Alan Watts

 Alan Wilson Watts (06 January 1915 - 16 November 1973) was an English writer, speaker and "philosophical entertainer". Watts is most well recognized for his ability to communicate and promote Hindu, Taoist, Buddhist and Chinese traditions to an Western public. Watts was born in Chislehurst in England and relocated to New York in 1938 to start Zen training. He completed a master's degree in theology from Seabury-Western Theological Seminary and was ordained as an Episcopal priest in the year 45. In 1950, he resigned from the ministry and relocated to California where he was a member of the American Academy of Asian Studies' faculty. He also served as a programer volunteer for KPFA Radio Station in Berkeley. He wrote more than 25 books and articles on the philosophy of religion and. He was the first to introduce the hippie counterculture , and The Way of Zen (1957) that became the best-selling book about Buddhism. He made the argument in Psychotherapy East and West (1961) that Buddhism could be viewed as an alternative form of psychotherapy. He described Nature, Man and Woman (1958), "from a literary standpoint, the most important book I've ever written." Watts was also interested in the topic of psychedelics and human consciousness through his works such as "The New Alchemy", (1958), and "The Joyous Cosmology" (1962). His lectures were popular posthumously through regularly broadcasts on radio stations stations in California as well as New York as well as online via websites and apps like YouTube[5] and Spotify. The audio recordings of his talks date mostly in the late 1960s and early 1970s.