Alan Watts

 Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 16 January 1915 - 16 November 1973) was an English writer, speaker and self-styled "philosophical entertainer," known for his interpretation and promoting Japanese, Chinese and Indian traditions of Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu philosophical thought for an Western public. He was born in Chislehurst in England and relocated to New York in 1938 to begin Zen training. He graduated with a master's in theology from Seabury Western Theological Seminary and became an Episcopal priest in the year 1945. In 1950, he left the ministry and moved to California and joined the American Academy of Asian Studies' faculty. He also worked as a volunteer programer for KPFA Radio Station in Berkeley. He wrote over 25 books and essays on the subject of philosophy and religion, and introduced the new hippie counterculture in The Way of Zen (1957) One of the first bestsellers on Buddhism. In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), he claimed that Buddhism could be seen as a form of psychotherapy. The book Nature, Man and Woman (1958) was one of his favorites, which he believed to be "from an aesthetic standpoint--the most important book I have ever written." He also explored the topic of psychedelics and human consciousness through works like "The New Alchemy", (1958), and "The Joyous Cosmology" (1962). Watts's lectures gained posthumous popularity via regular broadcasts on public radio, particularly in California and New York, and on websites and apps such as YouTube[5] and Spotify. His recorded audio talks are mostly from the 1960s and 1970s.