“I seem, like everything else, to be a center, a sort of vortex, at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself.. Each one of us, not only human beings but every leaf, every weed, exists in the way it does, only because everything else around it does. The individual and the universe are inseparable.” ~Alan Watts

The following are excerpts from a transcript of Alan Watts’ “Conversations with Myself.” The full video can be viewed here on youtube. It’s the closest thing we have to a TED Talk from Watts, a systems thinking pioneer, decades ahead of his time.

“I’ve been living out here for some months; to write, and to absorb an atmosphere that is different from the city. To try and find out what is the essential difference between the world of nature and the world of man. Because there’s an obvious difference, like the difference of…