including our own limited understanding.

So what happens next? This insight doesn't make you a passive observer. It transforms your relationship with the world and your own mind.